Bitcoin’s average transaction fee comes down after reaching record high amid Runes rollout

The average transaction fee on Bitcoin fell on Sunday after it surged to a record high the day prior, following the network’s fourth halving .

The average fee paid on Bitcoin per transaction dropped to $34.8 on April 21, after logging a record high of $128.45 on the day of halving, according to YCharts data . The average transaction fee measures the average fee in U.S. dollar terms when a bitcoin transaction is processed by a miner.

On April 20, the bitcoin total transaction fees amounted to $81 million, up from $7.7 million the day before, the data showed. The network logged $22.37 million in total fees on April 21.

The spike in fees coincided with the launch of Casey Rodarmor’s Runes protocol, a new token standard similar to BRC-20s. It caused transaction fees to increase as individuals hurried to create rune-based memecoins. 

Also on April 20, the halving block appeared to be from the ViaBTC mining pool , which earned a basic reward of 3.13 BTC ($199,579) and an additional 37.6256 BTC ($2,399,135) reward paid as fees of the 3,050 transactions which were included in the block, according to Blockchain.com’s tracker .

Bitcoin edged up 0.9% to trade at around $65,700 at the time of publication, according to The Block’s price page .