Ethereum and Bitcoin fees up sharply

Activity on the networks Bitcoin and Ethereum is at the origin of a clear inflation of costs from transaction. In cause in particular the return of the memecoin frenzy with PEPE and the development of NFT Ordinals.

Trading volumes are quiet today. Indeed, it is not these operations that are currently generating an – episodic – surge in fees on blockchains BTC and ETH. On Wednesday, the fees were climbing to $7.24 on Bitcoin, according to data from BitInfoCharts.

Bitcoin Avg. Transaction Fee – Source : Bitinfocharts

BRC-20 and NFT Bitcoin bullish factors

This is a high since July 2021. For comparison, during 2023, fees for a transaction on the blockchain averaged between 50 cents and $4. On May 3, miners were collecting $3.5 million in fees, a nearly 500% increase over 15 days.

How to explain this sudden growth with no correlation to trading activity in the Bitcoin asset ? The cause is a new token format, the BRC-20 for ‘Bitcoin Request for Comment’, comparable in principle to Ethereum’s ERC-20.

BRC-20 is used to issue and transfer fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. The growth of Bitcoin NFTs (Ordinals) is part of the reason for the growth of activity on the network and thus theincrease in fees.

Pepe Coin shakes up Ethereum DEX

The Ethereum blockchain also records a rise in fees. The ecosystem is more accustomed to this. On average, a transaction is equivalent to a trade in May 2022, i.e. a bull market period.

And again, this is not a flight of the trading ofethers which explains the inflation of the fees. On Ethereum, the origin is to be found in the memecoins. The useless Shiba tokens are back. The last one in vogue is Pepe.

The token’s price has skyrocketed in a matter of weeks. Launched in mid-April, PEPE saw its marketcap surpass $900 million overnight before pulling back.

The digital coin’s liquidity pools referencing the famous Pepe The Frog meme on Uniswap have recently become the most active in terms of number of transactions.

Ethereum Avg. Transaction Fee – Source : Bitinfocharts

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