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Bitcoin’s transaction fee crisis is over—for now

The median fee peaked at $34 in mid-December—now it's less than $1.

by Timothy B. Lee - Feb 20, 2018 12:15 pm UTC

The median daily transaction fee on the bitcoin network fell to $0.79 on Sunday, a six-month low. That represents a dramatic 97-percent decline from the peak of $34 reached on December 23. The median daily bitcoin transaction fee was more than $10 from mid-December until mid-January but has been declining steadily since then.

The high fees of the last few months have been a crisis for the bitcoin network. Bitcoin fans once touted the network's near-zero fees as a selling point. But as fees soared in late 2017, businesses started backing away from the network.

Video game maker Valve stopped accepting bitcoin payments for its Steam platform in December, writing that "it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option." That same month Bitpay, a company that accepts bitcoin payments on behalf of merchants, announced that it was setting a minimum transaction size of $100—though the company quickly cut the minimum to $5 in response to customer outrage. Stripe, a major credit card processor, stopped accepting bitcoin payments for customers in January, arguing that thanks to high fees, there were "fewer and fewer use cases" for the payment network.

But fees have fallen in recent weeks. Yesterday, the median bitcoin fee fell below $1 for the first time since September. The question is whether these fees will stay low—or if it's a temporary reprieve. The bitcoin community is racing to implement new technologies that could allow bitcoin payment volumes to continue expanding without a return of crippling fees.

Why bitcoin fees have fallen

To a large extent, high fees became a problem that solved itself. As fees soared, some users looked for ways to use the network more efficiently, while others stopped using the network altogether.

For example, it's technically possible for a single bitcoin transaction to include payments to many different recipients simultaneously. This effectively packs more payments into less space on the blockchain. When fees were low, companies didn't bother with these kinds of optimizations. As fees rose, companies made them a priority. As a result, the number of outputs per transaction has been rising in recent weeks, helping to relieve congestion.

At the same time, as we've seen, high fees have also encouraged some companies to simply stop using bitcoin. Some companies, like Valve, have gotten out of the cryptocurrency game altogether. Others have shifted to other blockchain networks—like litecoin, Ethereum, or Bitcoin Cash—where transaction fees are much lower. When companies leave the bitcoin ecosystem, it helps to push fees downward. But that's obviously not a positive sign for bitcoin's long-term future.

At the same time, bitcoin's speculative bubble has been cooling in recent weeks, and that has likely pushed fees down as well. In December, money was pouring into the bitcoin market, and people were willing to pay top dollar to get their bitcoins into exchanges to sell them at high prices. But bitcoin's price has fallen dramatically since the December peak of $19,500. It reached a low of $6,000 earlier this month, and by Monday afternoon one bitcoin was worth around $11,000. A cooling market naturally means less demand to move bitcoins around for speculative purposes.

Segregated Witness could provide some breathing room

The big question is what will happen if usage of the bitcoin network continues to grow. A hard-coded limit on the size of blocks limits how many transactions the bitcoin network can process per second. Some in the bitcoin community wanted to simply raise the block size. But they didn't get their way and became so frustrated that they launched a rival network called Bitcoin Cash last August.

Since their departure, the mainstream bitcoin network has been controlled by bitcoin's "small block" faction. Instead of simply increasing the maximum block size, they've focused on a technological upgrade called Segregated Witness that separates cryptographic signatures from the rest of the blockchain data. These signatures aren't counted against that one-megabyte block-size limit, so this is a de facto block-size increase. It went into effect in August, which should have helped with the capacity problems the network experienced last fall.

The problem is that users had to modify their bitcoin software to use a new, more efficient transaction format. But it takes time for software providers to roll out the necessary changes, and the process has been slower than proponents had hoped. Six months after the upgrade went into effect, only about 14 percent of bitcoin transactions use the new format—a figure that has barely changed since initial excitement about the upgrade wore off around October.

The slow rollout by some bitcoin companies has enraged some bitcoin partisans. Coinbase—one of the most popular services for buying, selling, and storing bitcoin—has been a popular target of criticism.

Coinbase has insisted that updating software for a company of its scale simply takes time. The company says it plans to begin supporting Segregated Witness by the end of February.

Other companies are hard at work on the upgrade as well, which means we should see a steady increase in Segregated Witness adoption in the coming months. That should give the bitcoin world a bit of breathing room.

But Segregated Witness is not a panacea. If 100 percent of transactions use the new format, it will roughly double the network's capacity—but that's it. Further increases will require more radical changes.

The bitcoin community is pinning its hopes on Lightning

The bitcoin community's longer-term vision is a new payment network called Lightning that operates as a second layer on top of the existing bitcoin network. It could dramatically expand the bitcoin network's capacity by shifting most routine transactions outside the blockchain. You can check out our recent Lightning explainer for a full explanation of how this will work.

In theory, Lightning should allow a significant expansion in the practical capacity of the bitcoin network. But there are a lot of practical challenges ahead. Lightning will be a good fit for some bitcoin applications and a poor fit for others—it remains to be seen how much of the bitcoin community will ultimately switch from old-fashioned bitcoin transactions to new-fangled Lightning ones.

And Lightning will also face the same challenge as Segregated Witness: even after the network is officially launched, it will take months, if not years, for it to be widely adopted. Indeed, Lightning is a bigger change than Segregated Witness, so we can expect the shift to take longer. This means that even if Lightning fulfills all of its supporters' hopes, years might go by before it can make a serious dent in demand for the underlying bitcoin network.

All of which means that a resurgence of bitcoin fees is a real possibility. A lot depends on what happens to bitcoin's price in the coming months. If bitcoin's price reaches new highs, we're likely to see bitcoin fees hit new highs as well. On the other hand, if the bitcoin bubble continues to deflate, fees are likely to remain reasonable. In that sense, a falling bitcoin price could be a blessing in disguise.

2018 Best Bitcoin exchange Review and Comparison

This page aggregates the most reputable Bitcoin exchanges around today and compares them according to important buying factors. The list below is a general summary and more detailed reviews can be found at the bottom of the page.

compare exchanges

LocalBitcoins

247Exchange

New to buying Bitcoin? here’s what you need to know before choosing an exchange:

Coinbase Bitcoin exchange review

Cons: Not available worldwide, Support takes time to respond

Summary: Coinbase is probably the most popular company today for buying Bitcoins. It was founded in late 2012 as a part of Y-Combinator and until today has raised more than $106 million in venture capital. Coinbase is considered by many the leading Bitcoin exchange available.

The are two ways you can buy Bitcoins from Coinbase. One is through the Coinbase wallet and the other is through the Coinbase exchange. When you buy Bitcoins through the Coinbase wallet you are basically buying the Bitcoins from Coinbase itself, whereas when you use the exchange you are participating in a trading with other users of the exchange.

CoinMama Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Accept credit cards, Fast transaction time, great user interface.

Cons: Relatively high exchange rate, limited states within the US.

Summary: Coinmama is a another veteran Bitcoin broker working in the market since 2013. They offer easy ways to buy Bitcoins with credit cards or cash deposits via MoneyGram and Western Union. Coinmama uses Simplex – a credit processor which allows you to buy up to $5000 in one purchase. Coinmama also has relatively high exchange rates due to chargeback issues and the availability of credit and debit cards as payment methods.

CEX.IO Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Reputable company, high buying limits

Cons: Limited countries available, higher exchange rates

Summary: CEX.IO was established in 2013. CEX.IO is a bitcoin trading exchange which accepts credit cards and allows you to trade. On Cex.io You can buy Bitcoins for USD, EUR and RUB.

