Note: The author of this article is ShiLiang Huang from Shenzhen, China. He is a prolific translator and author of bitcoin related literature, running a Wechat official account of H13116885.

Bitcoin has been hailed as the king of digital currencies for its three advantages: fast peer-to-peer transactions, worldwide payments and low processing fees. But this is no longer the case.

Bitcoin: no longer a means of payment with low or even zero transaction fees

For the first years of bitcoin’s experience, fees for using bitcoin were very low, the typical transaction fee was around 0.0001 btc/KB. Since 2016, however, the transaction fee is generally over 0.001 btc/KB. And bitcoin’s network congestion is the reason.

As more blocks are filling up, not all transactions can be included in the blockchain straight away. Against this background, many domestic mining pools revealed a transaction accelerator platform where a higher fee can help accelerate transaction confirmation.

Many companies are also working with mining pools to charge more fees for faster transactions and these companies accept RMB. Is it ironic that bitcoin transaction needs to be assisted by the legal currency?

Bitcoin: not a peer-to-peer electronic cash system anymore

For so many years a transaction sent could be confirmed in 10 minutes. At that time, bitcoin was indeed fast peer-to-peer transactions. Now as bitcoin is subject to congestion, ten minutes are often insufficient to confirm a transaction even with a higher fee.

In order to make a transaction jump the queue, one would go to a transaction accelerator platform that serves as a third party. But how come bitcoin is still peer-to-peer if a third party is involved?

How to make bitcoin great again?

The answer is simple and that is to increase the current 1M block size.

The scaling solution has been widely discussed and accepted and it is technologically feasible. So what are you still waiting for, mining pools?