Bitcoin Network Transaction Fees Drop After Peak Following Halving

Average decreased Bitcoin transaction fees Sunday after reaching a record level the day before, following the network's fourth halving.

The average fee paid per Bitcoin transaction fell to $34.8 on April 21, after hitting an all-time high of $128.45 on the halving day, according to For YCharts data. Average transaction fees measure the average fee in US dollars when a Bitcoin transaction is processed by a miner.

On April 20, Bitcoin transaction fees stood at $81 million, up from $7.7 million the day before, according to the data. The network recorded $22.37 million in total fees on April 21.

The block halving, which took place on the same day, was awarded to the ViaBTC mining pool, which received a base reward of 3.13 BTC ($199,579) and an additional reward of 37.6256 BTC ($2,399 $135) paid in fees on 3,050 transactions included in the halving. . The block, according to the Blockchain.com tracker.

Rune Protocol and Halving Process

The fee increase coincided with the launch of the Casey Rodarmor-designed Runes protocol, a new token standard similar to BRC-20. This led to an increase in transaction fees as people rushed to create meme coins based on the runes.

And this shows data On the Mempool.space chain, the cost of medium priority transactions is now $8.48 while the cost of high priority transactions is $9.32.

Immediately after the halving, these fees increased to over $146 for a medium priority transaction and $170 for a high priority transaction.

The Hashprice Index, a measure created by Luxor to determine how much a miner can expect to earn with a given hash rate, also fell from $182.98 per hash/day to $81, a level lower than that of 'before the halving.

While Bitcoin miners expected the halving to significantly reduce their revenue, the introduction of Casey Rudramore's Runes protocol - designed to create fungible tokens on Bitcoin - which was triggered during the halving , was supposed to be the antidote to this, given the level of activity it will create on the channel.

But the lowest price of the Runestone NFT block has fallen by almost 50% in the last 24 hours with a minimum price of around 0.037 BTC, according to Magic Eden. Ordinal pools such as Bitcoin Pullets and NodeMonkes are up 11% and 8%, respectively, according to CoinGecko data.

It should be noted that these rankings also generate significant transaction fees, but do not appear to be the same source of income that many hoped Runes would be.