BitFinex Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Advanced trading features, leverage abilities

Cons: Does not accept fiat deposits, complex interface

Bitfinex is an advanced Bitcoin trading platform that is more suitable for experienced traders. The platform does not accept fiat deposits at the moment which means you’ll need to fund your account with altcoins or Bitcoin.

If you’re an experienced cryptocurrency trader, Bitfinex likely offers everything you need and more. The chief draw is probably the platform’s high Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity, but its margin funding, leverage, and multiple order types offer a lot of flexibility.

Coinhouse Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Reputable company, high buying limits

Cons: Limited to Eurozone countries only, relatively higher exchange rates

Summary: Coinhouse is the “House of Bitcoin” in Paris. You can buy bitcoins directly online by Visa / MasterCard or cash with Neosurf prepaid card available in most European countries.

Buy Bitcoins on Coinhouse Read our Coinhouse review

BitPanda Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Multiple payment options, relatively low fees

Cons: Fees are hidden inside the exchange rate, EU citiznes only

Overall rating: B

Bitpanda is an Austrian Start-Up Company that was founded in October 2014. The company allows you to buy Bitcoins or Ethereum with a credit card as well as with Wire transfers, Neteller, Skrill, SEPA and more. The company supplies its services to European countries only with a relatively low fee.

If your account is verified the limit is 2,500€ daily (75,000€ monthly) for credit card purchases. For other options, there’s a 10,000€ daily (300,000€ monthly).

Bitstamp Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Highly respected and reliable exchange, low transaction fees.

Cons: Not suited for beginners, limited payment methods, high deposit fees on small amounts of money.

Summary: Bitstamp is the oldest Bitcoin exchange out there today. Founded on 2011 Bitstamp has managed to survive most of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s turmoil without being hacked or shut down, and that’s definitely saying something.

If it wasn’t for it’s non intuitive user interface and lack of convenient payment methods Bitstamp may have been rated #1 in our charts. But unfortunately today I can only recommend Bitstamp for larger purchases of coins where you will definitely need to use a wire transfer and the fees won’t compose such a large amount of the deposited sum.

Kraken Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Highly respected and reliable exchange, low transaction fees.

Cons: Not suited for beginners, limited payment methods, high deposit fees on small amounts of money.

Summary: Another Bitcoin exchange veteran, Kraken was also founded in 2011 like Bitstamp and managed to stay alive until today. Kraken is consistently rated as a top Bitcoin exchange by different news outlets and was also the first Bitcoin exchange listed on Bloomberg terminals. Kraken is also trusted by hundreds of the Tokyo government and the BaFin regulated Fidor Bank.

Kraken is pretty similar to Bitstamp in its pros and cons and are almost identical when coming to decide which on of them to use.

iGot Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Super low fees, great interface.

Cons: Limited payment options, relatively high exchange rate.

Summary: iGot was founded in 2013 in Australia, it provides a trading platform and also merchant payment services for Bitcoin. It has super low fees but also supplies on a limited range of payment methods.

The exchange was also behind the relief campaign for Nepal earthquake victims earlier this year. Having said that, iGot has yet to gain enough reputation as a major player in the Bitcoin exchange market.

HitBTC Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Beginner friendly, great buying experience.

Cons: High exchange rate, brand not reputable enough.

Summary: I’ve reviewed HitBTC last year and was pretty pleased with their product. The company seems to have a solid user interface making it pretty easy to buy Bitcoins. Also the platform seems to be very “newbie oriented” and puts an emphasis on security.

Although HitBTC gained considerable traction over the past year since it’s launch, much like iGot it still hasn’t managed to reach the “big leagues” of Bitcoin exchange (i.e. Coinbase, Circle, Bitstamp etc.)

Virwox Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: A wide variety of payment methods including Paypal and credit cards, no verification required

Cons: Shady reputation, very high fees when buying with Paypal or a credit cards (due to multiple conversions).

Summary: Virwox is not a Bitcoin exchange per se. It’s actually a Second Life reseller which allow you to exchange SLL (Second Life Linden’s) in to Bitcoins. So why is it listed here? Because currently it’s the only known exchange in which you can buy Bitcoins with PayPal.

The issue with Virwox is that even though it supplies various payment methods many users have complained about their services. Some have even reported that their money was taken with no return. However most of the reviews tend to show that either the purchase of Bitcoins was successful or that the money was refunded.

247Exchange Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Easy user interface, works worldwide and multilingual.

Cons: Buying process is too long (mainly due to verification), the service takes a premium in order to be able to deal with chargeback issues.

Summary: 247Exchange is a veteran player in the Bitcoin ecosystem which allows you to buy Bitcoins with a credit card in a simple and secure manner. Unfortunately their buying process still has a few glitches and the verification process can take quite some time. I recently reviewed the service hands on, you can read about it here.

Bittrex Bitcoin Exchange Review

Pros: Smooth, easy to understand interface, top-notch security, 250+ altcoins

Cons: Slightly high fees, poor customer service, odd account suspensions

Bittrex provides a growing cryptocurrency exchange that suits investors looking for a large altcoin selection. The US company launched in 2014 and is now one of the leading trading platforms.

Its reputation is built upon a smooth user experience combined with unparalleled security. The interface is simple to understand allowing users to easily expand their portfolios with access to over 250 coins. Bittrex has a crack squad of security experts keeping funds safe. The team currently maintain a clean record in fighting off hacks and attacks.

Luno Bitcoin Exchange Review

Pros: Good reputation, happy reviews, well-run platform.

Cons: bitcoin only, fluctuating fees, small market cap

Luno enjoys a marvelous reputation with an array of happy users. It doesn’t have a huge trading cap but it performs its duties admirably against the big boys. Despite being in operation since 2013 the Luno team still struggle to secure serious market dominance.

Solely a bitcoin exchange the platform is aiming to become the “most trusted, secure and reliable exchange”. Users can buy, sell and store bitcoin with service including the use of wallet and mobile features. The one downside is the fees, which can be a little tricky to work out for new buyers. Overall, it is a solid well run service.

Indacoin Exchange Review

Pros: Convenient simple way to buy bitcoin

Cons: Extortionate fees, low buy limits

Indacoin has been around since 2014 target customers looking for fast easy bitcoin buys. It functions as a way for you to buy bitcoins with a credit or debit card. Simply fill out a payment form then confirm via a telephone message and voila, you’ll have bitcoin funds.

There are some downsides to transacting in this manner. Fees are astronomical anywhere you make a credit card transaction and none more so than Indacoin. Users really do pay a price for convenience. There are buy limits to be aware of with a maximum of $750. That being said, the service does do what it says in a legitimate manner.

Bitbay Exchange Review

Pros: Decent currency support, Less known to hackers, acceptable fees

Cons: Small market cap, Unknow quantity, still building a reputation.

Bitbay is another interesting cryptocurrency exchange competitor. The Polish outfit services users both domestically and worldwide. The feature-rich trading platform is still fighting to become a well-known name in the industry. But many are not put out by the smaller reputation.

Bitbay provides a nice selection of coins with bitcoin, litecoin, ether, and lisk all available to trade. Fees are acceptable too, although slightly higher than some bigger exchanges. The pros, particularly for Polish users far outweigh the cons. Domestic customers can even get a bitcoin credit card to start transacting regularly.

Changelly Exchange Review

Pros: Simplistic crypto exchange, no trading expertise needed, sleek interface

Cons: Fee higher when trading fiat, not completely anonymous

Changelly is a real neat solution to a very real problem. Satoshi gave birth to bitcoin, one global currency. Bitcoin then reproduced and again. Now it has evolved. There are hundreds of global digital currencies which need to be exchanged. Changelly makes it easy and convenient to exchange cryptocurrencies without the need for trading platforms.

