It could be due to the increased use of services that favor high-fee transactions. However, users can avoid paying excessive amounts.
Bitcoin’s congestion has increased considerably in recent days. The levels are close to, but not higher than, those in days close to the halving of May 11th, when there was a reduction of miners’ rewards by half. This has been the third-highest period of congestion so far this year.
On July 21st, there were more than 83 thousand transactions in the Bitcoin mempool. Within the blockchain, this is the temporary memory that stores the transactions pending confirmation.
Fee Average Also Increases
As a consequence of this, there is also an increase in the number of fees for Bitcoin transactions. This is because miners first choose those that pay a higher fee. Besides, those in a hurry to confirm their transactions decide to pay more, thus creating a snowball effect.
The fee average of last July 21st was USD 3.55. This implies a 438% increase since the recent low on July 12th, when the fee average was USD 0.81.
A possible reason for the latter is the increased use of services such as LocalCryptos, which calculate very high fees by default.
A German developer, identified by the pseudonym “0Xb10C”, states that users send one-third of the amount of Bitcoin from the online wallet of the Company Blockchain.com.
0Xb10C shows that it is possible to reach these data, which the company considered valid, basing on common fingerprints that the transactions sent from that wallet leave. Among them, he mentions:
1. Miners only use P2PKH output addresses (those that start with 1, also known as “inherited”).
2. They do not use SegWit or multi-signatures.
3. With each transaction, the system creates one or two outputs.
4. All these outputs follow the BIP-69 protocol.
In general, Blockchain.com users follow the fee recommendations that the platform offers. A large number of them use exactly the fees that this wallet suggests to send Bitcoin. At the time of writing this article, users sent 89 sat/vbite (the “Regular” option) and 119 sat/vbite (the “Priority” option).
Debates, Complaints, and Tips
As usual, some altcoin promoters used these figures to criticize Bitcoin. At the same time, they praised their cult cryptocurrency, leading to numerous debates.
For example, one user claimed that “Bitcoin and Ethereum are not worth it.” Instead, he proposed the cryptocurrency Digibyte, of which he highlighted the fact that it has instant transactions, 15-second block times, infinite scalability, minimal fees, and decentralized products that work on its blockchain.
Another person expressed his displeasure, saying that he had to wait 5 and a half hours for the confirmation of a transaction. “Bitcoin is like gold: it is valuable but not always easy to send,” was one of the responses that he received.
To conclude, users should understand that, despite the high average value of Bitcoin fees, they can avoid paying excessive amounts. Among other steps, they should consider checking the current volume of operations on the Bitcoin network and selecting wallets with the flexibility to customize network fees.
By Willmen Blanco
