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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

No, on-chain transaction fees aren't higher than the cost of a coffee. They're currently around $0.15 per transaction - cheaper than typical credit card processing fees. Plus, you could always build an off-chain transaction system with zero fees.

As for the environmental impact: individual Bitcoin transactions don’t directly increase energy usage. Miners consume electricity regardless of whether any given person transacts. And while mining is energy intensive, it doesn't have an environmental impact in itself.

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I must have misremembered? Last time I looked (maybe 2 years ago) I thought actual bitcoin transactions took maybe an hour to confirm and cost a couple of dollars -- am I just short more marbles than I thought I was or has something changed with how they do transactions.

The context I was looking at related to storing data in the bitcoin ledger. I think I commented here, I'll have to look back and see.

It's a dynamic market so fees can vary depending on congestion, BTC price, etc. Expected time to first block confirmation is around 10 minutes assuming your fee is high enough to be included in the next block (when blocks are full, miners prioritize transactions with higher fee).

When you send a transaction, you get to pick what fee you'd like to use. For this kind of service, transaction speed isn't really important so you can get away with setting a low fee.

Here's a 0.15$ fee transaction that was mined just 6 minutes ago: https://mempool.space/tx/2e66ba1758e233ff1b2395c7db55f8327de...

By "off-chain", I meant something like BuyMeACoffee letting users top up a wallet via an on-chain deposit, and then handling tips internally (e.g., in a SQL database). That way, small payments don't each require a blockchain transaction.

Expected time to first block confirmation is always 10 minutes. If the last block was found 10 minutes ago, then the expected time to the next block is still 10 minutes. It is always 10 minutes until it is actually found, at which point it is still 10 minutes.

The only thing that can change value is if the global hash rate significantly changes. This is why we have the difficulty readjustment every 2016 blocks (give or take 2 weeks).

Oops, you're right, I forgot about that. Updated my comment.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/3911

Bitcoin may not be the best example because it does have a lot of limitation and somewhat failed as a currency and instead turned into a speculative store of value. Block time on Bitcoin is ~10 min. For small purchases, you would probably be fine with 1 confirmation, but a 10 minute wait is terrible UX. There is lighting which is a layer on top of bitcoin which is much faster, but the UX is still a bit clunky.

But in general, I agree that cryptocurrencies could help the problem, but it still carries the compliance and AML risks unless you can outsource that to a 3rd party. What happens if you accept funds from an OFAC or other sanctioned account? Violating AML can come with huge fines and is generally just a massive headache. Cash doesn't have these issues as the evidence is generally impossible to track well. With nearly all cryptocurrencies, the entire ledger is open, so if you accidentally accepted payment from the wrong person, you could get royally screwed at some later time.

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