For a fee, you can send them a coin and receive another back. Of course, it is effectively making trades for you so you don’t need to understand charts and market trading. The slick interface coupled with a 0.5% fee on all transactions does make it an appealing prospect. However if you trade fiat currencies it seems like that exchange rate is a lot higher. So it is advised only to trade altcoins on Changelly.

Local Bitcoins Exchange Review

Pros: Transaction flexibility, no buy fee, worldwide user base, public rating system

Cons: 1% sell fee, some suspicious users

Local Bitcoins a clever operation that adds incredible flexibility to buying bitcoins. It brings buyers and sellers together in a marketplace. It is unique in that you can transact in almost any method thinkable including Paypal, wire transfer, Western Union, Webmoney or cash.

You can find some pretty good rates to buy bitcoin through the service with sellers all over the world looking to offload funds. Fees are dependent on which side of the transaction you sit. There is only 1% sell fee and funds are transacted directly to and from a Local Bitcoins wallet.

GDAX Exchange Review

Pros: Coinbase extension, cheap fees, ether and litecoin support

Cons: no altcoins, ether market crash

GDAX is the sister trading exchange to the world famous Coinbase. It benefits hugely from this close working relationship. Coinbase’s millions of users can use the same account detail to log in directly on GDAX. Once funds are transferred across trading can begin.

The backing of such a huge player makes GDAX one of the most trusted exchanges. Historically, funds have gone missing at least once but the customer support team were able to refund any losses. The exchange supports the big 3, bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin.

Gemini Exchange Review

Pros: Public owners, regulated, trustworthy.

Cons: Limited currency support, not yet a market leader.

Gemini is seen as one of the most trustworthy legitimate bitcoin exchanges. Publicly developed by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, it is building an encouraging mark of public support since 2015.

The ‘Winklvii’ are working with regulators to make their product a leader in conforming to banking and legal legislation. Primarily a US-based exchange, it still does not retain the same market cap as the top echelons but worldwide expansion looks set to change this through 2018. Fees are in line with market averages the only downside is minimal currency flexibility. Just bitcoin and ether on offer here.

Bitcoin Fees Explained

People often claim that with Bitcoin "you can send money between any two points on earth for free". While that is true in some cases, sometimes a transaction fee is required. The fee, when it is required, is usually worth a few dollars.

The fees go to the miners to incentivise them to keep mining, which in turn keeps the Bitcoin network secure. They already get a reward of 12.5 XBT for each block they mine, but this reward halves every 4 years. The plan is that as the block reward diminishes over the time, it will be replaced by transaction fees.

So what decides when you have to pay, and how much?

Well, like everything else in Bitcoin, the fee structure is built into the network rules, which are defined as "what the reference client does". When you attempt to send coins using bitcoin core (the current reference client), it goes through the following steps:

1. Pick which coins to spend

The client has to decide which of your coins to use to make up the payment amount. Each time you receive a payment, the payment goes into your wallet and stays there until you spend it.

If you receive a payment of 2 XBT and another of 3 XBT, you'll have 2 new amounts in your wallet, of 2 XBT and 3 XBT. They don't "merge" into a single 5 XBT coin. Over time you'll build up a collection of differently sized amounts in your wallet, and the client needs to decide which ones make the best fit for the amount you're trying to spend.

These amounts are known as the "inputs" of your new transaction, and the amounts you are sending (including any change that gets sent back to your own wallet) are known as the "outputs".

2. Discourage "dust" spam

If any of the outputs (including any change) of your transaction are less than 0.01 XBT, then a fee of 0.0001 XBT is required. The coin selection algorithm is careful to avoid selecting coins that result in a change amount of less than 0.01 XBT if at all possible.

3. Prioritize old and high-value coins

If the coins you're spending are too small or too new then your transaction won't qualify as free. Each transaction is assigned a priority, determined by the age, size, and number of its inputs.

Specifically, for each input, the client calculates the value of the input in XBT multiplied by the age of the input in blocks. It sums these products over all inputs and divides the total by the size of the transaction in bytes. If this gives a number less than 0.576 then the transaction requires a fee. This means that you can include lots of very small, and/or very new inputs in a transaction and have it require no fees at all so long as you include a large old input along with them; it is the average value-times-age that matters.

If step 3 caused a transaction to require a fee when it was originally sent, it's possible that as time passes, and new blocks are found, the transaction's inputs will age, its priority will increase, and as a result step 3 may no longer cause it to require a fee.

4. Charge per kilobyte

Finally, the client checks the size of the transaction in bytes. The size depends on the numbers of inputs and outputs, and is roughly:

148 * number_of_inputs + 34 * number_of_outputs + 10

If this size is less than 10,000 bytes and step 3 found that the transaction's priority was high enough to qualify as free, then the transaction still qualifies as free, otherwise a fee is required. The fee is charged per 1000 bytes or part thereof. The amount charged per 1000 bytes defaults to 0.0001 XBT, but can be increased in the Settings>Options>Main tab of the client. If you set the "fee per kB" to less than 0.0001 XBT in that dialog then a value of 0.0001 XBT will be used. When it applies, this fee per kB replaces any fee from step 2, rather than adding to it.

All these rules are visible in the reference client's source code. See CTransaction::GetMinFee() in src/main.cpp, AllowFree() in src/main.h, and CWallet::CreateTransaction() in src/wallet.cpp.

1. When Too Much is Not Enough.

Suppose you have only two outputs in your wallet, worth 1 XBT and 2 XBT. You want to buy something for 2.999 XBT. The coin selection code has no choice; it has to select both coins to get a big enough total to make the transaction. That means the change will be 0.001 XBT, which triggers the 0.0001 XBT fee for having an output that's less than 0.01 XBT. As a result your transaction will fail, because the amount you're sending plus the fee is more than you have.

What this means is that there's no way of spending 2.999 XBT when you have 3 XBT. You could send the full 3 XBT to the vendor without a fee (assuming the outputs are sufficiently old to satisfy step 3), but some vendors ask you to send the exact amount they specify.

2. The Big Dice Winner

Once, someone got lucky and turned 0.02 XBT into 1280 XBT on a 64000x payout bet on a bitcoin 'dice' game! When the site paid out the winnings they didn't have a single 1280 XBT input lying around in their wallet. Instead what they had was a whole bunch of various sized outputs from other players' losing bets, as well as a lot of change from paying other winners.

The transaction the site created to pay the winner of this jackpot used so many inputs that it ended up being 51,203 bytes long. Being over 10000 bytes, this required a fee of 0.0005 XBT per 1000 bytes or part thereof (prior to being changed to 0.0001, the fee used to be 0.0005), so the required fee was 52 * 0.0005 = 0.026 XBT. That's more than the player bet in the first place. Who says Bitcoin transactions are free!

Of course, this is still less than you would pay in fees if you used PayPal to transfer $40,000.

Note that the dice game actually included a fee of 0.0286 XBT, which is more than is required. That's probably because they don't use the standard satoshi client to create their transactions, and the client they used got it slightly wrong.

3. Pushing the Limit

This transaction just barely qualified as being free. It's 9999 bytes long, which is the biggest a transaction can be without requiring a fee. Notice also that all but one of the inputs are only 10 nXBT (0.00000001 XBT); the single large input that was included with them was big enough to bring its priority up enough to make it free.

Are "required" fees really required?

