Comment Re:How is this even legal? (Score 1) 111
Then the entire model is faulty by design. The subject of the purchase should firstly be put in a locked state, transaction should be approved outside of the transaction processing chain and only thrown into the blockchain when successful with known, fixed and approved fees agreed upon before the final checkout.
The reason for all the number crunching is to prevent double spending (sending the same coin to two different accounts) without needing a central authority that keeps track of who has which coins. If you want a locking mechanism that ensures your transaction will succeed before you pay any fees, you either need a central authority that keeps track of which coins are currently locked and where they're due to be sent (which goes against what cryptocurrency is supposed to be), or the locking mechanism will be subject to the same constraints on throughput as the blockchain itself (and will probably have its own set of fees).
I haven't looked into this in any detail, but I understand that there are services that keep track of coins held by members, without using the blockchain. Moving coins between members is very quick and cheap. Periodically, the service writes transactions out to the blockchain. (I'm guessing there are economies of scale.) If this kind of service sounds familiar, that's because it is. It's basically a bank - the thing that cryptocurrencies were supposed to make irrelevant. The difference is that it's not regulated like a bank, so if it gets hacked or goes bust, or the owners decide to run off with everyone's coins, there's nothing you can do.