If you did not send bitcoins because Bitcoin (BTC) fees where too high, now it is time to make that transaction. Bitcoin transaction fees reached the cheapest point in nearly 12 months. In this way, some bitcoin alternatives do not seem as attractive as before.
BITCOIN LOW FEES
According to the twitter account, Bitcoin Core Fee, BTC transaction fees have reached a new record low on March the 25th. The price was 1 satoshi per byte in order for the transaction to be accepted into the next block. Furthermore, the transaction times have been reduced and take less than 10 minutes to be processed.
According to bitinfocharts, the average Bitcoin transaction fee has reached new low levels not seen since almost one year ago. When Bitcoin reached $20,000 dollars during December 2017, the average Bitcoin fee was $55 dollars per transaction.
One of the various reasons that can explain this fee reduction on Bitcoin’s network is the fact that important entities are using practices like transaction batching to reduce fees.
Another important development that has been reducing bitcoin fees is Segregated Witness (Segwit). This scaling solution applied to Bitcoin and adopted in August 2017, has been designed to optimize block sizes and reduce transaction fees and times. Coinbase and Bitstamp are just some of the cryptocurrency platforms that have added support for these scaling solution.
As of right now, 31% of the transactions are processed using SegWit addresses. The rate is steadily increasing and it could help the network to reduce transaction fees.
At the moment, the Bitcoin community is waiting for the off chain scaling solution known as Lightning Network. The proposed solution would allow the Bitcoin network to scale and allow many more transactions (millions) to be processed per second.
With this implementation, fees would be near to zero (in theory), and transactions would be processed almost instantly. In this way, more merchants, retail shops, and other commerce stores would start to use the famous cryptocurrency as a means of payment. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the low fees that the network is offering right now.
Author:
CARLOS TERENZI
International Relations and Cryptocurrencies.
https://www.cryptocurrencyguide.org/bitcoin-transaction-fees-reach-a-record-low/