Bitcoin Transaction Fees Spike 350% in a Month, as ETH Fees Decline

Bitcoin transaction fees are on the rise again. Fees shot up more than 350% during the last thirty days to Oct. 22. The most significant increase occurred in the last week, as the price of bitcoin soared on growing institutional interest.

According to data by Bitinfocharts, it cost an average of $5.75 to send a transaction over the Bitcoin blockchain on Saturday, up from around $1.8 five days earlier.

Fees peaked at $6.36 on Oct. 22, as the bitcoin (BTC) price scaled past $13,000, a 2020 high. Just over thirty days ago on Sept. 20, it cost only $1.39, on the average, to get a transaction processed via the Bitcoin network.

Over this period, transaction fees spiked 358%. A key reason for this is that investors were willing to pay a premium to Bitcoin miners to get their transactions processed ahead of others.

When prices surge, and the herd starts rushing in, in FOMO-mood, the Bitcoin blockchain often gets congested. And as miners compete to process the transactions, the cost of doing so – for investors – rockets.

By Sunday, however, bitcoin fees had dropped marginally to $3.98.

It is interesting to note that as crypto markets rallied, the cost of sending a transaction over the Bitcoin Cash blockchain rose somewhat while it fell significantly on the Ethereum network.

By far, the BCH network fees remain one of the cheapest of any blockchain in cryptosphere, even with the latest price increase. According to stats stemming from the web portal bitcoinfees.cash on Sunday, Oct. 25, the next block fee on the BCH network is $0.0014 and the current median fee is $0.0013 per bitcoin cash transaction.

It is currently 2,429.70x more expensive to transact on Bitcoin (BTC) in contrast to bitcoin cash (BCH), according to Coin Dance statistics on Sunday evening.

Average Ethereum transaction fees slumped more than 75% to $0.92 on Sunday from $3.49 on Sept. 20. This may be due to a loss of momentum in the decentralized finance (defi) economy in recent weeks. The bubbling sector has been the biggest driver of ETH gas fees since around July, when it really started to take off.