Incidentally, the concept of "required fee" isn't strictly enforced. Some miners don't follow the rules about what fees are required, and will include a transaction in their blocks even if it doesn't follow the fee rules. Using the "raw transactions" interface of the reference client it's possible to create transactions with less than the required amount of fee. Such transactions may eventually be included in a block by a maverick miner who doesn't enforce the fee rules, although this could take 24 hours or even much longer.

So it's all pretty complex, but hopefully this gives you a better understanding of how and why the client decides when and how much to charge you.

Transaction fees

Transaction fees are a fee that spenders may include in any Bitcoin transaction. The fee may be collected by the miner who includes the transaction in a block.

Every Bitcoin transaction spends zero or more bitcoins to zero or more recipients. The difference between the amount being spent and the amount being received is the transaction fee (which must be zero or more).

Bitcoin's design makes it easy and efficient for the spender to specify how much fee to pay, whereas it would be harder and less efficient for the recipient to specify the fee, so by custom the spender is almost always solely responsible for paying all necessary Bitcoin transaction fees.

When a miner creates a block proposal, the miner is entitled to specify where all the fees paid by the transactions in that block proposal should be sent. If the proposal results in a valid block that becomes a part of the best block chain, the fee income will be sent to the specified recipient. If a valid block does not collect all available fees, the amount not collected are permanently destroyed; this has happened on more than 1,000 occasions from 2011 to 2017, [1] [2] with decreasing frequency over time.

The market for block space

The minimum fee necessary for a transaction to confirm varies over time and arises from the intersection of supply and demand in Bitcoin's free market for block space. [3] On the supply size, Bitcoin has a maximum block size (currently one million vbytes) that limits the maximum amount of transaction data that can be added to a block.

However, Bitcoin blocks are not produced on a fixed schedule—the system targets an average of one block every 10 minutes over long periods of time but, over short periods of time, a new block can arrive in less than a second or more than an hour after the previous block. As the number of blocks received in a period of time varies, so does the effective maximum block size. For example, in the illustration below we see the average time between blocks based on the time they were received by a node during a one day period (left axis) and the corresponding effective maximum block size implied by that block production rate (right axis, in million vbytes):

During periods of higher effective maximum block sizes, this natural and unpredictable variability means that transactions with lower fees have a higher than normal chance of getting confirmed—and during periods of lower effective maximum block sizes, low-fee transactions have a lower than normal chance of getting confirmed.

On the demand side of Bitcoin's free market for block space, each spender is under unique constraints when it comes to spending their bitcoins. Some are willing to pay high fees; some are not. Some desire fast confirmation; some are content with waiting a while. Some use wallets with excellent dynamic fee estimation; some do not. In addition, demand varies according to certain patterns, with perhaps the most recognizable being the weekly cycle where fees increase during weekdays and decrease on the weekend:

Another less recognizable cycle is the intra-day cycle where fees wax and wane during the day:

These variations in supply and demand create a market for block space that allows users to make a trade-off between confirmation time and cost. Users with high time requirements may pay a higher than average transaction fee to be confirmed quickly, while users under less time pressure can save money by being prepared to wait longer for either a natural (but unpredictable) increase in supply or a (somewhat predictable) decrease in demand.

It is envisioned that over time the cumulative effect of collecting transaction fees will allow those creating new blocks to "earn" more bitcoins than will be mined from new bitcoins created by the new block itself. This is also an incentive to keep trying to create new blocks as the creation of new bitcoins from the mining activity goes towards zero in the future. [4]

Perhaps the most important factor affecting how fast a transaction gets confirmed is its fee rate (often spelled feerate). This section describes why feerates are important and how to calculate a transaction's feerate.

Bitcoin transaction vary in size for a variety of reasons. We can easily visualize that by drawing four transactions side-by-side based on their size (length) with each of our examples larger than the previous one:

This method of illustrating length maxes it easy to also visualize an example maximum block size limit that constrains how much transaction data a miner can add to an individual block:

Since Bitcoin only allows whole transactions to be added to a particular block, at least one of the transactions in the example above can't be added to the next block. So how does a miner select which transactions to include? There's no required selection method (called policy) and no known way to make any particular policy required, but one strategy popular among miners is for each individual miner to attempt to maximize the amount of fee income they can collect from the transactions they include in their blocks.

We can add a visualization of available fees to our previous illustration by keeping the length of each transaction the same but making the area of the transaction equal to its fee. This makes the height of each transaction equal to the fee divided by the size, which is called the feerate:

Although long (wide) transactions may contain more total fee, the high-feerate (tall) transactions are the most profitable to mine because their area is greatest compared to the amount of space (length) they take up in a block. For example, compare transaction B to transaction D in the illustration above. This means that miners attempting to maximize fee income can get good results by simply sorting by feerate and including as many transactions as possible in a block:

Because only complete transactions can be added to a block, sometimes (as in the example above) the inability to include the incomplete transaction near the end of the block frees up space for one or more smaller and lower-feerate transactions, so when a block gets near full, a profit-maximizing miner will often ignore all remaining transactions that are too large to fit and include the smaller transactions that do fit (still in highest-feerate order):

Excluding some rare and rarely-significant edge cases, the feerate sorting described above maximizes miner revenue for any given block size as long as none of the transactions depend on any of the other transactions being included in the same block (see the next section, feerates for dependent transactions, for more information about that).

To calculate the feerate for your transaction, take the fee the transaction pays and divide that by the size of the transaction (currently based on weight units or vbytes but no longer based on bytes). For example, if a transaction pays a fee of 2,250 nanobitcoins and is 225 vbytes in size, its feerate is 2,250 divided by 225, which is 10 nanobitcoins per vbyte (this happens to be the minimum fee Bitcoin Core Wallet will pay by default).

When comparing to the feerate between several transactions, ensure that the units used for all of the measurements are the same. For example, some tools calculate size in weight units and others use vbytes; some tools also display fees in a variety of denominations.

Feerates for dependent transactions (child-pays-for-parent)

Bitcoin transactions can depend on the inclusion of other transactions in the same block, which complicates the feerate-based transaction selection described above. This section describes the rules of that dependency system, how miners can maximize revenue while managing those dependencies, and how bitcoin spenders can use the dependency system to effectively increase the feerate of unconfirmed transactions.

Each transaction in a block has a sequential order, one transaction after another. Each block in the block chain also has a sequential order, one block after another. This means that there's a single sequential order to every transaction in the best block chain.

One of Bitcoin's consensus rules is that the transaction where you receive bitcoins must appear earlier in this sequence than the transaction where you spend those bitcoins. For example, if Alice pays Bob in transaction A and Bob uses those same bitcoins to pay Charlie in transaction B, transaction A must appear earlier in the sequence of transactions than transaction B. Often this is easy to accomplish because transaction A appears in an earlier block than transaction B:

But if transaction A and B both appear in the same block, the rule still applies: transaction A must appear earlier in the block than transaction B.

This complicates the task of maximizing fee revenue for miners. Normally, miners would prefer to simply sort transactions by feerate as described in the feerate section above. But if both transaction A and B are unconfirmed, the miner cannot include B earlier in the block than A even if B pays a higher feerate. This can make sorting by feerate alone less profitable than expected, so a more complex algorithm is needed. Happily, it's only slightly more complex.

For example, consider the following four transactions that are similar to those analyzed in the preceding feerate section:

To maximize revenue, miners need a way to compare groups of related transactions to each other as well as to individual transactions that have no unconfirmed dependencies. To do that, every transaction available for inclusion in the next block has its feerate calculated for it and all of its unconfirmed ancestors. In the example, this means that transaction B is now considered as a combination of transaction B plus transaction A:

Note that this means that unconfirmed ancestor transactions will be considered twice or more, as in the case of transaction A in our example which is considered once as part of the transaction B+A group and once on its own. We'll deal with this complication in a moment.

