TL;DR Breakdown
- Fees for BTC, ETH miners drop to six months low
- LTC, Doge miners fee also drop
- How ETH looks to solve miners fee dilemma
The transaction fee for both Bitcoin and Ethereum have dipped to a six-month low. This is according to data from crypto analytical site, BitInfoCharts. The dip is an aftermath of a crash in prices of these cryptocurrencies.
The transaction fee for the second-largest cryptocurrency dropped to $7.31, its lowest price since January, when it was at $6.89. Bitcoin transaction fee also dropped below $7, a level it saw last in January.
These fees are paid to miners who process transactions on the blockchain. These prices go up when crypto prices are up and also drop when they drop. Fees are higher also during periods of heavy traffic and drop when the network is quiet.
Also, miners are usually not interested in processing transactions when prices are down.
Other coins also experience drop in transaction fee
Although they are at a six-month low, the current transaction fee for ETH and BTC is still higher than the fees of other cryptocoin miners.LTC charged an average fee of $0.02 yesterday. Dogecoin, a meme coin that shot up in value this year, on average charged fees of just $0.8 per transaction.
Transaction fees are one of the biggest pain points on Ethereum. They make some services prohibitively expensive to use for all but the richest of traders. Ethereum, however, is looking to reduce these fees with a network upgrade.
The first is EIP-1559, a proposal that burns ETH instead of handing it to miners. EIP-1559, set to go live on July 14, intends to reduce fee volatility, and the second is Ethereum’s upgrade to Ethereum 2.0. This introduces various features that should cut down on fees, but it will take years to implement.
Ethereum’s transaction fees last established a new all-time high of $71.21 on May 19, as there was a rush of traders racing to exit leveraged positions on-chain amid plummeting crypto prices was responsible for the hike.
