February 10, 2021 | AtoZ Markets – The number of transactions waiting in Bitcoin's mempool has skyrocketed to 125,000 as of today. This means that there is about 149 megabytes of data waiting to be added to a block on the blockchain. At least 107 blocks are needed to fill this.
Congested Mempool Emboldens Bitcoin’s Critics
Although smaller, when compared with the spike of 143,000+ transaction recorded on December 17, 2020, the increasingly congested mempool is emboldening Bitcoin’s critics while providing forks with talking points about the speed and cost of cryptocurrency transactions.
Over past 3 months, the daily average Bitcoin transaction fee has varied between $2.18 and $17.20; makes buying a coffee (or any other consumer purchase) with Bitcoin very expensive ~
— D.A. Nygaard (@Danofhope) February 9, 2021
BitInfoCharts https://t.co/8bT5yl1Ioo
The mempool is usually the "waiting area" before the transaction is confirmed and will be verified individually by each node connected to the network.
The last time mempool was cleared to zero was January 1 of this year. Even before that, it was very rare for mempool to be cleared to zero.
Sorry @jonfortt @carlquintanilla but where is the followup question about "HOW can Bitcoin be used for Transactions when the current transaction confirmation cost is $16 each"
— LiveMarketChat (@LiveMarketChat) February 9, 2021
So unless you are purchasing something more than $800.....its cheaper to use a credit card at 2% fee pic.twitter.com/I927LIb8C8
According to Bitcoin statistics site mempool.observer, a fee of at least 93sat/byte is recommended for the transaction to be included in the next block. Assuming a BTC price of $46,280 and a median transaction size of 224 bytes, the fee will be $9.63.
A Twitter account that tracks Bitcoin network fees estimates that the fee to be included in the next block is 141.9 sat/byte.
When you learn the hard way lowballing sat/byte fees. I sent a large transaction RIGHT before mempool exploded. Say some prayers for my MIA satoshis that they find their way home safely some day.. #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Q0fmWwWjVr
— ☣️BTC Bap☣️ (@BTCBap) February 9, 2021
On February 8, a total of 84.72 BTC was collected as a transaction fee. Transaction fees remained fairly reasonable between November and December 2020, even as they continued to hit highs in the bull market.
Meanwhile, Lightning Network, Bitcoin's second layer solution, is breaking new records such as the number of nodes.
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