If bitcoin is becoming even more successful (in the sense of high transactions number) and if blocksize remains at ~1 MB, what will be the impact on fees? And could we imagine unsustainable fees?
The utility of bitcoin depends on your perspective. As a means of value exchange, high fees make it less useful. But as a store of value, high fees matter little.
As far as I know, even for very big payments, most banks charge either no fee or a flat fee for SEPA. My bank charges nothing for normal SEPA transfers or 20 euro for expedited ones (or it did a couple of years ago; I think there’s some new regulation reducing max times for transfers, making expedited less relevant). No upper limit mentioned on the forms. Of course, that’s only relevant within the EU.
EU is WAY ahead of the US in many areas. I daresay that's because corporate monopolies have a bit less power here (Europe).
The older folks in the US (the same group who put the US in the situation it's in now) are still writing paper checks, putting them in envelopes, and sending them through the postal service. Sure, you can send a bank wire, but the sender will pay $15-30 for the privilege, and the receiver often has to pay $15 or more as well. Oh, and it can take 1-2 business days; and the receiving bank may decide, based on whatever reason, to hold the funds for 10 business days.
Things are slowly changing with US banking, becoming slightly more modern; but it's still the dark ages.
I'm amused when I visit family in the US and hear local people expressing superiority over the rest of the world, while Kenya has been doing mobile banking for 10 years.
Anyway, until you've lived in the US, you don't know how sucky banking is. Any extra-bank financial system in the US is better than what they have now!
To clarify for non-Eurozoners: SEPA is the Single European Payment Area. All bank transfers denominated in euros within the EU, EEA, San Marino and Monaco must cost the same regardless of destination bank or country. In the eurozone that cost is usually zero.
In Australia, my bank charges $10.50 for a domestic RTGS (Real-time gross settlement) transfer. That system is only for payments over $100,000 and usually clears within 120 minutes. Not sure what it would cost for an international transfer - the SWIFT fee seems to be a flat $30 - it doesn't specify any maximums but I'm not sure if that still applies when you're talking tens of millions of dollars...
I never said it couldn't be :). But with bitcoin's significant transaction fees, it's much less useful as a medium of transaction (for small value transactions).
Remember just a year or two ago when it was cool to buy your coffee at a shop that took bitcoin? You wouldn't do that now, since your coffee would cost the equivalent of $20 ($4 for the coffee, $16 for the transaction fee).
It's also painful to realize how much bitcoin some of us have spent on little things in the past. I've had some coffees that are now worth $300 a cup had I treated the btc as value store rather than currency ;).
Sure but hopefully if all this nonsense ends with couple stable currencies, the price will stabilize and younwill be able tobuy your coffee with bitcoins again or moneroj, or hell if i know.
I think it will. The internet has been around for 20 years, and we're only just figuring out some of the good things to do with it (and stumbling over a million crappy ways to use it).
I see bitcoin as a proof of concept that was much needed, so it grew legs and became a "real thing". Something better will replace it (and I wish I knew for sure which it would be so I could "bet" on it now! ;) ).