The Memecoin Effect: Bitcoin Transaction Fees Skyrocket As PEPE Steals The Show

Bitcoin BTC/USD transaction fees have recently soared, reaching a two-year high with the total fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain amounting to $3.5 million on May 3, marking a 400% increase since late April.

YCharts data indicates that the average Bitcoin transaction fee peaked at $7.20.

The ongoing memecoin trading craze, featuring coins like Pepe Coin PEPE/USD, has inadvertently pushed Bitcoin's transaction costs to multi-year highs.

The current spike in Bitcoin transaction fees is mainly due to a surge in the activity involving BRC-20 transactions.

Galaxy Research data shows, on May 2, BRC-20 transactions accounted for 50% of all Bitcoin transactions.

The BRC-20 token standard, an experimental standard inspired by Ethereum's ERC-20, enables users to issue and transfer fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Transaction fees on the #Bitcoin network yesterday reached their highest point in 2 years, both by mean sats/vbyte per transaction in daily cumulative fees paid. Half of all transactions yesterday related to BRC-20 transactions. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/J8geOOxwlM

— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) May 3, 2023

Introduced in March 2023 by a pseudonymous on-chain analyst named Domo, BRC-20 has quickly become a significant trend in the crypto industry, particularly amid the rapid growth of the PEPE memecoin.

Over the past week, the token's value has surged more than 600%, reaching an all-time high of $0.00000216 on May 5.

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The Bitcoin blockchain isn't the only one affected by the memecoin frenzy.

Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain gas fees have also recently skyrocketed to new multi-month highs.

On May 2, ETH transaction fees reached an aggregate amount of over $19 million, a level not seen since May 2022, according to Crypto Fees.

Ethereum remains the most expensive network in terms of transaction fees as of this writing.

Nevertheless, the current spike in Bitcoin transaction fees is still far from the all-time high levels.

The highest Bitcoin transaction fees occurred in April 2021, when the average Bitcoin transaction cost nearly hit $70 due to a significant decline in the Bitcoin network hash rate.

Transaction fees reached their previous peak in 2017, surging above $60.

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