Bitcoin [BTC] transaction fees rise significantly despite fall in prices

[Pegasus]

Bitcoin [BTC], after crossing the $8,000 mark on May 16, 2019, fell to $7,295, losing 9.64% in value over the last 24 hours, at press time. Although the bears were ravaging the crypto-market, the daily average transaction fee for Bitcoin shot up to $4.02 per transaction on May 17, 2019. This was the first time since February 2018 that the per block transaction fee had touched $4.

A tweet by LongHash stated that the per block transaction fee was recorded to be $4.13. The three-block fee was $3.81 per transaction and the six-block fee was $3.58 per transaction.

https://twitter.com/longhashdata/status/1129222209858359297

The reason for this increase in transaction fees was attributed to BTC’s bullish rally and a number of unconfirmed transactions. As Bitcoin [BTC] crossed the $8,000-mark, the number of unconfirmed transactions also piled up. The number of unconfirmed transactions reached 55,243 and the mempool size was 39,576,560 bytes, at press time.

Another reason why the transaction fee spiked was the recent dip in Bitcoin prices. A massive sell order pulled the price of Bitcoin to a low of $6,192 on BitStamp exchange. This also resulted in the liquidation of longs on BitMEX, worth approximately $209 million.

A similar congestion issue was seen during the Bitcoin frenzy of 2017, when the transaction fee was at an all-time-high of $37.49 per transaction.

Source