ckBTC and Chain Fusion is a killer feature for the Internet Computer, as a developer of an app that uses this feature we love it, and would like the world to use it.
However, as it stands today the withdrawal limit makes it useless for small transactions that the user wants to settle on the Bitcoin network.
The current minimum ckBTC that can be transferred to the Bitcoin network is about USD $40 at the current Bitcoin price as you can see from the screenshot I attach.
In order to compete with the Lightning Network, and bring more Bitcoin users to the Internet Computer DFINITY must do all it can to lower this value to a very small minimum. I do suggest make that the price of a cup of coffee, or lower, that would be about USD 5, not the current $ 40.
I do hope this is possible, and would appreciate any feedback on this topic. I just found out myself while doing testing for Satoshi Notes.
this is mostly due to security reasons to ensure that the Bitcoin transactions are eventually being confirmed by the Bitcoin network without any human interaction.
I agree that it would be awesome to be able to withdraw a lower amount. IMO we could also think about changing ckBTC fees for transfers and approvals. That is a totally different topic which I do not want to touch deeply at this point.
I think ckBTC is competitive as far as (ICRC) transfers are concerned.
Withdrawing bitcoin is something else entirely because it obviously requires a Bitcoin transaction, which can be costly.
As I mentioned in the post linked by @marc0olo, the withdrawal limit is kept relatively high for security reasons. Apart from that, does it make sense to withdraw 5$ worth of bitcoin if the network fee is 1$ or (much) more, i.e., the fee can be anywhere between around 20% to 100%?
First thanks for taking the time to answer, and thanks also to @marc0olo.
Prices in the Bitcoin network are far lower than the numbers you quote, to send about $9 USD equivalent in Bitcoin cost me about USD 0.65 cents.
So it is not hard to lower the ckBTC to Bitcoin minimum to a figure lower than $40, why not $10 or $20 instead? Remember that if the price of Bitcoin rises the current $40 could easily be double that number.
I am attaching the receipts of these fees, and the Mempool that shows them at the bottom of this post. I sent this to the Bitcoin address of my wallet on the IC, and yes it worked perfectly.
That is why given that ckBTC and Chain Fusion support for Bitcoin are one of the killer features of the Internet Computer I do think that it would be beneficial for DFINITY, us the developers, Bitcoiners and the whole Internet Computer community to lower this fee as much as possible, and to make the whole Bitcoin support better, and better.
