44 sats \ 6 replies \ @nullcount 28 Aug 2023 \ on: Why fees keep so high? bitcoin
Fees are priced in sats per vbyte. Nothing about the definition of a sat or a vbyte had anything to do with USD exchange rate, amount of sats sent or unique addresses so I wonder why you think they ought to be correlated?
Sending value over the network is why we use BTC, no? The amount of USD or sats that are sent daily shows how much interest the participants have in that use, and the amount of addresses shows how many different actors are involved in those transactions. The more people there are with more value to send, the more demand it will create thus rising price for space on the block.
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Sending value is only one reason to use BTC, it might even be the main reason. However, BTC is a ledger for posting vbytes on the timechain. That's all. Those vbytes can represent locking and unlocking scripts to "send" sats. But those vbytes can also be used to establish payment channels (Lightning Network), "anchor" data from altcoin chains (Liquid Network), put messages in blocks ("Chancellor on the brink..."), host JPEGs of 8-bit monkeys (Ordinal Transcriptions), or JSON objects that represent token transfers (BRC20) or even keeping botnets online. You can even use up a ton of vbytes doing wallet maintenance (UTXO consolidation a.k.a. self-transfers) or doing fancy script 'programming' onchain with miniscript. It also cost exactly the same to send 1,000 sats onchain as it does to send 1,000 BTC (assuming it's just one UTXO input, single sig). Therefore, every use of a vbyte does not necessarily correlate to any value changing hands. It certainly does not matter how you choose to denote that value (USD exchange rate).
As for the addresses: unique addresses do not identify unique users. A user can have many addresses. Further, a single address might be shared by many users (in a custodial or multisignature relationship).
Since the following are true:
- fees are measured in sats/vbyte
- addresses are not 1:1 with users
- vbytes are not 1:1 with value transferred
...it follows that USD transaction volume and new address use can decrease while fees remain flat.
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Sending value over the network is why we use BTC, no?
No. We use BTC to fuck fiat and make it obsolete.
This is bullshit fiat mindset with "sending value over bitcoin network", is just a replacement of paypal, but still using fiat.
Stop thinking like that and remove slowly the word USD from your vocabulary.
We are using only bitcoins / sats.
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I just want to be left alone minding my own business and free to keep the value of my work in the best way I see fit, I also want to have peaceful and voluntary ways to exchange/transfer that value across the world with no censoring or restrictions.
I am in no mission to fuck anyone or make anything obsolete, if that's your fight it's ok, don't count me in.
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fiat have no "value". Is just a lie.
Don't fool yourself.
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It's not just to send value, it's to hold value. In other words Bitcoin is an asset thats primary use does not have to be as a medium of exchange for accessing the blockchain as a payment rail.
The amount of USD or sats that are sent daily shows how much interest the participants have in that use
The amount of USD is different from the amount of sats that are sent daily, they are not interchangeable as your usage of the word "or" would imply. If each sat were worth $100 one day and each transaction would send thousands of sats, does that show less demand than today where people still send sizable denominations of Bitcoin?
There are also more ways to transact using Bitcoin than only making on-chain transaction (see the lightning network). And, to the chagrin of some who thought there would only be monetary use-cases for the Bitcoin blockchain, there are also people who use the blockchain for its immutable properties (see ordinals and inscriptions). These allow for individuals to make low value transactions with high fees (in which case dollar amounts would be a poor metric for measurement).
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