A report published on Feb 11 stated that the Bitcoin transaction fees hit new lows falling to 2014 levels. With the BTC transactions hitting a one year high in January, reaching levels of 2017, BTC median fees have dropped. Accordingly, the median registered was $0.02 per transaction.
Transaction fees is the fee paid to transfer Bitcoin between two people and is deducted from the amount being transferred. Miners validating the transaction earn this fee as a reward.
Transaction Fees Drop to 2014 Levels
Analyst Kevin Rooke compiled data of the current transaction fees indicating that the volume of Bitcoin has doubled since October 2015. On Jan 4 he tweeted,
Bitcoin tx fees just hit their lowest level in over 3 years!
Jan 1, 2019:
Median Bitcoin tx fee = $0.02
Total transactions = 234,576Oct 13, 2015:
Median Bitcoin tx fee = $0.02
Total transactions = 134,741 pic.twitter.com/HjNUO4ktnj— Kevin Rooke (@kerooke) January 4, 2019
As per reports in January, cryptocurrency exchanges had ‘record transacting volumes’ in 2018. As such, the combined USD markets trade volume increased by 21% since 2017. Also, Bitfinex and Kraken recorded increased of 50% and 192% respectively during the same period.
However, the major cryptocurrency exchanges have experienced lower trading volumes since the beginning of 2019. The lows experienced by these exchanges have not been seen since 2017. Reportedly, Binance recorded BTC/USD trading volume reduced by more than 40% as compared to December 2018. Similarly, Coinbase’s BTC/USSD market experienced lows at around $1 billion.
An analysis was released in January showing Ethereum transaction value hitting an all time high with 115 million in December. Diar, a crypto and blockchain research firm, stated,
“In terms of transaction count on-chain the ‘super computer’ has found stability since October bobbing between 16–17 million monthly transactions.”
Increasing Transaction Volumes
Despite the disappointing performance of Bitcoin in 2018, transaction volumes have been experiencing record highs. The average daily Bitcoin trading volumes have been gradually increasing for the past six months resulting in increasing transaction rates per block. As a result, demand for newly mined blocks is decreasing further reducing mining rewards.
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