Not everything is going smoothly in the world of Bitcoin right now. There have been issues with unconfirmed transactions for several days now. Whereas the mempool had 130,000 “stuck” transactions yesterday, things got a lot worse overnight. At the time of writing, over 220,000 transfers are waiting to be processed. All of this further confirms Bitcoin has deviated from being a currency quite some time ago. Something will need to change sooner rather than later.
Transaction woes in the Bitcoin world are nothing new under the sun. Despite the vast net worth of this network, its scaling problems become more problematic every month. The Bitcoin network cannot handle the massive amount of transactions people aim to submit. Issues like these are known for some time now, yet there is no quick and easy fix. Even the activation of SegWit hasn’t pushed back the mounting number of unconfirmed transactions.
Unconfirmed Transactions Keep Flooding the Network
Scaling Bitcoin will take a lot of time and effort. While the developers are working on solutions, companies are struggling to implement them. With the SegWit adoption rate still subpar, it is evident unconfirmed transactions will remain a big problem. It isn’t easy to solve this problem either, thanks to a rather fractured community. All of this further pushes Bitcoin toward becoming a store of value on the same level as gold. That would be a shame, given the fact this was originally designed to be an actual currency.
With over 220,000 unconfirmed transactions flooding the mempool, a troublesome situation is created. Until the network can process more transactions at once, these issues will remain in place. Right now, the Bitcoin network processes 3.9 transactions per second, which isn’t acceptable. Moreover, these backlogs force users to pay higher fees, although that isn’t a foolproof solution either. Higher fees won’t solve the congestion, but only make others wait even longer while miners fill their pockets.
For the time being, it’s still unclear where these unconfirmed transactions come from. With the Bitcoin price soaring, a lot of people attempt to cash out before the course reverses. Unfortunately, moving funds to and from exchanges is nigh impossible right now. This makes it very difficult for people to actively sell their BTC unless they had it in an exchange wallet already. A frustrating few days for all BTC enthusiasts, that much is rather evident.
