And thanks to new restrictions on Bitcoin mining in China, fewer computers are competing for blocks.
In brief
The average Bitcoin transaction fee is now 0.0002 BTC, or around $7.
That’s the lowest it’s been since January 1, according to data from BitInfoCharts.
Average Bitcoin transaction fees have sunk to lows of $7, according to data from blockchain analytics site BitInfoCharts. Fees haven’t been this low since January. The Bitcoin blockchain charges a fee for each transaction and distributes the proceeds to miners.Fees rise when demand for processing transactions outstrips the supply of miners. On April 21, average fees hit a record high of $62.8 per transaction.
Conversely, fees fall when mining supply outstrips demand. The drop in fees suggests Bitcoiners aren’t as interested in placing transactions as they were just over a month ago.That could have something to do with the recent crash in the crypto markets, which sent the price of Bitcoin down from $60,000 to $36,000 in just a few weeks.
Bitcoin miners are also not as interested in processing transactions. Mining difficulty—the amount of computing power required to validate Bitcoin transactions—fell by 16% on Sunday—the sharpest decline in over a year. Bitcoin mining becomes easier when the overall hash power backing the blockchain decreases.
