Got some Satoshi to send or Bitcoin (BTC) wallets to reorganize? It’s increasingly cheap to do so. According to an Arcane Research report, Bitcoin “transaction fees have stayed low since July 2021, showing no signs of rising.”
Bitcoin mean tx fees remaining very low despite small hike last week. Source: Arcane Research
There was, however, a small bump in transaction fees last week. Shown as a small jump at the tail end of the graph, clustering of the mempool pushed “up the average transaction fees per day over the past seven days to $691,000, a doubling since last Tuesday.”
Nonetheless, the doubling in transaction fees is insignificant: transaction fees remained in a low range. Miners churned through the mempool transactions over a two-day period, securing the network while keeping transacting affordable.
Eric Yakes, author of the Bitcoin book the 7th Property told Cointelegraph that there were three main reasons why transaction costs are so low: Segwit adoption, hash rate redistribution, and Bitcoin layer 2 infrastructure such as the near-instant payment lightning network kicking in.
“June 2021 saw a large increase in the % of Segwit transactions on-chain increasing from ~50% to ~70% which has steadily risen to above 80%, which fundamentally should be increasing transaction throughput for the network.”
Cointelegraph reported on the growing number of exchanges using Segwit addresses over the course of 2021.
In July 2021, Yakes explains that “network difficulty bottomed and has since risen to ATHs,” following the China ban and redistribution of hash rate. Combined with the rise in the number of Segwit transactions:
“This rebound in hash rate has found blocks more rapidly than the difficulty adjustment can keep up with and that has created a more rapid clearing of transactions than otherwise, thus lowering the price of transactions.”
However, Yakes mentions that transaction fees “should not be expected to remain persistent. Eventually, and this is all contingent upon price, hash rate, and difficulty will find their equilibrium, making the fee market less competitive and increasing…
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