Bitcoin takes new heights, network loading and commissions grow

The popularity of the crypto-currency markets is growing rapidly, and this is not surprising, since the price of bitcoin has risen by 60% in just one last month. However, along with the passing of the mark of 7000 dollars for BTC, the congestion of the blocks again increased, as well as the commission of the miners. This was the reason for users' displeasure with unconfirmed transactions and the need to pay 5-10 dollars per transaction. The actual cancellation of the SegWit2X's hardfork not only does not solve the crisis of scaling, but rather aggravates it, since other solutions still do not work, and even activated more than two months ago SegWit has not been put into operation to the full.

Approximately two months ago, the problem of the Network congestion and growth of commissions has calmed down a little. However, the calm did not last long - recently the ecosystem again began to experience an overload. Over the past three weeks, the number of unconfirmed transactions reached 25-70 thousand.

Now, the most minimal commission fee per transaction with a high probability of confirmation for 6 blocks is 65 540 satoshi or about 4.50 dollars. In addition, Bitcoin has a division of up to eight decimal places after the decimal point, and people are concerned that if commissions continue to grow, small amounts in Bitcoins cannot be spent at all or the commission fee will exceed the cost of the transaction itself.

As the volume of trading on the crypto currency market is growing, as well as the market of commissions, many people are beginning to find advantages in the Bitcoin Cash network and large blocks. The cost of BCH transactions is approximately $ 0.05-0.26 per transaction, a maximum of 1/10 of the Bitcoin network commission. This allows the Bitcoin Cash community to send smaller transactions and even share tips in Reddit. 

Another topic of conversation which revolves around the fee market is the use of Segregated Witness (Segwit) transactions. Before Segwit was implemented, it was said that 90 percent of bitcoin-based businesses were "Segwit ready." Segwit adoption has yet to surpass 10 percent of the ecosystem, and Segwit transactions have seen a steep decline lately.

So far Segwit has seen adoption rates hit a high of roughly around 7 percent during the first weeks of October. The subject of Segwit adoption has genuinely become a bone of contention when discussing the recent astronomical fees lately. For instance on November 4, Shapeshift's CEO Erik Voorhees reveals his discontent for the rising fee market plaguing the community stating;

The average Bitcoin transaction fee ($10.17) is now more than twice the cost of Bitcoin itself when I first learned of it ($5) in 2011.

Following Voorhees statement, over Twitter, the founder of Coinkite and Opendime, Rodolfo Novak‏, asked the Shapeshift CEO if his firm has "tried Segwit transactions." However, the question didn't sway Voorhees that much, as the Shapeshift founder emphasizes to Novak, "[Shapeshift] is one of the biggest senders and receivers of Segwit transactions."

For now, no one has a good answer to how the bitcoin 'community' can find a solution to the scaling problem and rising fee market. At the moment, individuals and organizations continue to argue on social media and forums about the scaling subject, while preparing for the pending fork that aims to fix these problems.