Bitcoin Fees Continue to Surge Thanks to Ordinal Mania

By Mat Di Salvo

Bitcoin fees have continued to soar, with the average cost to send the cryptocurrency now at the highest in over two and a half years. 

Bitinfocharts data shows that it today costs on average $37.58 to make a transaction. The last time it was that high was back in April 2021. Fees have been exploding since May this year ever since interest in Ordinals took off. At one point they reached $31.14 per transaction. 

Ordinals—Bitcoin’s answer to non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—are simply assets, such as pictures or art, that can be stored on Bitcoin’s blockchain. 

Investor interest in Ordinals means that more are being minted and taking up blockspace that might have otherwise been used to process image-less BTC transactions. Since miners, who confirm transactions, have more work to do, they can—and are—charging more for people who want to send or receive BTC. 

Case in point: Decrypt tried to make a transaction using a mobile wallet, but the fee would’ve been 42% of the amount of BTC selected to send.

The Ordinals craze has divided the Bitcoin community, though. Some have said that the blockchain should be prioritized for those who want to do what Bitcoin was initially created for: Making peer-to-peer payments online. 

Bitcoin fees touched their highest back in April 2021 when the average price to make a transaction stood at $62.77. 

At that time, Bitcoin was in the midst of a bull run so more people were using the blockchain to move around the asset. The price of the biggest digital coin by market cap back then stood at $57,000.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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