A trivial solution would be to increase the block size, but unfortunately Bitcoin Core developers refuse to do it, under the pretext that it will "increase centralization". In reality, a <i>reasonable</i> (2-4×) increase wouldn't. The amortized cost of running a full node able to support 2-4 times larger blocks is only $5 per month (<a href="http://blog.zorinaq.com/full-node-on-5-dollars/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.zorinaq.com/full-node-on-5-dollars/</a>). The block propagation delay has also largely been solved with Compact Blocks which transmit a nominal 1MB block in ~20kB. Also, at least 2 on-chain scaling technologies are being developed that would easily let us increase block sizes: UTXO commitment sets can reduce long-term blockchain storage by 50×, and Graphene reduces the size of a 1MB broadcasted block by another order of magnitude, down to ~2kB.
From the second screenshot, the transaction value was 0.003857 BTC.
From the guy's post, he transferred 0.003853 BTC. From the first screenshot, BitPay is saying he underpaid by 0.000004 BTC which would seem to be...100% correct?<p>I mean, obviously Bitcoin is a pretty silly way to buy a game on Steam, but this seems to be 100% user error.<p>...well, probably. There's some key info missing here, but this seems highly suggestive:<p>"BitPay emailed me saying I underpaid by 3 cents at the time, and said to refund me. I checked the price of bitcoin 0.003853 btc in usd is around $31 which was a lie on their part."<p>No, they said he underpaid by 0.000004 BTC. And the number he was googling is, coincidentally, 0.000004 BTC lower than the transaction value in his screenshot, so...
Editorialized title that omits the key role BitPay's policies played and blames this on Bitcoin's network fees. BitPay's policy of failing transactions if they don't confirm within 15 minutes has always been broken, because even if the transaction gets into the next block there's a reasonable chance (about 25%, I think) that no block will be mined within the next 15 minutes.
I'm admittedly green when it comes to the day-to-day workings of Bitcoin but put some money into it on Coinbase a few weeks ago.<p>I decided to see how easy it was to use for transactions, so I bought $2 of credit with an online service. But the payment service this other company used charged a $6 fee of some kind, and there was also a $8 'transaction fee' for the Bitcoin itself, meaning it cost around $16 to get my $2 of credit :-D I decided I'd probably stick with it as an investment instead of a currency..
I have paid ~180$ dollars of fee couple of days ago while sending around 600 dollars. Tx was around 6 KB though. I was using wrong client for transaction (I had newest bitcoind-qt with fee set manually and older client with automatic fees) and fee was automatically set to that amount.
Also like I said removal of net neutrality regulations means ISPs esp big ones can kill Bitcoin by blocking the default port used by the Bitcoin client and ISPs can more than just blocking a certain port. ISPs can identify and block all P2P traffic (anything that is not being sent or received to/from an approved central service) and do it in the name of protecting MPAA member revenue or whatever blanket execuse like killing off encrypted p2p communication like Signal et al)