Hacker News Reader

Number of new Bitcoins a day: 2063 [1] Transaction fees in Bitcoin: 272 [2]

So transaction fees are not insignificant.

1: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins July 6th data 2: https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees July 6th data

View on HN

That's total, not per block.

Per block, fees average 0.9btc iirc.

Transaction reward is 12.5 btc

0.9 is not insignificant, but compared with block reward, the true (current) incentive providing block security is not in question, and that is what was being discussed.

How is that a useless figure? You'd expect it to have the same ratio per block or per day, so they're comparable when talking about the ratio of fees to rewards

Because we are talking about security of blocks and block scarcity, there is no limit on the space "per day", its all per block, similarly people don't make race attacks on a day, they make race attacks on a block.

Per block or per day is the same thing. Also better to look at it on a day level since transactions+fees vary throughout the day

Because we are talking about block security. Security is not on a per day basis, its on a block basis.

people don't make race attacks on a "day" they make a race attack on a block or series of blocks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com