Bitcoin Transaction Fees Skyrocket to 2-year High!

You may want to wait for Bitcoin transaction fees to settle down and the outstanding pool of unconfirmed transactions to be processed before making any Bitcoin transactions over the next few days.

Some users are reporting Bitcoin fees as high as $20 per transaction - prices we haven't seen for more than two years.

Increased Demand for Blockspace.

The cause for the increase in Bitcoin transaction fees is attributed to an increase in demand for block space - driven by the popularity of the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 tokens.

Typical Bitcoin transaction fees have been around $1.20, but over the last few days, many users are reporting +$20 transaction fees and a lot more for higher-priority transactions.

+390,000 Unconfirmed Bitcoin Transactions

The number of unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin network has skyrocketed from 134,000 to over 390,000, which has caused a bottleneck in the mempool.

The surge in unconfirmed transactions has resulted in a +343% increase in transaction fees, as Bitcoin miners struggle to keep up with the demand, leaving many users frustrated and unable to complete their transactions in a timely manner - including myself. I have had a Bitcoin transaction pending for more than 24 hours with zero confirmations.

Binance Paused Bitcoin Withdrawals

This network congestion has also caused issues with various crypto exchanges, including Binance which has halted Bitcoin withdrawals a couple of times over the weekend.

Is Bitcoin Under Attack?

The increasingly clogged mempool has resulted in a lot of discussion on social media, with some speculating the rise in non-financial transactions is a DDoS attack, while the reason is most likely the block size simply isn't large enough to meet the increasing demand.