[martindale]

This is absurd and hyperbolically incorrect; fees in Bitcoin are calculated per-byte of the transaction's size (and in BTC, no less!), so even if the cost of a transaction was that high, the price in USD would be misleading — with the underlying asset at ~$4500, of course the dollar value of the fee would appear high in a weaker currency.

Who wants to wait _any_ number of blocks for a payment to clear, anyways? Blockchains provide a trust anchor that serves well as a settlement system, but they aren't intrinsically payment networks in and of themselves — the ideal experience is of course an _instant_ payment, and waiting for confirmations just doesn't cut it.

This is why so much effort is going into building payment rapid networks on _top_ of Bitcoin, using "rapidly-adjusted micropayment channels" [0] and routing protocols to build things like Lightning [1].

And you're pumping IOTA in this same post? Unbelievable, these days.

Current fee experience of Bitcoin: https://twitter.com/alansilbert/status/905106387260370945 Historical fees: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

[0]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract#Example_7:_Rapidly-adjus... [1]: https://medium.com/lightning-resources