[wyager]

>bitcoin demands friction to run the blockchain

It requires (electrical) power. I don't think this could reasonably be called "friction". When I think "friction", I think of burdens imposed on users. Bitcoin has relatively few of those.

[lotsofmangos]

Cost per transaction of $19 is a fair amount of friction - https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction

[wyager]

>Cost per transaction of $19 is a fair amount of friction

Haha, I have no idea what that chart is talking about. It might be in cents. Even then, it seems expensive.

My phone client uses a ~$0.05 fee, I think.

All fees are optional. Your transaction might just take longer without one.

[backdraw_]

There are about 500 transactions per block; each block contains 25BTC + fees (the fees are negligible at the moment). At the current price of $350/BTC that means that the revenue per transaction is 25*350/500 = $17, which means that the cost per transaction should be around that area. This means that the low transaction fee is actually massively subsidized by the fixed block reward.

[lotsofmangos]

Yeah, just thinking about that fee graph. I have no idea of the transaction size it is based on and without that it is pretty useless.