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In 2013, one bitcoin cost $20. In 2017, it costs $20 to send one bitcoin. With record highs, thriving adoption, and media attention, this should be a celebratory time for bitcoin believers. And yet it’s hard to shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right. How did we reach a point where the world’s bank killer and Western Union crippler has become incapable of taking on the institutions it once sneered at? Bitcoin is hot as hell right now. But it’s also a mess.
By any reckoning, 2017 has been a phenomenal year for bitcoin. Even the currency’s most ardent supporters would have struggled, 12 months ago, to predict the current state of affairs. But neither could they have envisaged, in their worst nightmares, it costing upwards of $20 to transfer a fraction of a coin. To chalk this year up as an unfettered success story calls for moving the goalposts and performing mental gymnastics. Bitcoin has made great leaps alright. It’s just unfortunate that not all of them have been forwards.
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It can be debated whether Satoshi’s white paper envisioned bitcoin as a P2P settlement for micro-transactions. What can’t be debated is that bitcoin is effectively now unsendable and undependable for anything under a couple of hundred dollars. From the clearnet to the darknet, the conversation is the same: fees have become untenable. Despite this, bitcoin’s most ardent defenders remain in denial.
On some corners of the internet, questioning the gospel of Satoshi and the infallibility of bitcoin is heresy. “I can’t send a friend five dollars without a $15 transaction fee and this is the currency of the future?” raged one Redditor, to which the first three responses on r/bitcoin ran:
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-fees-have-become-infeasible/