8 December 2017: Bitcoin network delays
Your patience is probably appreciated.
The bitcoin network is currently experiencing delays due to a high transaction volume, and at the time of writing there are over 20,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be processed. This issue affects all exchanges, all brokers and all bitcoin services worldwide.
The only way to speed up your transactions is to increase your transaction fees.
This issue may have significant implications for the future of bitcoin prices.
This is because the miners who process transactions prioritise the transactions which earn them the most in fees. The visualisation below shows how it works.
- The spiky orange bar at the top represents the highest fee transactions waiting to be processed.
- The purple bar represents the second-highest fee transactions waiting to be processed.
- The blue bar and other layers below it show the third-and-onwards highest fee transaction fees waiting to be processed.
The miners are currently just skimming the top layer off the most expensive transactions. The spikes come from transactions being processed and then more coming in to take their place. The lower-fee purple transactions are only rarely processed in small numbers when the miners manage to dig through the orange layer.
Partial snapshot of transactions processed in an 8 hour period
Average transaction fees
The average transaction fees are currently equivalent to US$6-7 per transaction. That's how much those in the orange and purple layer are paying to get through.
This is the highest they've been since 13 November, where they peaked at around $US20. But as you can see below, the number of pending transactions is actually significantly higher now than it was then.
This suggests that a lot of people are going to be waiting a long time for their transactions to go through.
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Pictures: Johoe's Mempool Statistics
