Bitcoin (BTC) Fees Hit 5-Year Low, Runes Impact Fading

Following the Bitcoin (BTC) halving event, the transaction fees on the network skyrocketed as the Runes token standard that was launched alongside triggered an explosive gas fee. In a dramatic twist, CryptoQuant analyst Julio Moreno has pointed out that the transaction fees are dropping significantly.

According to his analysis, despite the massive number of Runes activity recorded on April 20, the transaction fees plummeted. As reported earlier, the impact of Runes hit a climax when a trader paid more than $500,000 in transaction fees. While this is nothing new to the Bitcoin blockchain, the higher-than-usual gas implies average users will get strained conducting transactions on the network.

According to Moreno, despite the massive embrace of Runes, Bitcoin recorded a daily average transaction fee that was lower than in late 2017 and early 2018. Despite this impressive stat, the headwind is not cleared as the network balance can be negatively tilted moving forward.

Average #Bitcoin transaction fees coming down significantly.

This helps put fees into perspective.
Even with all the Runes activity yesterday, the daily average transaction fee was lower than in late 2017, early 2018. pic.twitter.com/BEtO9aRWCJ

— Julio Moreno (@jjcmoreno) April 21, 2024

The events ongoing on the Bitcoin blockchain have a precedence. Earlier last year, the BRC-20 token standard was created, driving a lot of transactions on the network, a situation that is just abating.

Unique twists in Bitcoin transactions

The Runes standard creates good traction that places Bitcoin in a good spot with miners poised to benefit from the high traffic generated. As the Bitcoin halving has now reduced the overall transaction fees, this Runes transaction boom will help provide the needed cushion to help miners stay in business.

Unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin has no plans to enhance the blockchain to reduce transaction fees. Ethereum did that with the recently launched Dencun upgrade. This upgrade repositioned the Ethereum Layer-2 protocols, whose fees were reduced to a fraction of what they were before the upgrade.

Despite the growing number of activities on Bitcoin, enhancements to reduce fees are currently not on the radar of its core developers.

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