The cost of shipping Bitcoin is now the cheapest in nearly a year — as the price of the largest cryptocurrency approaches its all-time high.
Bitinfocharts data show that the average transaction fee on the Bitcoin blockchain is $0.73. This is the lowest fee cost recorded since August 2023, when it briefly reached 64 cents.
When Decipher tried to send $10,000 in Bitcoin, the suggested transaction fee was just $0.40 — about a hundred times cheaper than sending a wire transfer from the US to Europe via Wise.comfor example.
The drop in transaction fees occurs as Bitcoin price stands at $68,000 per coin after a brief reaching $70,000 on the largest U.S. digital asset exchange, Coinbase, on Monday.
Bitcoin transaction fees typically increase when the network is busy: when many 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, may charge higher fees to get payments sent quickly.
In April, the cost to send Bitcoin hit a record $128 per transaction as the network became congested with activity following the Rune castinga new standard for creating tokens on the blockchain.
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high in March of nearly $74,000. Since then, it has struggled to stay above the $70,000 level.
But now evidence points to an imminent interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve. The U.S. central bank raised interest rates to a two-decade high in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic to cool inflation.
When interest rates are high, investors tend to pull back on buying “risky assets” like cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin’s latest resurgence also comes after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, where he swore to create a national “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” if elected.
Edited by Andre Hayward
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