These transaction groups are then sorted in feerate order as described in the previous feerate section:

Any individual transaction that appears twice or more in the sorted list has its redundant copies removed. In the example case, we remove the standalone version of transaction A since it's already part of the transaction B+A group:

Finally, we see if we can squeeze in some smaller transactions into the end of the block to avoid wasting space as described in the previous feerate section. In this case, we can't, so no changes are made.

Except for some edge cases that are rare and rarely have a significant impact on revenue, this simple and efficient transaction sorting algorithm maximizes miner feerate revenue after factoring in transaction dependencies.

Note: to ensure the algorithm runs quickly, implementations such as Bitcoin Core limit the maximum number of related transactions that will be collected together for consideration as one group. As of Bitcoin Core 0.15.0 (released late 2017), this is a maximum of 25 transactions, although there have been proposals to increase this amount somewhat.

For spenders, miner use of transaction grouping means that if you're waiting for an unconfirmed transaction that pays too low a feerate (e.g. transaction A), you can create a child transaction spending an output of that transaction and which pays a much higher feerate (e.g. transaction B) to encourage miners to confirm both transactions in the same block. Wallets that explicitly support this feature often call it child pays for parent (CPFP) because the child transaction B helps pay for the parent transaction A.

To calculate the feerate for a transaction group, sum the fees paid by all the the group's unconfirmed transactions and divide that by the sum of the sizes for all those same transactions (in weight units or vbytes). For example, if transaction A has a fee of 1,000 nanobitcoins and a size of 250 vbytes and transaction B has a fee of 3,000 nanobitcoins and a size of 150 vbytes, the combined feerate is (1,000 + 3,000)/(250 + 150), which is 10 nanobitcoins per vbyte.

The idea behind ancestor feerate grouping goes back to at least 2013 and saw several different proposals to add it to Bitcoin Core, with it finally becoming available for production with the August 2016 release of Bitcoin Core 0.13.0. [5]

Reference Implementation

The following sections describe the behavior of the reference implementation as of version 0.12.0. Earlier versions treated fees differently, as do other popular implementations (including possible later versions).

Users can decide to pay a predefined fee rate by setting `-paytxfee= ` (or `settxfee ` rpc during runtime). A value of `n=0` signals Bitcoin Core to use floating fees. By default, Bitcoin Core will use floating fees.

Based on past transaction data, floating fees approximate the fees required to get into the `m`th block from now. This is configurable with `-txconfirmtarget= ` (default: `2`).

Sometimes, it is not possible to give good estimates, or an estimate at all. Therefore, a fallback value can be set with `-fallbackfee= ` (default: `0.0002` BTC/kB).

At all times, Bitcoin Core will cap fees at `-maxtxfee= ` (default: 0.10) BTC. Furthermore, Bitcoin Core will never create transactions smaller than the current minimum relay fee. Finally, a user can set the minimum fee rate for all transactions with `-mintxfee=`, which defaults to 1000 satoshis per kB.

Note that a typical transaction is 500 bytes.

Including in Blocks

This section describes how the reference implementation selects which transactions to put into new blocks, with default settings. All of the settings may be changed if a miner wants to create larger or smaller blocks containing more or fewer free transactions.

Then transactions that pay a fee of at least 0.00001 BTC/kb are added to the block, highest-fee-per-kilobyte transactions first, until the block is not more than 750,000 bytes big.

The remaining transactions remain in the miner's "memory pool", and may be included in later blocks if their priority or fee is large enough.

For Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 zero bytes [6] in the block are set aside for the highest-priority transactions. Transactions are added highest-priority-first to this section of the block.

The reference implementation's rules for relaying transactions across the peer-to-peer network are very similar to the rules for sending transactions, as a value of 0.00001 BTC is used to determine whether or not a transaction is considered "Free". However, the rule that all outputs must be 0.01 BTC or larger does not apply. To prevent "penny-flooding" denial-of-service attacks on the network, the reference implementation caps the number of free transactions it will relay to other nodes to (by default) 15 thousand bytes per minute.

Bitcoin Fees Are Down Big: Why It Happened And What It Means

The average cost of sending a bitcoin transaction is cheaper than it's been in a year and a half, showing the price isn't the cryptocurrency's only unpredictable metric these days.

But with all the debate about growing fees, this might come as a surprise. After all, it wasn't so long ago that fees were so high a group of prominent investors and miners created a whole new version of bitcoin mostly to keep fees lower.

Backing up a bit, much of the conflict centered on the fact that while called "fees," these expenses are best considered as transaction costs that are necessary to the network, as necessary as paying for someone to deliver a protocol service, be it SMS, VoIP or email, or even a pizza.

This is because bitcoin is a software that requires all of the many thousands of computers that run it to stay in sync. To do so easily, there's a limit on how much data the network can process at intervals, and users need to pay more to get their transactions in at times of congestion.

So, as bitcoin grew more popular in the last year, fees skyrocketed to over $25, according to a graph from data website Bitinfocharts.

Bitcoin users, those who truly rely on the protocol for essentials, have been affected by this, as were those who believed bitcoin could be competitive with legacy payment systems.

But, bitcoin fees have fizzled out, declining since the end of December.

So, why did fees take a nosedive? The simple answer is users are making fewer transactions right now. In December, there were roughly 400,000 transactions per day, while today bitcoin is seeing only 200,000, according to data from Blockchain.info.

"I think its really simple," BitGo CEO Mike Belshe told CoinDesk. "There is substantially less transaction demand."

The question, he added, is why has there been a decrease in transactions?

SegWit and beyond

If Twitter and Reddit are any indication, sentiment on the matter tends to be influenced by personal politics, in this case, where users stand in bitcoin's long-standing block size debate, which, at its core, was about network economics.

Popular Twitter figure "Armin van Bitcoin" cheered that the low fees mean the "scaling debates are now a thing of the past," pinning the development partly on growing adoption of Segregated Witness, a scaling feature at the center of bitcoin's long-raging fee debate.

And there is truth to the claims. SegWit reduces transaction fees and adds more space to the blockchain, but it still isn't widely adopted, so it's hard to say how much it actually helped. There hasn't been much of a recent increase in SegWit use either. For the past several months, only about 10-14 percent of transactions, according to SegWit tracking site SegWit Party.

Plus, SegWit doesn't reduce the number of transactions, it makes each one cheaper.

Another possibility, according to Belshe, is that fee prices "finally forced" some large transaction processors to implement a technology called "batching," rolling many transactions into one, to leave more space on the blockchain.

Indeed, exchanges like Coinbase have said they were working on implementing the feature in the past. And Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift announced it now batches transactions, making a point that it makes up 2 percent of all the transfers that occur on the bitcoin blockchain.

However, it's a theory that's difficult to get hard data on, unless an exchange were to formally announce that they were using this technique. "This is hard to confirm with 100 percent certainty," Belshe said.

Still, he argued that even if just one large exchange started batching transactions, it could have a huge impact on the overall transaction load.

These sorts of technical theories add to the idea that developers and those building services on top of bitcoin can make optimizations in order to free up space on the blockchain, without compromising on some of its core features.

"This is why Bitcoin Core worked so hard to get 'layer-two solutions' working, and why they focus so much on optimization of the size of transaction through various things like Schnorr and Bulletproofs," XO Media CEO John Carvalho said, adding:

"They are doing everything to minimize the footprint of every type of transaction attached to bitcoin because they are all stored forever."

