> The average transaction fee during slow periods is about $5 and it jumps to $20 whenever there is load on the network.
When people say this, do they mean $5/$20 per bitcoin or per any transaction whatever size?
When people say this, do they mean $5/$20 per bitcoin or per any transaction whatever size?
Transaction fees are per kb of data so more complex transactions pay more. The amount transfered is irrelevant.
It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin?
Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)
In addition to that, there's always the Lightning Network as well wherein you can transact for fractions of pennies.
You should fund a LN channel for more than one transaction because you cannot change the channel funds after creation, so you better make sure enough is in it. This makes it unsuitable for things that require more than a tiny fraction of your monthly income, e.g. rent.
LN channels also need to be constantly monitored to not get scammed, which the LN whitepaper suggests you to pay third parties for.
The LN whitepaper completely obmits the routing problem, too. It more or less says "we don't want to think about that now". A network whitepaper that doesn't think about routing, imagine that.
Yes, that makes it a closed system, but it was never realistic to have every single person on earth access bitcoin via on-chain transactions.
If you don’t pay enough it can take hours for your coffee to be paid for.
So every time you buy a coffee with Bitcoin the transaction fee is different and sometimes will cost more than the coffee itself.