Bitcoin is a global value transmission network with a capital flow of billions or even tens of billions of dollars every day. Against such a value flow, what rules can we find and follow? Today, we are going to observe the status of Bitcoin network from the perspective of onchain transaction fees. In Bitcoin network, users can encourage miners to package their trades into blocks through fee incentives. However, apart from issues concerning extension solution and alternative cryptocurrencies, the objective data about Bitcoin in the previous 3 months has demonstrated a completely different story. The trading volume of Bitcoin, block size and transaction fees in the first quarter of 2019 have all reached an all-time high, indicating that high congestion emerges on Bitcoin network once again. The following chart comes from: https://chain.info/, a website focusing on recording real onchain data, producing relatively concise and visualized data graphs and enabling direct screenshots of data.
Let's take a closer look at the following graphs:
Since March 2019, transactions on Bitcoin network have been on a constant rise, up more than 40 percent compared with the previous quarter. What' more, the number of transactions on Bitcoin network reached nearly 450,000 on May 2, and the number was almost 300,000 even at its low peak. If such a growth rate persists, the Bitcoin network will remain being congested.
As time goes on, we can see that the growth speed of block size has been accelerating all the way, and the minimum of average block size in the past 6 months reached 1.05 MB, leaving little space for users who did not pay a high transaction fee.
Therefore, the most expensive part that a user in the Bitcoin community may experience right now is the transaction fee. Just a few years ago, it can be said that Bitcoin trading is "free" or "almost free" (the blue area shows the variation trend of the percentage of free Bitcoin trading among all transactions). In the past 3 months, however, the daily average fee for transaction ranges from 0.00006931 to 0.0006768 during peak hours. The average overall transaction fee has witnessed an increase of 155%, with the highest one being 55 USD per transaction. Since 2018, the total transaction fee for Bitcoin has also approached 1 billion USD.
Let's take a closer look at the following graphs:
As time goes on, we can see that the growth speed of block size has been accelerating all the way, and the minimum of average block size in the past 6 months reached 1.05 MB, leaving little space for users who did not pay a high transaction fee.
Merely from the perspective of network efficiency, Bitcoin has been experiencing such network congestion for quite a long time and users in the Bitcoin community have to pay high handling fees when the price of Bitcoin is high. Wondering whether Satoshi Nakamoto has ever expected of it or not. But now it's high time to contemplate on the real value of Bitcoin. So for those who are still buying BTC, what's your opinion? Can Bitcoin be really regarded as an asset capable of maintaining value in such a turbulent world?
