Diary of a Crypto Time Traveler #9 / Transaction Fees - 23rd January 2018

peterogwara (30)in #cryptocurrency • 6 years ago (edited)

23rd January 2018 - Transaction Fees

Flip over to the first entry to get a complete understanding of my situation. Links to others provided at the bottom.

Life at the bookstore is still novel. I don't see Lindsay so much anymore, though I do get a hot cup of coffee and a croissant at the coffee shop every morning. The thing is, she is no longer on the morning shift, so she's never around. We do talk on the phone though. We talk a lot.

I've also become fast friends with Old Sam. I don't think I could've asked for a better boss or landlord! He's very witty, and cares very much about his shop. I've found out he has two children, both of whom are grown up and married, and live out of state. And in sharp contrast to the old fashioned bookstore he runs, he's not at all old fashioned when it comes to technology and money. Imagine my shock when he said he had a sizeable cryptocurrency portfolio! I've begun to suspect he might be one of those who came in quite early --he certainly acts like a man with no financial worries. In a way, I envy him. He's been able to live the life I wanted and provide well for his family. I, on the other hand, have no idea if my children will ever see me again. I must work hard towards this!

Old Sam also revealed something else: he almost opened the bookstore to bitcoin transactions last year, but couldn't because of the high transaction fees. This was a new concept for me. Transaction fees? Unless those memories were also gone, there was nothing like transaction fees in 2089, so I did a little research on them

Transaction fees, it turns out, are extra amounts paid to miners to have transactions processed on some blockchains. Originally, these fees were so small they were negligible, but because the higher the amount you pay, the faster your transaction is processed, slowly persons started paying higher and higher. And then, bitcoin became very popular, and suddenly, the network became so clogged that transaction fees became very very exorbitant! This happened towards the end of 2017 when the currency had an almost 100% increase in value, and everyone was rushing in.

To solve this issue, other blockchains had come up with plans which requires no transaction fees at all. The Steem blockchain is one of these, which really makes it much better for business use. Also the Steem blockchain processes transactions in seconds. For his day and age, that's pretty impressive. Perhaps I should tell Old Sam about it. He does run a bookstore afterall, and Steemit is mostly a community of readers and writers.

Anyway, I checked and it seems transaction fees on the core bitcoin blockchain are back down. How long they will stay this way? Now that's anyone's guess.

Diary of a Crypto Time Traveler is a fictional story used to share real knowledge on cryptocurrencies, blockchains and predictions, and my own recent findings.

Read previous entries below:
#8 Jan 20th & 21st - Two great days
#7 Jan 18th 2018 - Cryptocurrency Wallets, My First Payout... and a New Job!
#6 Jan 17th 2018 - The Thing With Lindsay
#5 Jan 16th 2018 - The BLOODBATH
#4 Jan 15th 2018 - Steemit for Newbies