Despite complaints in the inconvenience of use, the network is used to make large payments. Over the last three months of 2017, transactions were processed for about $ 150 billion, almost ten times as much as a year earlier, and more than seven times as much as Western Union transfers for the quarter.However, it is important to note that the actual number of transactions has not changed – the amount of transactions is increasing.

Payment means

The average daily cost of bitcoin transactions

Of course, this is not an ideal system for paying for a cup of coffee. This is because transactions must compete to be picked up by the miners who prefer those who offer higher commissions. If anyone wants to transfer $ 1 million, he can easily afford to pay $ 20. But if someone suddenly buys a pizza, it’s simply not profitable. As a result, small transactions can be delayed – a kind of inequality that has caused reproaches that bitcoin has become another toy for the elite.

What can be done in this case? One of the most common solutions are exchanges and wallets, such as Coinbase and Xapo, which serve millions of bitcoins of customers. Coinbase last year estimated that the exchange holds about 10% of all bitcoins in circulation, other exchanges have similar balances. Users who use the services of the same provider can instantly make payments to each other. In the process, we use the provider’s own books, which, without delay and payment, transfer the data to the unit. For example, Xapo processes about 500,000 transactions a day and only 30,000 are reflected in the blockroom.

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Thus, transactions can be fast and cheap if users are willing to rely on a reliable centralized intermediary – however, this is exactly the system that bitcoin is called upon to break. Let’s not forget that at the same time providers of purses and exchanges have become the main targets for hackers.

So, how can ordinary people make p2p deals with bitcoin? The network called Lightning offers a solution: it allows users to create two-way channels through which they can make small payments, with only the final amounts being displayed in the blockroom. To cope with the problem of trust, the network obliges users to make deposits that can be withdrawn in the event of a refusal to fulfill obligations.

While Lightning is still in its infancy and does not yet allow to make bitcoin versatile. Nevertheless, already now it provides the possibility of processing small payments, excluding the presence of a third party. Decisions based on this technology can also be used by decentralized exchanges.

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