Bitcoin’s resurrection started a few weeks ago, with turn of the month from March to April. For months, since mid-November, the world’s most prominent crypto asset struggled to keep its value, and alternated brief periods of stability with price falls. Now, however, the scenario is completely different.
As of the moment of writing this piece, BTC’s price was growing steadily, and the planet’s most valuable cryptocurrency was exchanging hands at $5,941, up 3.34% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is about to recover from pre-collapse levels: prior to November 14th, it was hovering around the $6,000-$6,500 range.
At the time of this writing, Bitcoin’s market cap was $105,082,037,362, with a 24-hour trading volume of $18,059,891,307. The market dominance rate was holding steady at 56%.
A Stark Increase over March
According to crypto research company Diar, the average bitcoin transaction fees went up by approximately 200 % in the month of April when compared to March’s digits, per the report.
The document, which is behind a paywall, states that Bitcoin miners gained $13.7 million only in transaction fees, a significantly higher number than the $3.9 million (an increment of 71 percent) made in March. When comparing the overall mining earnings, April showed almost $300 million (precisely $291 million,) whilst March came up at 30 percent less than that.
The overall movements also went up, presumably because of the price surge. Remember that, in March 31, Bitcoin’s value was at around $4,100, whereas in April 2nd, the coin soared to the $4,700 levels. From that point on, it has been steadily going up to finally surpass $5,000 on April 6th and $5,500 on April 23rd.
On-chain Transaction Volume also Went Up
As a result, on-chain transaction volume, at least according to Diar’s report, has gone up 43% in April, resulting in full blocks. Meanwhile, SegWit (Segregated Witness) approached 40% of the total transactions per block, with each block frequently surpassing the 1 MB limit. For comparison’s sake, consider that SegWit usage rate was 26%, on average, last year.
The industry growth is also evidenced in the amount of on-chain BTC transactions, which came close to the December 2017 all-time high, leaving behind the cold-ish days of March. According to Diar, 1-2 block confirmation times were 84% lower than what peak moment showed.
Comparing the Increase to 2017
If activity reached the same level than that of December 2017 (when Bitcoin started an impressive price surge that took its value to nearly $20,000,) BTC transaction fees would go significantly up nonetheless. Concerning that idea, here is what Diar had to say:
“Diar estimates that at current SegWit usage levels, fees could go up as high as 300% should on-chain movement of Bitcoins resemble that seen in at the end of 2017,” the crypto research and investigation firm wrote this week.
On the other hand, and according to the Diar report, the transaction volumes on Ether (ETH,) on decentralized applications, registered a new all-time high.
By Andres Chavez
