Expensive fees = "bitcoin will die, its unusable as cash"
Cheap fees = bitcoin is dead, no one is using it as cash"
Its not that big of a deal. All of the high fee times historically were caused by moving on, off and between exchanges or "defi". Day traders buying on coinbase and sending it to FTX to gamble on shitcoins. There was never an actual bitcoin circular economy using blockspace enough to cause a noticable increase in fees. That's mostly dead now, and even a ton of the inter and intra-exchange bitcoin moves are down because of ETFs where no bitcoin ever changes hands. Even if a billion $ worth of bitcoin gets sold on grayscale and bought on blackrock, it will not result in a single on chain TX because both custody it at coinbase.
I'd be willing to bet the actual bitcoin economy (excluding drugs) is as big as it ever was, but a lot of the real ass bitcoiners shifted largely to lightning (in terms of number of TXs, even if not in total volume). Just take all the people on nostr for example. We've all sent more zaps than total onchain transactions in all the years before nostr.
The whole point of small blockers and lightning was that 1mb would be enough for a shit ton more traffic by moving most of it off chain. We've seen exactly that.
Karadenizli
npub15r…t7dpl
2026-05-07 22:52:06 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…d9qa
Author Public Key
npub15r9hp5eq3a0heantnja4sth3ug277nhse9f3scu937mxfh0mpw8snt7dplPublished at
2026-05-07 22:52:06 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Expensive fees = \"bitcoin will die, its unusable as cash\"\nCheap fees = bitcoin is dead, no one is using it as cash\"\n\nIts not that big of a deal. All of the high fee times historically were caused by moving on, off and between exchanges or \"defi\". Day traders buying on coinbase and sending it to FTX to gamble on shitcoins. There was never an actual bitcoin circular economy using blockspace enough to cause a noticable increase in fees. That's mostly dead now, and even a ton of the inter and intra-exchange bitcoin moves are down because of ETFs where no bitcoin ever changes hands. Even if a billion $ worth of bitcoin gets sold on grayscale and bought on blackrock, it will not result in a single on chain TX because both custody it at coinbase. \n\nI'd be willing to bet the actual bitcoin economy (excluding drugs) is as big as it ever was, but a lot of the real ass bitcoiners shifted largely to lightning (in terms of number of TXs, even if not in total volume). Just take all the people on nostr for example. We've all sent more zaps than total onchain transactions in all the years before nostr. \n\nThe whole point of small blockers and lightning was that 1mb would be enough for a shit ton more traffic by moving most of it off chain. We've seen exactly that. ",
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