Over 200,000+ unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions. Steem would process this within a minute!
Bitcoin's problem
There are currently over 200,000+ unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin network and this is steadily increasing. You can watch it realtime on blockchain.info.
It's a huge problem for Bitcoin and without a scaling solution in sight the only way to be sure to actually send money at this point is to lure the Bitcoin miners with a high transaction fee.
When I used Bitcoin for the first time I was amazed for 2 reasons:
- Bitcoin was fast. My transactions were being confirmed within 10 minutes.
- It was nearly free to use. Very low transaction fees.
At this point, Bitcoin is as good as unusable. If you don't want to pay a high fee it could take hours or even days before Bitcoin miners will confirm your transaction. This way you will never be able to buy a cup of coffee using Bitcoin. The transactions costs would be higher than your coffee itself.
Blocks are full!
Bitcoin has a 10 minute blocktime and a blocksize of 1 Megabyte, which means the network can store only 1 MB of transaction data per 10 minutes. As you can see in the chart below, the number of Bitcoin transactions is growing rapidly. With so many transactions, 1 MB is simply not enough.
Source: blockchain.info
Transactions per second
The Bitcoin network is currently processing between 3 and 4 transactions per second. It's growing fast, but it's still nothing if you compare this with credit card issuer VISA for example. VISA handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second and is capable of handling up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions. (source: Wikipedia)
The Steem Blockchain
Steem is capable of handling 1000's of transactions per second. You can read more about the performance and scalability of Steem on Steem.io.
This means Steem would easily process all 200,000+ unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions within a minute!
And that's not all. It does it even without any fees. This is why Steem is, besides a social platform, a much better cryptocurrency for buying a cup of coffee. And that's exactly what @mallorcaman did today. Did you know there are 3 bars/restaurants on the sunny Spanish island Mallorca where Steem is adopted as a payment option? Read about it here.
Steem is pretty amazing.
That's for sure!
If STEEM "can" do this than why are BTC folks not jumping ship into a better crypto like STEEM/STEEMIT? Fear of losing out or is it STEEMIT's fault for not easing transactions that BTC can already make like PoS transactions?
I would welcome it as a payment system, this is probably many years out though. In the meantime, I collect all the crypto's, not spending them yet...I did recently take a few SBD and changed to BTC, just to see how the process was and as a learning exercise.
BTC is just limited in transaction and it has reached the top now. That is why it will not be one of the maincryptos in later future. Just my 2c.
Resteemed just realized that you tagged me on this post :) Notifications seem to be working again on steemit maybe thats why I missed it
We are the future, no doubt about it!
The bottleneck problem of BTC is obvious. The fast performance of steem as well. But there is no free lunch. The fees for steem transactions are hidden in the inflation rate. No one really knows whether the forecast of the declining inflation rate will be fulfilled. For reasons of DPoS every parameter can be changes arbitrarily.
Steem can also be shut down or forced to hard fork to censor transactions and accounts of unpersons like Snowden pretty easily.
I don't see how Steem can be shut down or forced (by governments) to hard fork. Steemit.com can be shut down or forced to make changes, but if someone hosts the website from a country like the Bahamas we can still use the Steem blockchain.
Steem the next Bitcoin :)
Wait... Beyond Bitcoin !
I was dubious to transfer 250+ Steem to steemit and expected it to take forever. Was so happy when it came through before I drank my coffee! :D I'm pleasantly suprised and very tempted to just transfer over 80% of my assets to Steem power
Smart move.
Great post! But I heard from one of the experts that when other alt coins reach scale of bitcoin then they will have the same issues as Bitcoin has. Would you agree?
Nope. Steem is capable of handling 1000's of transactions per second. Bitcoin, in its current shape, is limited to 7 transactions per second.
Thanks for clarification!