Bitcoin community discusses the recently noticed transaction fee increase. Every time more transactions with low offered fee and priority remain unprocessed, according to bitcoin holders' allegations.

The amount paid as a transaction fee has recently increased up to five times, told South American bitcoin exchange Bitex.la to CoinDesk. They also complained about the longer time it now takes to confirm payment, which for a deposit may reach one full day.

“We are paying more fees and the transactions are taking more time to deliver,” Bitex chief marketing officer Manu Beaudroit said.

Peer-to-peer bitcoin trading platform BitQuick mentions three to four times transaction fee rise, according to company's CEO Jad Mubaslat.

The higher the offered fee, the more likely the transaction will be sooner included in the block. So the fee level reflects the rising or falling demand for space in blocks. Most bitcoin wallets use a hard-coded fee amount of 0.0001 BTC ($0.04). But over the last months with the block size remaining unchanged at the 1Mb level and the demand for space growing, this fee proved insufficient for effectuating fast transactions. Quite a few of them do not reach the required level of priority and are not included in blocks for a long time.

According to the data from 21.co, bitcoin users paying standard wallet fees between 1 and 10 satoshis per byte need to wait between five and 42 blocks, which means they suffer from delays between 1.5 and 16 hours. The minimum fee to push the transaction forward to be included in a block within an hour is currently set at 21 satoshis. For a no-wait transaction, the minimum fee is 61 satoshis, that is, about $2.6.  

Elena Platonova