😅 Makes me wonder why the difficulty adjustment is trending toward a large downward adjustment even though miner fees are through the roof right now. Shouldn’t this be incentivizing more hash rate to come online? 
Discussion
Is it because it’s looking back so the next one should go up. No idea
It’s an estimate based on blocks produced so far during this difficulty adjustment period. Target block time is average of 10 minutes per block. Right now by estimated a downward adjustment it’s saying that blocks are being produced more slowly than every 10 minutes on average. That could completely reverse before the next difficulty adjustment if more miners come online in the next week or so, but it’s always interesting to watch.
It is just an estimation, hashrates go up and down daily.
The transaction fee is far too high.
This is a bad thing. Be honest about it.
This is an amazing thing.
I’m not too concerned about it. If it’s too high then the people paying those fees will stop paying them. Demand for block space will decrease and fees will drop again eventually. For now someone clearly thinks it’s worth the fees, because they’re paying them. But I also don’t depend on low on chain fees like some businesses do, so for them I’d agree it’s a bad situation until either fees go down or they adjust their business model.
Not only is it not a bad thing, it’s a highly positive thing. Bitcoin will always only be capable of providing final settlement assurances. This is a great motivator for businesses and individuals to build out lightning and other layer 2 payments. High fees = High usage 👍 = High security 👍
It’s only a motivator to avoid the thing that is bad. The high fees.
High fees are bad and fee surges are bad.
Preferably the infrastructure would quickly scale to arbitrage the demand, but this isn’t the case yet.
High fees are good and are absolutely necessary under a Bitcoin standard. It’s all about perspective and time preference.
I feel like there will be a couple of scams that get some headlines and then it’ll all stop cuz the whole thing is dumb.
Then the scammers will move to the next blockchain.
Yea whoever is paying these fees right now for such small transactions is essentially making a leveraged trade against bitcoin. Sending ~500 sats at a cost of ~30K sats in fees is not sustainable. They’re banking on trading these BRC-20 tokens with enough of a profit margin that it makes up what they’re losing in on chain fees. But they’re shitcoins. It all goes to zero at some point.
The scams will follow the money. Make no mistake
Just an estimate. If these shitheads keep paying exorbitant fees, more miners will come back online