Bitcoin Transaction Fees Hit Record High on Halving Day

The average transaction fee in the Bitcoin network fell to $34.86 after reaching a record high of $128.45 on the day of the halving, April 20.

The rise in transaction fees began ahead of the block reward reduction. Experts attributed the trend to user activity in anticipation of the launch of the Runes protocol, timed to coincide with the event.

Bitcoin developer and Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor introduced the solution in September 2023. The protocol allows for the issuance of fungible tokens on the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency. Unlike BRC-20, it uses the UTXO model, preventing network congestion.

As noted by well-known Ordinals enthusiast Leonidas, on April 20, Runes topped the trends on X, garnering 2.14 million posts.

Runes are trending on X with 2.14M posts

Probably nothing pic.twitter.com/3TprE7QoWF

— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) April 20, 2024

At the time of writing, users had issued 6882 tokens on the protocol, conducting 974,293 transactions (Rune Alpha).

According to The Block, miners’ revenue from fees on the day of the halving reached $17.66 million (7DMA)—almost 25% of the total revenue of $72.35 million.

For the inclusion of 3050 transactions in block #840,000, where the reward was reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, users paid fees amounting to $2.4 million.

According to mempool.space, from around block #840,200, fee sizes returned closer to typical average values. Over the past day, the figure decreased by nearly 73%.

Earlier, Fineqia International analyst Matteo Greco expressed the opinion that the halving would lead to a demand shock and strengthen the mining sector.