The average Bitcoin transaction fee rose to USD 3.40. It could take those transactions with very low fees several days to be confirmed.
In recent days, the Bitcoin network has shown an unusual state of congestion. This situation has increased the average payment fee to levels not seen for a whole year. Users of the main cryptocurrency in the market do not usually welcome these kinds of things.
International Workers’ Day has kept the Bitcoin mining network busy, due to the large number of pending transactions to be confirmed. In other words, the average Bitcoin transaction fee rose to USD 3.40. The community had not experienced these levels of average fees for a whole year.
All this means that, during the congestion, users should probably increase the number of satoshis that they paid per transaction. Anyway, Bitcoin miners, who are responsible for the confirmations on the network, may initially choose those transactions that pay the most.
According to data from Bitcoin.com, there were up to 80,000 on-hold transactions on April 30th. Even though this figure has decreased by half, it is still high.
It is important to remember that the Bitcoin network has a memory to store those transactions that have not been confirmed.
In a few words, the Bitcoin mempool reached 77.9 MB on April 30th, while it remained at 66 MB on average. The last time that the mempool reached that state of congestion was December 2019.
The problem with having a large number of on-hold transactions is the time that it would take to empty the memory. Since miners can only eliminate1 MB on an average per block from the mempool added to the network, the rest will have to wait longer.
Some websites recommend estimated times ranging from 25 to 600 minutes for confirmations with low fees. If users’ commissions are very low, they should not think about it right now.
Some Reasons for Bitcoin Congestion
This could be a symptom of what is happening in the ecosystem. Some people are talking about a rebound in Bitcoin purchases before the halving. Many people think that the reduction of miners’ rewards by half will have a positive impact on the price of Bitcoin.
Another possible cause could be the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. In the last few days, there have been news reports about the growing use of Bitcoin as a trading currency in purchases through the network. Sometimes, it happens due to the mere fact that many people might be spending some of their savings.
There have been discussions on the possibility that many investors had disposed of their Bitcoin funds in Bitcoin when fear gripped the markets last March. A rebound in price usually has the opposite effect, since many people buy Bitcoin when they think that its price will increase. That situation could have taken place in December 2019 or December 2017, when the price of the main cryptocurrency reached levels never seen before.
By Alexander Salazar
