Bitcoin Fees Near Yearly Low as BTC Price Taps $70,000

The cost of sending Bitcoin is now the cheapest it’s been in nearly one year—just as the price of the biggest cryptocurrency nears its all-time high. 

Data from Bitinfocharts shows that the average transaction cost on the Bitcoin blockchain stands at $0.73. That’s the lowest fee cost registered since August 2023, when it briefly touched 64 cents. 

When Decrypt tried to send $10,000 in Bitcoin, the suggested transaction fee was just $0.40—about one hundred times cheaper than sending a wire transfer from the U.S. to Europe via Wise.com, for example. 

The drop in transaction fees comes as the price of Bitcoin sits at $68,000 per coin after briefly hitting $70,000 on America’s biggest digital asset exchange, Coinbase, earlier on Monday.

Bitcoin transaction fees typically soar when the network is busy: when lots of people are using the network, Bitcoiners have to compete with others to have their transactions processed by miners. 

Miners, or operators of powerful computers that process transactions and mint new coins, can charge higher amounts to get payments sent through quickly.  

Back in April, the cost to send Bitcoin hit a record high of $128 per transaction as the network became clogged with activity following the launch of Runes, a new standard for creating tokens on the blockchain.

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high in March of nearly $74,000. It has since struggled to stay above the $70,000 level.

But now evidence points to an impending interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve. America’s central bank hiked interest rates to a two-decade high following the Covid-19 pandemic to cool inflation.

 When interest rates are high, investors tend to back off buying “risk-assets” like crypto.

Bitcoin’s latest resurgence also comes on the back of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, where he vowed to create a national “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” if elected.

Edited by Andrew Hayward