Kraken Bitcoin withdrawal fee rises to $7! Blockstream CEO bets users are willing to pay $100

As the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, the number of Bitcoin transactions has also increased significantly. However, due to the unresolved expansion problem, the average transaction fee of Bitcoin transactions has also increased significantly compared to before. Recently, the large digital currency exchange Kraken announced that the platform's Bitcoin withdrawal fee has now risen to 0.0025 BTC/tx, equivalent to about US$7.

Last Thursday, Kraken explained to its clients:

“Kraken has always paid sufficient fees to miners to ensure that transactions are processed quickly. However, the average miner fee required to ensure transaction priority has been increasing recently, and the fees we charge our customers have not increased accordingly.”

It is reported that Kraken previously charged a transaction fee of only 0.0005 BTC/tx, which is one-fifth of the current fee.

Regarding the increase in Bitcoin transaction fees, Adam Back, president of Blockstream and author of the Hashcash algorithm, said that he was personally willing to pay a $100 fee for one Bitcoin transaction, and he "bet" that other users would do the same.

In a tweet, Back responded to a similar hypothesis put forward by former Bitcoin Foundation executive director Bruce Fenton, who argued that users would “willingly” pay a $20 fee.

“I bet they’ll pay $100/tx for digital gold, which is the equivalent of a medium-sized international remittance transaction, and I’ll do that. Of course, it would be nice if the fees were lower.”

Both added that lower fees would be "good" or "preferred."

Back's comments spark debate

@adam3us , this illogical thinking will get us into trouble, in a fully decentralized currency competitive market, no one will want to pay $100 for every transaction.

@DavidShares @adam3us Not saying I want to pay $100 per transaction, but you are wrong. If people use Bitcoin as a store of value, they will pay something for the security.

Silbert added that he doesn’t want to see higher fees.

Elsewhere, the number of unprocessed Bitcoin transactions has been steadily declining this month, while the size of Bitcoin’s mempool reached an all-time peak at the end of last month.