Ditching bitcoin

Others, especially those critical of how bitcoin developers favor a smaller blockchain and limited transaction space, argue the lower fees are a consequence of people that are sick and tired of the high fees leaving bitcoin.

"Bitcoin isn't useful for anything that involves low fees so people are migrating to alternatives. this has the consequence of lowering the fees on bitcoin," said Ryan X. Charles, founder of Yours, a media startup building on bitcoin cash.

Charles notably moved his startup off of the bitcoin blockchain last year, migrating to alternatives before building on bitcoin cash.

It's possible that some users are doing the same. Payment processor Stripe stopped accepting bitcoin in January payments due to the high fees, and BitPay, a startup that offers payment services over bitcoin has differentiated into supporting multiple protocols for its merchants.

Yet, if they are pushing users elsewhere, it's not clear where they're going. Bitcoin cash, the cryptocurrency created as a cheaper alternative to bitcoin, still has about 10 percent the number of transactions bitcoin currently does.

"Apparently [high fees] don't incentivize folks to switch to bcash," BitGo engineer Jameson Lopp said.

Bitcoin developer Meni Rosenfeld doesn't think so either. In fact, he disagrees with both of the above theories.

"The main reason for the drop in [bitcoin transaction] fees is not SegWit adoption, and it's not people moving to [bitcoin cash]. It's simply that the craze for buying cryptocurrencies in general has calmed down," he tweeted.

Indeed, there's been a downtick in outside interest in bitcoin. A lower price has less new investors searching for bitcoin on Google and coming in to buy and trade the cryptocurrency.

This view seems supported by the fact that the second most valuable blockchain by market cap, ethereum, has also seen a dramatic drop in fees in recent months. The same goes for litecoin, clocking in at number five, and XRP, at third place.

Charles also argued it's possible crypto's waning hype cycle has contributed to lower fees.

"I wouldn't be surprised if ethereum is also lower due to the decline in market value," Charles said, adding:

"There may simply be less demand for sending transactions across all blockchains. We went through a hype cycle."

And it's always possible the low fees were caused by a mix of the factors described above.

Fees forever

What do lower fees mean for users? In short, it shows that under the current setup, fees might fluctuate over time.

The hope is that - eventually - fees will always be "low," with the word low having somewhat of a relative definition. After all, a low-cost airline flight may be better than an expensive bus ride.

In this way, supporters hope that bitcoin will one day offer the best of both worlds, supporting high demand and "low" fees that reflect the quality of service, while also supporting miners, computer operators who devote real-world costs to securing transactions.

"The fee market is necessary as a counterweight to market price. [Theoretically,] demand for blockspace is infinite, so there must be levers to manage it," Carvalho said.

In the meantime, fees could continue to decline, creating a new standard of "low" that might be friendlier to today's internet users. Carvalho and Rosenfeld, for instance, think the much-touted Lightning Network will help get bitcoin to that point, as it moves more transactions off of the main bitcoin blockchain.

If Lightning really takes off, then low fees may become another problem, as they might not be enough to defray mining costs when the network finally produces all 21 million bitcoin.

For this reason, developer Greg Slepak had an almost ominous-sounding view of the future, arguing that users should "take the opportunity" of today's lows fees, adding:

"It might not come again."

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

How to Save on Bitcoin's Soaring Fees

Rising fees seem to be the only thing people talk about in the bitcoin world these days.

The crypto space is full of frustration and vitriol on the topic, as the average transaction fee has soared to $19, turning bitcoin's old claim to fame as a cheaper online payment method into a laughable assertion.

But despite these increasing costs, and the long-running debate they've caused, developers and users argue there are simple ways to decrease fees that aren't being fully taken advantage of.

This point was raised recently when new data came to light suggesting that one bitcoin startup, Coinbase, singlehandedly facilitates as many as half of all bitcoin transactions, based on the drop in overall network volume when the U.S.-based exchange went offline for a couple hours on Jan. 11.

The problem with that situation, according to critics, is the company could singlehandedly save users (not only its own but other companies' customers as well) a bundle on their transactions by implementing a couple technical features, namely Segregated Witness (SegWit).

And since the code change for SegWit was activated on bitcoin nearly six months ago, many are upset Coinbase hasn't yet implemented it.

Sergej Kotliar, the CEO of payment provider Bitrefill, called the new data a "smoking gun" in that it shows how much of bitcoin's limited transaction space Coinbase is using up. The pseudonymous blogger WhalePanda went so far as to blame bitcoin's transaction backlogs and high fees on the Silicon Valley startup's "incompetence."

Patience is running especially thin as it relates to Coinbase, since the startup was one of the more vocal during bitcoin's block size debate, complaining about high fees and arguing that an increase in the block size parameter would help alleviate those expenses.

Yet, critics argue, the company really shouldn't be complaining since it's not doing everything it can to push fees lower.

In response, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to stress that the company is working on rolling out technical features to reduce fees, but hinted that it's not easy. "Thanks for bearing with us!" he said. (Coinbase declined to comment for this story).

But should users not be interested in enduring the fees for transacting, there are several possible ways to reduce them today.

The fee halver

SegWit was lauded as the optimization that would help bitcoin scale without upping the block size during last year's scaling debates – yet only 12% of bitcoin transactions take advantage of the technology, even though SegWit transactions cost half as much as normal transactions.

Not all wallets currently have SegWit capability, but hardware wallets Trezor and Ledger support it and mobile wallets such as Edge (formerly Airbitz) and privacy-minded Samourai Wallet do as well.

But for users who don't want to go through the trouble of switching providers, SegWit capability is on its way at other companies too.

Coinbase and Blockchain.info are working on implementations, for example, but both have emphasized that SegWit is a new and complex change that they need to take their time with – they could lose user funds if a big enough mistake occurred.

Overall though, as the number of companies supporting the new feature grows, bitcoin fees will decrease – some even argue that transaction fees would disappear altogether if SegWit transactions replaced normal transactions.

But if fees aren't eliminated altogether, a more specific type of SegWit address is in the works, which could potentially save users more in the future.

Estimation game

But while users wait for mass SegWit adoption, they can reduce fees individually using fee estimators.

Although early bitcoin wallets didn't let users choose fees, this has changed, with many bitcoin wallets providing fee estimator tools to help users decide how much of a fee they should attach to their transaction to get it through the network in a timely manner.

In short, the higher the fee, the quicker the transaction will get added to a block, but on the other hand, users don't want to overpay. New fee estimator tools try to help users strike the right balance.

That said, some estimators are better than others.

Some users check with standalone tools that consider different factors, such as the estimator from University of Freiburg computer science researcher Jochen Hoenicke, which gives a good idea of what fee is required to get your transaction into the next block.

Another from Coinb.in considers transaction complexity – such as how much data is sent with the transaction. Fees also take this into account, meaning that even a transaction equal to $1 could have large fees based on a large amount of data attached to the transaction, whereas a transaction equal to $1,000 could have a smaller fee if the amount of data attached to it is limited.

Users have criticized some estimators as telling them to pay higher fees than necessary, but that's partly because fees are so difficult to predict. Fees can fluctuate for all sorts of reasons. The day of the week, for instance, can be a factor since people generally make fewer transactions on the weekend, meaning transaction backlogs would ease and fees wouldn't need to be so high during that time.

In this way, users who don't need to send money right away always have the option to wait for transaction backlogs to die down.

Beyond that, there are more roundabout ways to eliminate transaction fees completely, but these are highly dependent on what wallet or exchange provider is used.

