Since the recent Bitcoin halving event, the blockchain has seen a significant increase in transaction fees, with 63 blocks mined and a dramatic surge in the fee rate. This surge escalated the cost per transaction from $18 to over $245 as of 9:00 p.m. EDT on Friday. By Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. EDT, however, the fees had decreased to $34 per transaction.
Bitcoin Transaction Fees Surge
In the aftermath of the halving, Bitcoin transaction fees, or the costs associated with conducting transactions on the blockchain, saw a sharp rise. This increase was largely fueled by increased activity in the Runes protocol minting and strategic moves to front-run for newly minted runes. Notably, block 840,000, mined by the Viabtc pool, not only produced 3.125 newly minted BTC but also accumulated 37.625 BTC in transaction fees from 3,050 transactions processed within the block.
Over the next 12 blocks, including the one processed by Viabtc during the halving, Bitcoin miners collected a substantial 257.043 BTC, valued at approximately $16.35 million. Following this, within 60 blocks, miners had amassed over 860 BTC, exceeding $54 million in value. At block height 840,005, the Antpool mining pool had collected 32.946 BTC in fees alone, marking a record for fees collected within such a span, surpassing any previous 24-hour period.
By Saturday morning, fees had reduced to 375 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB) or $35 per transaction. After the halving, Bitcoin’s hashprice, which is the estimated value of hashing power per day per petahash per second (PH/s), dipped below $65 per PH/s. However, it surged to about $144 per PH/s by 6 a.m. EDT following the fee spike, higher than the $104 per PH/s hashprice prior to the halving.
Furthermore, Bitcoin’s total network hashrate remained consistently above 650 exahash per second (EH/s). Block intervals slightly undercut the standard 10-minute average, and Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is expected to increase by at least 2% in the next four days. Over the last day, 145 blocks were mined, with Foundry leading by mining 43 blocks, followed by Antpool with 33, F2pool with 20, and Viabtc contributing 16, including the noteworthy block 840,000.
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