Over the past several months, the bitcoin network has been experiencing a lot of lag that has threatened the future of bitcoin. These lags are due to the high number of transactions being processed in a day. According to Coinmarketcap, for example, there has been over $21 billion worth of bitcoin transactions. Meanwhile, blockchain.info reports that there are over 200,000 unconfirmed transactions. These problems have caused the fees for transacting in bitcoin to skyrocket, making the cryptocurrency very expensive to use.
Today, the cost of a single bitcoin transaction can be around $26. However, if one would want to have the transaction processed faster, they have to offer higher fees to the miners that can go as high as $50. This is in spite of the transaction period taking hours and even days to complete. In this regard, a lot of bitcoin enthusiasts now see the core property of bitcoin fading away. According to bitcoin’s whitepaper, it was supposed to be way faster and cheaper than conventional money transfer systems, but now it is even more expensive than, say, Western Union.