For well over the past six months, every time I have heard screams and shouts and gnashing of teeth about people not getting their transactions confirmed for hours, days, ever, I have done my own little experiment.

I have sent a transaction to myself using the recommended fee from my favorite Android wallet app 'Mycelium'.

Now, I am not debating that fees were getting really high. They absolutely were. However, what I'm saying is that if I paid the recommended fee (which at worst case was as high as $1.50, but was usually more about 30 cents), every single time my transaction was confirmed in the next block or two. Not hours. Not days. Not never. Always confirmed.

In addition to these 'experiment' transactions, I also did dozens of personal regular transactions which involved either buying a bunch of VR games on Steam over Christmas or transferring funds to and from exchanges. Once again, every single transaction confirmed in the next block.

So, today, just for the heck of it, I sent myself a transaction and paid only a 5 cent fee. Just to see what would happen.

Here is the transaction:

https://blockchain.info/tx/b8790b64580fdf90f106cd3f0dea9e9b5f4be9a2a0b92b8d7281c373f8d42ff4

• Received time: 17:24:50
• Confirmed: 17:43:22

19 minutes, or two blocks later.

Now, I'm not debating that fees are too damned high. I'm not debating that there has been a backlog. And, I'm not debating that if you don't pay a high enough fee when there is a huge mempool backlog, your transaction may get stuck.

What I am debating, however, is the notion that the network itself is in some fundamentally a broken state. In my experience, I have never had difficulty getting a transaction confirmed.

Just how much FUD is there about this whole 'the network is broken crap'?

Especially when I can get a 5 cent transaction confirmed in two blocks just today.