Please note: The blockchain is FULL
As I received this message on LocalBitcoins I asked myself, is it time to quit Bitcoin?
Let’s face it, fees are getting higher, confirmation times are ridiculous, politics and fighting has infected the community, there is really not much going for Bitcoin these days that other alts can´t offer.
Despite all of the bad news and even the possibility of a Hardfork that will split bitcoin into two different coins, the price remains high, for me anything above 1k is high and I still remember when we dropped to 200 bucks per coin.
So how can this be, why is the price not crashing?
Well besides the limited supply and huge amount of lost Bitcoins, my guess is that traders are expecting to double their coins if the hard-fork does occur. This is what happened when Ethereum split, Ethereum Classic was born and suddenly people ended up gaining a nice profit from a technical disaster.
Betting on the hard-fork is however a risky business, unlike the Ethereum planned fork, Bitcoin could fork at any time and when this happens you can be damm sure there will be a huge dump of both coins as people sell the chain they dislike. So, if you happen to be asleep, driving, biking or having dinner with your wife and children you would have to RUN to your laptop to sell those coins (something we crypto nerds are used to really), but if you don’t get there in time you could end up with less FIAT than if you sold right now.
The Altcoin Debacle
Most altcoins are traded against the Bitcoin pair, so if you are an altcoiner cheering for Bitcoin to die you better think again! In the scenario of a hard-fork and a Bitcoin crash, most altcoins will be worth more in Bitcoin but probably much less in FIAT, so I for one hope that the Core Team and the BU cheerleaders get their act together and come to some kind of agreement.
Conclusion
I still don’t have the answer to my initial question so I am not sure if I will sell my remaining Bitcoin, it is hard for me since I have feelings attached to my Bitcoin (yes I know, I am a terrible trader), but I would like to know what your thoughts are on the matter?
Maybe I am best just powering up some Steem and diversifying into other Cryptocurrencies, FIAT and Gold.
Yeah, I got the message too. I am curious to what they mean by FULL, and it makes me wonder which way localbtc wants things to go
A Bitcoin block can only handle 1mb of transactions, currently all found blocks are fulled, they have over 999.11 KB, so you have to wait until all previous transactions are confirmed until they get to yours. This is of course unless you send a very high fee to get your transactions in front of all of the rest.
You can check the blocksizes here: https://blockchain.info
EDIT: A bitcoin block is found every 10 minutes, so it can take a very long time until your transaction is confirmed.
it is time to have segwit already... zzz...
This time waiting is sometimes excruciating. I just sent some Bitcoin with Coinbase and it took nearly an hour to get the transaction through (that was with a fee of $0.56 too). I believe this is going to get worse before it gets better.
coinbase is the worst, its taken me hours to send btc to another wallet or market .... i think thats a mixture of coinbase and time wait for btc too tho... but in one case i ended up sending btc from my mycellium wallet cuz coinbase took so long in making confirmations
I am with them mainly for the Shift card. Cheaper access to my BTC means a lot. I don't usually send money from that account.
It's pretty unambiguous what they mean by 'full'. There is no more space for more transactions in blocks, each block hits the 1MB limit.
Not true at all. Backlog is at a relative low point as this chart shows:
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size?timespan=30days https://twitter.com/alansilbert/status/846336680982384641
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
What do they really mean by "The Blockchain is FULL."?
They mean that there is no free space in blocks for low/normal fee transactions..
Aren't the miners supposed to verify these transactions and put them in new blocks anyway? :/
The transactions are organized according to the paid fee.. so high fee transactions will go first and so on..
Okay, makes sense now. Thanks :D
Bitcoin has literally nothing going for it vs. alts aside from the network effect. That network effect is rapidly being diminished due to lack of usability.
If you believe that Bitcoin can usurp the network effect of the almighty dollar, then it makes no sense to believe that an alt cannot usurp the network effect of Bitcoin. The top alts are VASTLY closer to overtaking Bitcoin than Bitcoin is to overtaking fiat currencies by usage metrics.
full??? didn't even know such a thing could happen lol
You should ask yourself why are you holding bitcoins in the first place. Short term gains? You don't want the feeling of missing out if it ever hits say $10k range? You just like the concept of it and want to be a part of it?
I'm not going to tell you what to do, but just few things to consider:
Because it has a use other than trading; we can still buy "stuff" with bitcoin, hence it'll never die.
Cg
https://medium.com/@bramcohen/double-billing-is-not-healthy-competition-b698c345b11e