Bitcoin is About to Become Unusable… Again

Bitcoin is directly on course for crippling network bottlenecks and insane transaction fees. SegWit did not fix the problem. LightningNetwork is not ready for prime time.

If we look at the number of transactions per day, Bitcoin has been steadily growing for the past year with a recent peak of 391k. The peak utilization of 2018 was about 406k.

Looking at the recent block sizes, most blocks are filling up at around 1.2MB, which is only 20% larger than the original 1MB block limit.

This is far below the theoretical estimates for SegWit, which placed block sizes near 4MB.

SegWit adoption seems to have plateaued at around 45%.

Unconfirmed transactions are increasing on a daily basis. Numbers between 50k and 70k are being hit every day.

Complaints of network congestion and high fees are making their way through Crypto Twitter.

Doing some very rough math:

• 0% SegWit = 1.0MB
• 45% SegWit = 1.2MB
• 100% SegWit would be about 1.5MB

Even if we magically saw 100% SegWit adoption (which we won’t) we’re still on course for major network congestion and skyrocketing fees.

Once transactions start piling up, fees start to grow exponentially. We’re already starting to see this.

This is BAD. If the current crypto bull market continues, Bitcoin is going to hit a wall in the very near future. The market is ready, but the tech is not.

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Bitcoin is About to Become Unusable… Again was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.