Transaction fees rise with the price of bitcoin. Over the past month, the average cost of sending BTC has increased by 525%.
According to Bitinfocharts, the average BTC transaction fee today is $ 5.8. Transaction fees have skyrocketed in the last few days, which coincides with bitcoin breaking the $ 11,000 mark. Payments to miners for sending transactions have doubled in just the last three days.
High fees also correlate with an increase in the queue of unconfirmed BTC transactions (mempool). Mempool size peaked on July 24 when 80MB transactions were pending confirmation. When the queue of unconfirmed transactions grows, then users who want to send BTC faster, increase the commission size so that miners confirm the transaction faster.
The last time the increase in BTC transaction fees was recorded was in May after the miners' reward was halved. Then the average commission rate reached a two-year high of $ 6.6. During the same period, the largest queue size for unconfirmed BTC transactions was recorded in two years. However, a few days later, fees on the Bitcoin network fell by half as the transaction pool was gradually unloaded.
Ethereum transaction fees continue to rise as well. According to Etherscan, on July 18, the network used 74.033 billion of gas, which was a record high in gas, but not in dollar terms. On July 22, the network again approached the record level with 74.015 billion gas, equivalent to $ 1.4 million.