Bitcoin gas fees decrease by nearly 10-fold following halving.
Following the highly anticipated Bitcoin halving, the cost of sending transactions on the cryptocurrency’s network has experienced a significant decline. On-chain analytics provider Mempool.space reported that low-priority transactions were costing around $9.51, while medium-priority actions were priced at $10.07. High-priority transactions were priced at $10.44 per data seen at the time of reporting. These figures represent a significant drop compared to the fees charged immediately after the halving, where participants had to pay more than $146 for medium-priority transactions and over $170 for high-priority sends.
Despite the code change implemented by Satoshi Nakamoto to enhance scarcity and reduce token inflation, the price of BTC remained relatively unchanged, according to CoinMarketCap. Over the past week, BTC has gained approximately 2.4% and is currently trading at around $66,000.
Prior to the halving, a major concern among miners was the potential reduction in revenue due to the 50% cut in block rewards. Casey Rodarmor’s Runes protocol was introduced as a solution to this issue and was scheduled to launch concurrently with the halving in order to stimulate on-chain activity. Runes allows users to create UTXO-based fungible assets on BTC’s blockchain, providing another avenue for the development of decentralized finance (defi) on the largest blockchain network in the world.
The Runestone NFT collection, associated with Bitcoin Runes, has experienced a decline in its floor price since the halving. The average cost of a Runestone has fallen from 0.073 BTC to 0.035 BTC, indicating a decrease in interest in the concept following the initial excitement.
Overall, the Bitcoin halving event has led to a significant reduction in transaction fees, while the price of BTC has remained relatively stable. The introduction of the Runes protocol aims to address miners’ concerns and further promote the growth of defi on the Bitcoin network.
