Bitcoin payout threshold rising again

Post by **Steve Sokolowski** » Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:25 pm

The payout threshold for bitcoins will be rising again tomorrow. The new balance required for free payouts is $40, up from the current $20.

The increase is necessary because it is now costing $6.15 to send transactions across the bitcoin network. This is something that nobody seems to be reporting upon - these fees have doubled in two weeks. Not only is it no longer possible to buy a coffee with bitcoin, it costs more than three coffees just to pay for it, and you would have to wait at the coffee shop for two hours. That's because we raised our block target to 12, from the previous 6 (it was 2 just six months ago.)

Users have the option of waiting until they earn $40 in bitcoins for a free payout, selecting "lower payout threshold," which will cost several dollars per payout, or choosing any other coin for payouts. All other coins have a payout threshold of $1 and transaction fees are negligible. Also, we highly recommend not being paid in bitcoin because even if you take free payouts, you are losing at least $1.00 to miners, because that's how much it costs to send a one-input, one-output transaction when you spend it yourself. If the cost of a one-input, one-output transaction rises to $20 by the end of the year, as I believe is likely, the value of each of your payments will be cut in half. Please plan ahead and don't lose your profit.

The bitcoin network currently has 65,000 transactions pending, and full blocks sometimes delay our transactions by 12 hours or more. The idea of cryptocurrencies was to avoid third parties from controlling money or charging fees. Please advocate the adoption of LTC and ETH as base pairs on exchanges for all coins so that the cryptocurrency economy continues to grow without much of it being siphoned off in fees that are now almost always larger than credit card companies charge.