With Massive Network Congestion, What’s the Value of BTC?

Bitcoin is a global value transmission network with a capital flow of billions or even tens of billions of dollars every day. Against such a value flow, what rules can we find and follow? Today, we are going to observe the status of Bitcoin network from the perspective of onchain transaction fees. In Bitcoin network, users can encourage miners to package their trades into blocks through fee incentives. However, apart from issues concerning extension solution and alternative cryptocurrencies, the objective data about Bitcoin in the previous 3 months has demonstrated a completely different story. The trading volume of Bitcoin, block size and transaction fees in the first quarter of 2019 have all reached an all-time high, indicating that high congestion emerges on Bitcoin network once again. The following chart comes from: https://chain.info/, a website focusing on recording real onchain data, producing relatively concise and visualized data graphs and enabling direct screenshots of data.

Let's take a closer look at the following graphs:

Data Source: https://chain.info/chart/closePrice

Data Source: https://chain.info/chart/totalTxNum

Since March 2019, transactions on Bitcoin network have been on a constant rise, up more than 40 percent compared with the previous quarter. What’ more, the number of transactions on Bitcoin network reached nearly 450,000 on May 2, and the number was almost 300,000 even at its low peak. If such a growth rate persists, the Bitcoin network will remain being congested.

Data Source: https://chain.info/chart/totalMinerRevenue

Data Source: https://chain.info/chart/averageBlockSize

As time goes on, we can see that the growth speed of block size has been accelerating all the way, and the minimum of average block size in the past 6 months reached 1.05 MB, leaving little space for users who did not pay a high transaction fee.

Data Source: https://chain.info/chart/totalBlockFee

Therefore, the most expensive part that a user in the Bitcoin community may experience right now is the transaction fee. Just a few years ago, it can be said that Bitcoin trading is "free" or "almost free" (the blue area shows the variation trend of the percentage of free Bitcoin trading among all transactions). In the past 3 months, however, the daily average fee for transaction ranges from  0.00006931 to 0.0006768 during peak hours. The average overall transaction fee has witnessed an increase of 155%, with the highest one being 55 USD per transaction. Since 2018, the total transaction fee for Bitcoin has also approached 1 billion USD.

Merely from the perspective of network efficiency, Bitcoin has been experiencing such network congestion for quite a long time and users in the Bitcoin community have to pay high handling fees when the price of Bitcoin is high. Wondering whether Satoshi Nakamoto has ever expected of it or not. But now it's high time to contemplate on the real value of Bitcoin. So for those who are still buying BTC, what’s your opinion? Can Bitcoin be really regarded as an asset capable of maintaining value in such a turbulent world?

I used bitcoin in the early days because of the instant cash outs. While other site would stall payments and take days if not weeks, the bitcoin sites were paying instantly but the cost of using bitcoin was ridiculous. I remember my first christmas time the fees to send a deposit were between 5 and 20$ USD which was completly ridiculous. By the time i run out of btc i realized that in fact i had lost nothing to the casinos, everything was gone in fees. It improved over time but then recently went south again. I just can't use exodus no more, the fees are just completly ridiculous. I use my localbitcoin wallet but then it means my bitcoin are not in my own wallet and therefor there is a risk so i have to constantly sell and buy bitcoin to avoid leaving too much money in there and again the fees are ridiculous. Now that bitcoin casinos added other currencies and take e-wallets and e-interac there is just no point using bitcoin anymore except for when i need money quick. What i mean is that i use ecopayz but they are terrible when it comes to cashing out to bank, they don't want money to leave their system so they make looong and expensive to send to bank and work same as "normal" casinos and leave your withdrawal pending for 2 days allowing a reversal so at this point i get back to same issues i had with normal casinos so i use it mostly for money i expect to use again for gambling. I use bitcoin either because a certain promotion is better in bitcoin or because if i cash out i will most likely sell the bitcoin to get the money in my bank right away. But again, the fees are terrible and the delays sometimes even with high fees will leave me waiting hours to play on some sites requiring confirmations before play.

As ridiculous as it may seems, the bitcoin use, transactions fees and such cost me more since i use it than the money i lost to the casinos... When people say bitcoin is convenient and cheap, they clearly have no clue or say whatever to sell their product. When you want to deposit 25-50$ and it shows 12.60$ fees to send... come on what is that. People complain about banks charging 50 cents or 1$ sometimes for transactions. I guess this will change. Also the swings in price are just terrible. I can buy bitcoin for 50$.. play.. double up go back to sell the bitcoin and receive 75$ because bitcoin plunged while i was playing. Or i win huge, sell my bitcoins to see 1 hour after i sold for 2k of bitcoin it went up 10-15% and i wouldve had 200-300$ more which can make one go crazy. It had it's use but i use it less and less by the day. It was nice and cute when it came out, but like the first computers in the 70's 80's they quickly got obsolete and replaced by better new technology. Bitcoin opened the way but now its limitations are more than obvious.

I think your point is brilliant, Moore's law is going to be tested over and over again