For instance, it's possible to transfer bitcoin on Coinbase for free, using its off-chain way of transacting or by moving funds to the startup's cryptocurrency exchange, GDAX.

Longer-term tools

While the idea of batching a bunch of smaller transactions into one big transaction has been used in the traditional payments space for some time, it's becoming more popular for bitcoin businesses that facilitate payments.

If more companies use this feature effectively, bitcoin transaction fees could be reduced by as much as 80 percent, according to one estimate. However, it's worth mentioning that batching can erode privacy and is potentially slower, depending on how the company or user implements it.

Despite these tradeoffs, though, several companies, including Coinbase, have announced they intend to implement batching to tame fees.

In an effort to keep up with all the industry's progress on decreasing fees, Bitrefill's Kotliar launched a tool that allows users to see how optimized their bitcoin transactions are, displaying whether the transaction used batches, SegWit or a handful of other mechanisms shown to increase or decrease fees.

"Just paste a transaction ID and see if you're overpaying for your bitcoin transactions and withdrawals," Kotliar tweeted.

Plus, looking even further into the future, bitcoin developers are working on a handful of projects, such as the Lightning Network, that would be instrumental in reducing transaction fees, even as the number of people using the network continues to grow.

Summing up the work in the industry to reduce transaction fees in the short term, BitGo engineer Mark Erhardt tweeted:

"There is a lot of throughput to be gained by making better use of the available capacity."

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in BitGo, Blockchain, Coinbase and Ledger.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off

I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.

Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?

Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?

Rahyaftco@yahoo.com

RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

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A major bitcoin conference is no longer accepting bitcoin payments because the fees and lag have gotten so bad

Miami, the location on the 2018 North American Bitcoin Conference. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• The North American Bitcoin conference has stopped accepting bitcoin payments for tickets due to fees and congestion associated with the cryptocurrency.
• Bitcoin is red-hot right now, but the demand has put the network under unprecedented stress and sent transaction fees sky-rocketing.
• Those issue makes it difficult to use bitcoin as a replacement for a traditional currency.

For all the hype around bitcoin right now, it's easy to overlook an important fact: It doesn't actually work very well as a currency.

While interest in the digital currency has exploded over the last 12 months, pushing its price up from $800 to $15,000, the network has buckled under the strain. Users face fees of upwards of $30 on every transaction, which can take hours to process.

In fact, it has gotten so bad that even a major bitcoin conference has stopped accepting bitcoin payments for tickets altogether.

The North American Bitcoin Conference will be held in Miami on January 18-19, with last minute tickets going for $1,000 a pop. But would-be attendees can no longer pay for a ticket in bitcoin or in any other cryptocurrencies. On its website, the event's organizers explain: "Due to network congestion and manual processing, we have closed ticket payments using Cryptocurrencies — Hopefully, next year there will be more unity in the community about scaling and global adoption becomes reality."

It adds: "We have, and always will, accept cryptocurrencies for our conferences, up to fourteen days before the event. However, due to the manual inputting of data in our ticketing platforms when paid in cryptocurrencies, we decided to shut down bitcoin payments for last minute sales due to print deadlines."

Speaking to Bitcoin.com, conference organizer Moe Levin confirmed that transaction costs played a part in the decision. He told the site: "We wish this was easier, but no ticketing options exist which can handle large volumes of ticket sales, and transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain exceed $30 at certain times of the day."

Other organizations have also steered away from bitcoin due to fears over fees and price fluctuations in recent months. PC gaming marketplace Steam stopped accepting bitcoin as a payment method in December 2017, "due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin." And Microsoft temporarily suspended payments on its online store because it is "unstable" earlier in January, though it restored the option this week.

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.>>

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2018 Best Bitcoin exchange Review and Comparison

This page aggregates the most reputable Bitcoin exchanges around today and compares them according to important buying factors. The list below is a general summary and more detailed reviews can be found at the bottom of the page.

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LocalBitcoins

247Exchange

New to buying Bitcoin? here’s what you need to know before choosing an exchange:

Coinbase Bitcoin exchange review

Cons: Not available worldwide, Support takes time to respond

Summary: Coinbase is probably the most popular company today for buying Bitcoins. It was founded in late 2012 as a part of Y-Combinator and until today has raised more than $106 million in venture capital. Coinbase is considered by many the leading Bitcoin exchange available.

The are two ways you can buy Bitcoins from Coinbase. One is through the Coinbase wallet and the other is through the Coinbase exchange. When you buy Bitcoins through the Coinbase wallet you are basically buying the Bitcoins from Coinbase itself, whereas when you use the exchange you are participating in a trading with other users of the exchange.

CoinMama Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Accept credit cards, Fast transaction time, great user interface.

Cons: Relatively high exchange rate, limited states within the US.

Summary: Coinmama is a another veteran Bitcoin broker working in the market since 2013. They offer easy ways to buy Bitcoins with credit cards or cash deposits via MoneyGram and Western Union. Coinmama uses Simplex – a credit processor which allows you to buy up to $5000 in one purchase. Coinmama also has relatively high exchange rates due to chargeback issues and the availability of credit and debit cards as payment methods.

CEX.IO Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Reputable company, high buying limits

Cons: Limited countries available, higher exchange rates

Summary: CEX.IO was established in 2013. CEX.IO is a bitcoin trading exchange which accepts credit cards and allows you to trade. On Cex.io You can buy Bitcoins for USD, EUR and RUB.

BitFinex Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Advanced trading features, leverage abilities

Cons: Does not accept fiat deposits, complex interface

Bitfinex is an advanced Bitcoin trading platform that is more suitable for experienced traders. The platform does not accept fiat deposits at the moment which means you’ll need to fund your account with altcoins or Bitcoin.

If you’re an experienced cryptocurrency trader, Bitfinex likely offers everything you need and more. The chief draw is probably the platform’s high Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity, but its margin funding, leverage, and multiple order types offer a lot of flexibility.

Coinhouse Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Reputable company, high buying limits

Cons: Limited to Eurozone countries only, relatively higher exchange rates

Summary: Coinhouse is the “House of Bitcoin” in Paris. You can buy bitcoins directly online by Visa / MasterCard or cash with Neosurf prepaid card available in most European countries.

Buy Bitcoins on Coinhouse Read our Coinhouse review

BitPanda Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Multiple payment options, relatively low fees

Cons: Fees are hidden inside the exchange rate, EU citiznes only

Overall rating: B

Bitpanda is an Austrian Start-Up Company that was founded in October 2014. The company allows you to buy Bitcoins or Ethereum with a credit card as well as with Wire transfers, Neteller, Skrill, SEPA and more. The company supplies its services to European countries only with a relatively low fee.

If your account is verified the limit is 2,500€ daily (75,000€ monthly) for credit card purchases. For other options, there’s a 10,000€ daily (300,000€ monthly).

Bitstamp Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Highly respected and reliable exchange, low transaction fees.

Cons: Not suited for beginners, limited payment methods, high deposit fees on small amounts of money.

Summary: Bitstamp is the oldest Bitcoin exchange out there today. Founded on 2011 Bitstamp has managed to survive most of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s turmoil without being hacked or shut down, and that’s definitely saying something.

If it wasn’t for it’s non intuitive user interface and lack of convenient payment methods Bitstamp may have been rated #1 in our charts. But unfortunately today I can only recommend Bitstamp for larger purchases of coins where you will definitely need to use a wire transfer and the fees won’t compose such a large amount of the deposited sum.

Kraken Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Highly respected and reliable exchange, low transaction fees.

Cons: Not suited for beginners, limited payment methods, high deposit fees on small amounts of money.

