A shock announcement by BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi should probably be getting a lot more press attention than it is right now. In fact, it’s surprising that so far very few mainstream media pundits who love to hate Bitcoin, haven’t already picked up on what could be the most damning Bitcoin story of recent weeks. Imagine, for example, if people looking at how to buy Bitcoin were to suddenly discover that as Bitcoin currently stands, 57.26% of blockchain wallet balances are actually unspendable?
Is Your Bitcoin Account Frozen?
As Bitcoin has grown in popularity in recent years, it is no secret that the digital currency has been dogged by potentially quite serious scalability issues. Blockchain wallet transactions frequently become bottlenecked due to limited block sizes. This being the case, fees paid to Bitcoin miners (who process transactions) have been steadily increasing, The problem as BitPay CEO Tony Gallipi sees it, however, is that average Bitcoin transaction fees have now surpassed the actual Bitcoin account balances of 57.26% of all blockchain wallets.
The Bitcoin Scalability Issue Which More Altcoins Need to Start Taking Note Of
According to Tony Gallippi, receiving $45 in Bitcoin might seem like a good idea. In practice, however, it will cost that average Bitcoin user more than $45 to make a transaction with such a small wallet amount. What is more, this is a serious issue for anyone with an active Bitcoin account balance, especially now that SegWit2x, (the only feasible solution to combating the further fee increases) has been scrapped by the Bitcoin Core development community.
Of course, Bitcoin is just as much a brand now as it is a form of digital currency. While, however, Bitcoin might be happy to ignore the current fee crisis for a little longer, high fees might be just what altcoins like Litecoin, Dash Coin, and Bitcoin Cash, need to start gaining more market leverage.
Might Bitcoin Cash Eventually Prove More Viable Than Bitcoin?
As discussed in previous posts, there are real concerns with how Bitcoin Cash is essentially owned and operated by a niche team of clearly very self-serving developers and miners. Bitcoin Cash, however, was initially lauded as a way to finally combat the increasing transaction fee problem experienced by the Bitcoin network.
By increasing Bitcoin block sizes eightfold, the original premise behind Bitcoin Cash was to make the digital currency the more logical choice for anyone looking to trade and transact Bitcoin (albeit a derivative version) just like they do regular US dollars. This being the case, the BCH community should welcome the findings of BitPay’s Toni Gallippi. What is more, so too should altcoins like Dash Coin, Litecoin, and Monero, which are already acquiring serious investor interest and which themselves are already free from such high transaction fee and scalability problems.
Bitcoin looking ahead
People who buy Bitcoin, are often ridiculed and in some cases even maligned to the point of character assassination by the mainstream media. The ugly truth about a so-called Bitcoin bubble (for them at least) is that evidence suggests that trust in Bitcoin is actually growing. In fact, a recent Forbes magazine survey turned the idea of a Bitcoin bubble on its head entirely. The majority of respondents to this survey, after all, told Forbes that they would only sell Bitcoin when the Bitcoin price reaches $196,165. The only thing that could cause a Bitcoin Bubble to burst would be capital flight from the currency. This being the case, evidence that people plan to hold investments until Bitcoin skyrockets past $100,000, is fantastic news for people new to the cryptocurrency market