The average transaction fee on the Bitcoin network has jumped to a 10-month high ahead of the halving, as demand for space on the Network is seemingly increasing.
According to data from BitInfoCharts, the average transaction fees on the Bitcoin network surged to a high of $2.94 on April 30, a level that hasn’t been seen since July 2019. One day before the rise, the fees were at $1.28, and the day before they were at $0.66.
In January of this year, the average transaction fee was of $0.29, according to data from the same source.
Source: BitInfoCharts
While the average transaction fee has since dropped below the $2 mark to $1.8, it’s worth pointing out that throughout April fees on the flagship cryptocurrency’s network kept on rising. The fees are notably rising ahead of bitcoin’s third halving event, which will see block rewards drop from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block.
Data from Blockchain.com shows that the network’s mempool had a large backlog of unconfirmed transactions at the time the fees rose. Notably, the rise wasn’t related to a rise in the number of BTC transactions being made per day.
CryptoCompare data shows, in fact that the number of confirmed bitcoin transactions per day dropped significantly earlier this year during the so-called ‘Black Thursday’ after the price of BTC plummeted 40% in little over 24 hours, and is only now recovering.
Source: CryptoCompare
Bitcoin’s average transaction fees hit an all-time high of $54 in December 2017, when the cryptocurrency’s price hit its all-time high near the $20,000 mark. Since then, several features have been implemented to better use the 1 MB. These include Segregated Witness (SegWit) and transaction batching.
Featured image via Unsplash.