Summary: Another Bitcoin exchange veteran, Kraken was also founded in 2011 like Bitstamp and managed to stay alive until today. Kraken is consistently rated as a top Bitcoin exchange by different news outlets and was also the first Bitcoin exchange listed on Bloomberg terminals. Kraken is also trusted by hundreds of the Tokyo government and the BaFin regulated Fidor Bank.

Kraken is pretty similar to Bitstamp in its pros and cons and are almost identical when coming to decide which on of them to use.

iGot Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Super low fees, great interface.

Cons: Limited payment options, relatively high exchange rate.

Summary: iGot was founded in 2013 in Australia, it provides a trading platform and also merchant payment services for Bitcoin. It has super low fees but also supplies on a limited range of payment methods.

The exchange was also behind the relief campaign for Nepal earthquake victims earlier this year. Having said that, iGot has yet to gain enough reputation as a major player in the Bitcoin exchange market.

HitBTC Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Beginner friendly, great buying experience.

Cons: High exchange rate, brand not reputable enough.

Summary: I’ve reviewed HitBTC last year and was pretty pleased with their product. The company seems to have a solid user interface making it pretty easy to buy Bitcoins. Also the platform seems to be very “newbie oriented” and puts an emphasis on security.

Although HitBTC gained considerable traction over the past year since it’s launch, much like iGot it still hasn’t managed to reach the “big leagues” of Bitcoin exchange (i.e. Coinbase, Circle, Bitstamp etc.)

Virwox Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: A wide variety of payment methods including Paypal and credit cards, no verification required

Cons: Shady reputation, very high fees when buying with Paypal or a credit cards (due to multiple conversions).

Summary: Virwox is not a Bitcoin exchange per se. It’s actually a Second Life reseller which allow you to exchange SLL (Second Life Linden’s) in to Bitcoins. So why is it listed here? Because currently it’s the only known exchange in which you can buy Bitcoins with PayPal.

The issue with Virwox is that even though it supplies various payment methods many users have complained about their services. Some have even reported that their money was taken with no return. However most of the reviews tend to show that either the purchase of Bitcoins was successful or that the money was refunded.

247Exchange Bitcoin exchange review

Pros: Easy user interface, works worldwide and multilingual.

Cons: Buying process is too long (mainly due to verification), the service takes a premium in order to be able to deal with chargeback issues.

Summary: 247Exchange is a veteran player in the Bitcoin ecosystem which allows you to buy Bitcoins with a credit card in a simple and secure manner. Unfortunately their buying process still has a few glitches and the verification process can take quite some time. I recently reviewed the service hands on, you can read about it here.

Bittrex Bitcoin Exchange Review

Pros: Smooth, easy to understand interface, top-notch security, 250+ altcoins

Cons: Slightly high fees, poor customer service, odd account suspensions

Bittrex provides a growing cryptocurrency exchange that suits investors looking for a large altcoin selection. The US company launched in 2014 and is now one of the leading trading platforms.

Its reputation is built upon a smooth user experience combined with unparalleled security. The interface is simple to understand allowing users to easily expand their portfolios with access to over 250 coins. Bittrex has a crack squad of security experts keeping funds safe. The team currently maintain a clean record in fighting off hacks and attacks.

Luno Bitcoin Exchange Review

Pros: Good reputation, happy reviews, well-run platform.

Cons: bitcoin only, fluctuating fees, small market cap

Luno enjoys a marvelous reputation with an array of happy users. It doesn’t have a huge trading cap but it performs its duties admirably against the big boys. Despite being in operation since 2013 the Luno team still struggle to secure serious market dominance.

Solely a bitcoin exchange the platform is aiming to become the “most trusted, secure and reliable exchange”. Users can buy, sell and store bitcoin with service including the use of wallet and mobile features. The one downside is the fees, which can be a little tricky to work out for new buyers. Overall, it is a solid well run service.

Indacoin Exchange Review

Pros: Convenient simple way to buy bitcoin

Cons: Extortionate fees, low buy limits

Indacoin has been around since 2014 target customers looking for fast easy bitcoin buys. It functions as a way for you to buy bitcoins with a credit or debit card. Simply fill out a payment form then confirm via a telephone message and voila, you’ll have bitcoin funds.

There are some downsides to transacting in this manner. Fees are astronomical anywhere you make a credit card transaction and none more so than Indacoin. Users really do pay a price for convenience. There are buy limits to be aware of with a maximum of $750. That being said, the service does do what it says in a legitimate manner.

Bitbay Exchange Review

Pros: Decent currency support, Less known to hackers, acceptable fees

Cons: Small market cap, Unknow quantity, still building a reputation.

Bitbay is another interesting cryptocurrency exchange competitor. The Polish outfit services users both domestically and worldwide. The feature-rich trading platform is still fighting to become a well-known name in the industry. But many are not put out by the smaller reputation.

Bitbay provides a nice selection of coins with bitcoin, litecoin, ether, and lisk all available to trade. Fees are acceptable too, although slightly higher than some bigger exchanges. The pros, particularly for Polish users far outweigh the cons. Domestic customers can even get a bitcoin credit card to start transacting regularly.

Changelly Exchange Review

Pros: Simplistic crypto exchange, no trading expertise needed, sleek interface

Cons: Fee higher when trading fiat, not completely anonymous

Changelly is a real neat solution to a very real problem. Satoshi gave birth to bitcoin, one global currency. Bitcoin then reproduced and again. Now it has evolved. There are hundreds of global digital currencies which need to be exchanged. Changelly makes it easy and convenient to exchange cryptocurrencies without the need for trading platforms.

For a fee, you can send them a coin and receive another back. Of course, it is effectively making trades for you so you don’t need to understand charts and market trading. The slick interface coupled with a 0.5% fee on all transactions does make it an appealing prospect. However if you trade fiat currencies it seems like that exchange rate is a lot higher. So it is advised only to trade altcoins on Changelly.

Local Bitcoins Exchange Review

Pros: Transaction flexibility, no buy fee, worldwide user base, public rating system

Cons: 1% sell fee, some suspicious users

Local Bitcoins a clever operation that adds incredible flexibility to buying bitcoins. It brings buyers and sellers together in a marketplace. It is unique in that you can transact in almost any method thinkable including Paypal, wire transfer, Western Union, Webmoney or cash.

You can find some pretty good rates to buy bitcoin through the service with sellers all over the world looking to offload funds. Fees are dependent on which side of the transaction you sit. There is only 1% sell fee and funds are transacted directly to and from a Local Bitcoins wallet.

GDAX Exchange Review

Pros: Coinbase extension, cheap fees, ether and litecoin support

Cons: no altcoins, ether market crash

GDAX is the sister trading exchange to the world famous Coinbase. It benefits hugely from this close working relationship. Coinbase’s millions of users can use the same account detail to log in directly on GDAX. Once funds are transferred across trading can begin.

The backing of such a huge player makes GDAX one of the most trusted exchanges. Historically, funds have gone missing at least once but the customer support team were able to refund any losses. The exchange supports the big 3, bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin.

Gemini Exchange Review

Pros: Public owners, regulated, trustworthy.

Cons: Limited currency support, not yet a market leader.

Gemini is seen as one of the most trustworthy legitimate bitcoin exchanges. Publicly developed by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, it is building an encouraging mark of public support since 2015.

The ‘Winklvii’ are working with regulators to make their product a leader in conforming to banking and legal legislation. Primarily a US-based exchange, it still does not retain the same market cap as the top echelons but worldwide expansion looks set to change this through 2018. Fees are in line with market averages the only downside is minimal currency flexibility. Just bitcoin and ether on offer here.