At the time of publication, there’s more than 69,000 transactions waiting in line to get confirmed by a bitcoin miner. Since bitcoin’s price rise, at certain times, transaction fees have climbed to $10 to $20 per transfer, and people who pay less than the median fee may have to wait a while. However, people might not realize that there’s a tool people can leverage called a transaction accelerator, a platform that increases the probability of getting a transaction confirmed.
Bitcoin’s Transaction Backlog and Transfer Fees Ramp Up
On Wednesday, February 17, 2021, bitcoin (BTC) touched a lifetime price high at $52,640 per unit. Since then BTC’s value has retreated a hair but the crypto asset has continued to keep steady between the $51,000 to $52,000 price range.
Meanwhile, BTC fees have also steadily increased as the cost per transfer is currently $16.62 to get a transaction into the next block according to bitcoinfees.cash data. BTC’s median fee is lower and around $10.76 per transfer according to the web portal. Stats from bitinfocharts.com shows the average bitcoin transaction today is $22.70 USD or 0.0000011 BTC per byte.
Because fees are so high and competing, the Bitcoin network’s transaction backlog (mempool) shows a great number of unconfirmed transactions are waiting to be cleared. Data from the site Blockchain.com shows the mempool transaction count or the total number of unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, is above 69,000 transactions on Thursday. Cryptocurrency transaction stats from txstreet.com shows 77,034 transactions are waiting for a BTC miner confirmation.
Unfortunately, the number of transactions pending and the ability to compete with higher fees has made people wait an awfully long time for a single confirmation. When a long time ago a small fee could get a BTC transaction cleared with 10 minutes now can take hours and even days to get a single transaction if the fee is too low.
People can leverage a tool that is available in a few select BTC wallets called replace-by-fee (RBF), but a majority of BTC wallets do not leverage the RBF protocol. However, there is a tool that people can use called a transaction accelerator which allows people to pay a fee and push a transaction faster.
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Speed Up a Bitcoin Transaction With Bitcoin Cash-Powered Transaction Accelerators
The web portals btc.com and viabtc.com, both offer transaction accelerators, and users can even pay in bitcoin cash (BCH) to speed up a transfer. The web portal pushtx.btc.com says that leading bitcoin mining pools cooperate to provide the transaction accelerator service.
“Using our transaction accelerator can increase the probability of confirming a transaction within 1 hour to 75%, within 4 hours to 98%,” the website notes. The person who wants to speed up a transaction simply adds the transaction hash and the program will give an estimated fee. Btc.com, which just got acquired by a Chinese lottery firm, is the Bitcoin network’s third-largest mining pool today.
Viabtc is also a mining operation that also offers users a number of other cryptocurrency services. The company’s mining pool is the sixth-largest mining pool pointing hashrate at the Bitcoin network on February 18. Viabtc also provides a transaction (TX) accelerator service and one is free and the other service can be paid for with bitcoin cash (BCH) to speed up a transfer.
“When there’s a pending transaction caused by a crowded BTC network or low miner fees,” Viabtc’s transaction accelerator website explains. “You can use TX Accelerator to accelerate the confirmation of a BTC transaction.”
People may need a tool like a transaction accelerator because they would like their transactions confirmed quickly. The problem with slow settlements and confirmation times is because prices fluctuate, a person could lose money trying to send BTC to an exchange to make a timely trade. Transaction accelerators are simply a band-aid to an ongoing problem, but they are definitely better than nothing at all and worth knowing about.
Moreover, because btc.com’s and viabtc.com’s transaction accelerator users can leverage bitcoin cash (BCH), they can utilize the BCH network’s low transfer fees. Data from bitinfocharts.com, bitcoinfees.cash, and txstreet.com indicate that the current fee to get into the next BCH block is only $0.0035 or a third of a penny.
What do you think about btc.com’s and viabtc.com’s transaction accelerators? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.