BTC bullish rally has triggered the number of transactions, thus congesting the network. The blockchain registered up to 2,000 transactions awaiting confirmation in a single hour
It was reported that on May16th Bitcoin reached average commissions of over US $4 per transaction, twice the price of those registered last week. The increase occurred after the cryptocurrency reached its best price of the year, about US $8,000 per unit.
In the last week, the number of transactions with high commissions for confirmation has increased compared to that of last week, as shown by BitInfoCharts. At the time of writing this article, the average commissions for users with SegWit addresses were of US $3.21 per transaction, whilst those that own Bitcoin wallets with Legacy addresses have come to pay up to US $4.67, according to calculations made by Buy Bitcoin Worldwide.
This portal is also said to calculate that an average transaction with this price is confirmed every six blocks, which is equivalent to a total of 60 minutes awaiting confirmation. When consulting the Johoe’s Bitcoin Meempool portal statistical data, it can be observed that the Bitcoin network is currently congested, an event that can trigger the price of commissions.
The charts record more than 2,000 unconfirmed midday transactions for May 16th and up to 1,000 waiting to be confirmed several hours later. The average number of unconfirmed transactions for May 17th was 900, surpassing those of previous days, in which only 50 to 100 daily transactions were recorded.
Tariff per Bitcoin Transaction
The price of Bitcoin tariffs is intrinsically related to the network’s processing capacity. If it takes miners a long time to confirm transactions, there are users that are willing to pay better rates to take the priority over the processing of their transactions. In this sense, the more congested the network is, the more expensive the commissions will be.
The congestion of the Bitcoin network could be due to the rise in the number of transactions after the price of the BTC surpassed the US $6,000 per unit. Data from BitInfoCharts show that by May 15th more than 300 thousand transactions were registered throughout the day, an amount that has been maintained since the end of April. During the same month, users were beginning to perceive the increase in Bitcoin commissions, reaching almost two dollars per transaction.
The difference in the cost per transaction in the last two weeks has almost doubled as the price of the tariffs was only US $2 by May 6th. The increase in the number of transactions and the revaluation of the price of tariffs caused BTC transactions on May 18th to achieve their highest numbers this year.
After activating SegWit, the Bitcoin network had to wait for several months to register its lowest commissions since 2011, closing at US $0.58 per transaction. However, at that moment the Bitcoin market was in a bearish trend, which helped the commissions remain economic.
Bitcoin has proved to be a solid crypto asset that can recover from extreme situations, such as economic crises. Independently on the rise in the commissions for its transactions, it has always kept the demand high in the cryptocurrency market.
By Willmen Blanco
