A few minutes ago, I tipped a friend with $1.15 worth of bitcoin and to my surprise, the miners' fees were $0.13 which is more than 11.3% of the total amount I am sending, as shown on the below screenshot. Are you kidding me?
I still can't believe it. When did Bitcoin's transaction fees become higher than those of Paypal?
One of the main issues bitcoin was designed to address is the high cost of online payment methods like Paypal, Skrill and credit cards. Bitcoin is supposed to be a decentralized currency that stands in the face of the greed of commercial banks and other centralized bodies that act as middlemen to validate financial transactions, then why have the miners' fees rise sharply?
I know that the volume of bitcoin transactions has significantly risen during the past few weeks, in response to the recent price surge. It's the same scenario all over again; bitcoin price surges, mainstream media start covering bitcoin in the news, more people get introduced to cryptocurrency and the number of transactions and volume of bitcoin trading rise accordingly. However, during periods of price surge, transactions' confirmation times increase, yet miners' fees never increased the way it is happening now.
All decentralization enthusiasts, including myself, dream of the day bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, put Fiat money to extinction, but if I would have to pay more than 11.3% as transactions fees, then definitely something wrong is going on and this has to change.
Why would I use bitcoin if I have to pay fees that are even higher than those of wired transfers?
Bitcoin's scalability is by far the main issue hurdling bitcoin mass adoption, as bitcoin's blockchain can only handle around 7 transactions per second, which is extremely low when compared to Visa's network that handles an average of around 2,000 transaction per second.
On the other hand, STEEM's high scalability qualifies it to become a massively adopted cryptocurrency. The STEEM protocol is designed to handle around 10,000 transactions per second; thanks to the LMAX Disruptor technology which can help STEEM's blockchain become the platform with the highest rate of confirmed transactions.
STEEM is not only a decentralized social network, but also a cryptocurrency that addresses bitcoin's main problem; scalability. Furthermore, using STEEM can relatively alleviate the congestion of transactions on bitcoin's blockchain which led to a sharp rise in the confirmation times of transactions during the past few weeks.