Bitcoin Economist Tuur Demeester raised an interesting question today. He pointed out that the total amount wagered on bitcoin casinos has dropped from 4,500 bitcoin/day to 3,500 bitcoin/day between 2015 and 2016. What do you guys think? Has the rise in fees stopped you from gambling at bitcoin casinos, poker rooms or sportsbooks?
back in the day of "sathoshi dice" i think a lot of bitcoin gambling was done on-chain. these days only the deposit and withdrawal process happens on-chain. everything else has been centralised. right now the average transaction fee on the btc network is about $0.11 so i can't see how that would put anyone off crypto-gambling. if you can't afford to lose 11 cents then you really shouldn't be gambling.
I'm paying around $0.40 in fees now for most of my transactions. I was paying between $5 and $10 dollars when I deposited at a poker room or sportsbook so it's still very cheap. Maybe if you are a very small time gambler who is only depositing a couple of dollars, then maybe the fees will be an issue.
Fees are about $1 per transaction at the moment. It's high but it's certainly not enough to put off a determined gambler. Depositing with Visa or Mastercard would certainly cost you more. We do need Lightening Network payments soon though.
Fees have decreased considerably over the past couple of weeks, which has lead many to speculate that big block supports had been spamming the network to make it appear that blocks were full. Now that an agreement has been reached on SegWit, the spamming has stopped and the price has dropped.
Yes, most of my recent transactions have cost about $0.20 and have been confirmed within a couple of blocks. It certainly looks as if big blockers were spamming the network on purpose to drive up fees in order to further the big block narrative. Here's a tweet from Charlie Shrem this morning...
that's like asking "is the queue outside the restaurant causing a drop in usage?" the fees are rising because so many people want to enter. the restaurant is FULL, GET IN LINE.
The 20x price increase this year has made a lot of early bitcoin users millionaires. I think many of these are now recklessly spending their new found wealth at cryptocurrency sportsbooks and casinos.
until the lightning network is launched, i'm mostly using litecoin for small transactions like paying for my vpn and topping up my phone credit with bitrefill. i've also found myself using ltc for deposit and withdrawals a few times because it's faster and cheaper than btc.
Bitcoin fees are almost free now. If you're willing to wait a few hours, your transaction will confirm even if you don't attach a fee.
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