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Comment by SuddsMcDuff | Hacker News Reader

Way to get your Bitcoin donation address on HN!

I was 50/50 on putting it there. I decided that putting a PayPal address would be more evil than this. I also didn't expect this to get anything other than downvotes.

I'd rather pay Paypal transaction fees right now :P

Fixed - or donate to MSF instead.

Eh, with transaction fees as high as they are I doubt they'll get a single donation.

I shoulda used something else! Oh well, the .xyz domain only cost me ~5AUD

TX fees are insanely low right now, the average transaction should cost about $0.80 USD worth of bitcoin (and closer to $0.40 USD worth if you use a segwit address).

It's all relative. "Insanely low" compared to a month ago, sure. They're still insanely high when compared to any other crytpcurrency, or Bitcoin itself before it was allowed to hit the block size cap.

Even litecoin (average of $0.30) and ethereum (average of around $0.10) have TX fees that aren't "insanely low" compared to bitcoin right now. And "bitcoin before it was "allowed" to hit the cap", of course tx fees would be low... Bitcoin was never designed to scale like that, fees are a core part, and "bidding" to get in a block was always a core part of bitcoin, it wasn't until the last year or so that it started showing due to usage.

The fact is that there aren't any cryptocurrencies that are well tested and widely distributed that can handle any significant usage cheaply and quickly. There are some very promising options, but none that are fully ready for primetime in my opinion.

Still, I wasn't trying to start up the argument about transaction fees again, just pointing out that they are at a 12 month low right now in bitcoin. And the comment that was implying transaction fees are really high right now is outright false.

> "[fees] are at a 12 month low right now in bitcoin"

Sorry, that is bullshit. See https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

That graph is average paid in USD per transaction. A transaction from an exchange with 300 inputs and 500 outputs is going to be paying a magnitude or 2 more than a simple 1 input 2 output transaction. But in your graph they are all lumped and averaged together.

It's like me saying "The cost of electricity is lower than ever" then you show a graph showing the average electricity bill is $800, but don't include the information that it includes the aluminum forge down the street...

The correct graph to look for is "satoshi per byte that will get you into the next transaction". And while i'm sure you can find dates and times in the past year where it's been technically cheaper, the reality is that right now it's about as cheap as you can get to transact in bitcoin (5 sat/byte fees are going in the next block currently, it generally doesn't go much lower because many miners won't include fees below that). That hasn't reliably happened since early 2017.

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