<story><title>There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions</title><url>https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>habosa</author><text>You&amp;#x27;ll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone.  It used to be &amp;quot;this is the currency of the future, down with cash&amp;#x2F;Visa!&amp;quot; but now you hear &amp;quot;Bitcoin is not a currency, it&amp;#x27;s a store of value&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency.  But as a store of value, none of those arguments apply.  It only has to compete with gold bars, which are crappy in their own ways.</text></comment>
<story><title>There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions</title><url>https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>45h34jh53k4j</author><text>This is referring to the minimum cost in fees for a transaction to get copied from the mempool to a block.
Only when a transaction is in a block is it a valid transfer of bitcoin.
Its nothing to do with trading or exchange rates or energy costs or fiat.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is working exactly the same as it has always, however now because of the backlog, transaction fees are very high.
In the order of Western Union + Visa Fees + Bank Wire fees all at the same time!&lt;p&gt;I made a very small transaction for a friend a week ago (~$50) and paid $2 USD in fees. That is not enough and the transaction will sit waiting until the backlog decreases, it may never clear.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is kind of broken right now.</text></comment>