The number of transactions waiting to be confirmed in the Bitcoin mempool temporarily surpassed 125,000 today. This equates to roughly 149 megabytes of data waiting to be added to the blockchain. This is enough to fill at least 107 pending blocks.
Although the increasingly crowded mempool is smaller than the spike, which recorded a transaction backlog of more than 143,000 on December 17, 2020, it encourages critics of Bitcoin and provides forks discussion points about the speed and cost of cryptocurrency transactions.
Over the past 3 months, the average daily bitcoin transaction fee has fluctuated between $ 2.18 and $ 17.20. makes buying a coffee (or any other consumer purchase) with Bitcoin very expensive ~
BitInfoCharts https://t.co/8bT5yl1Ioo
– DA Nygaard (@Danofhope) February 9, 2021
The mempool is commonly referred to as the “waiting area” for incoming transactions before they are confirmed, and is independently checked by each node connected to the network.
The last time the mempool was cleared to zero was on January 1st of this year. Mempool shares had become rare even before that.
Sorry @jonfortt @carlquintanilla, but where is the follow-up question to “HOW can Bitcoin be used for transactions when the current transaction confirmation cost is $ 16 each?”
So if you are buying no more than $ 800, it will be cheaper to use a credit card with a 2% charge. Pic.twitter.com/I927LIb8C8
– LiveMarketChat (@LiveMarketChat) February 9, 2021
According to the Bitcoin network stats trackers on mempool.observer, a charge of at least 93 sat / byte is currently recommended to ensure that a transaction is included in the upcoming block. With a reference price of USD 46,280 for BTC and an average size of 224 bytes per transaction, this results in a transaction fee of USD 9.63.
According to a similar Twitter-based service that monitors charges on the Bitcoin network, the recommended charge for recording the next block rose to 141.9 sat / byte today.
If You Learn The Hard Way, Lowballing Sat / Byte Charges. I sent a large transaction RIGHT before mempool exploded. Say some prayers for my MIA satoshis that they will find their way home one day. #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Q0fmWwWjVr
– “BTC Bap” (@BTCBap) February 9, 2021
On February 8th, a total of 84.72 BTC in transaction fees were charged, representing mining sales of $ 2.05 million. Transaction fees had remained reasonably reasonable for most of November and December 2020, even after a buoyant bull market pushed prices above previous all-time highs.
Bitcoin’s second tier scaling solution, the Lightning Network, is also seeing record highs in the number of participating nodes and the dollar value of accumulated BTC capacity across all channels.
On February 2nd, Mega Exchange OKEx announced plans to incorporate Lightning into their exchange processes to save money on transaction fees while relieving the mempool of transaction demand.
