Bitcoin transaction fees are nearing $6 due to the increased activity from ordinals, a variant of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. This surge in demand has been driven by active projects such as $RATS and those minted by $BEES, gpts, and HALV, according to BitInfoCharts.
On Monday, the vibrant market activity pushed Ordinals sales to reach $18.33 million over the past week, marking a 191% increase, as reported by CryptoSlam. This spike in fees and market activity mirrors the highs seen in June when secondary sales of Bitcoin Ordinals also peaked. While October's secondary sales for these Ordinals surpassed $16 million, November has already outpaced this with a total of $18.5 million so far.
Dune Analytics noted a revival in the rate of Ordinals inscriptions after an October slowdown, with total inscriptions now exceeding 38 million. CryptoSlam data further indicates an 18.4% rise in Ordinals buyers to 13,176 and an 80.9% uptick in weekly transactions to 35,786.
The increased competition is adding significant transaction numbers for Bitcoin miners to process on-chain, congesting the mempool and slowing transactions without high fees. According to GeniiData, nearly one million such "mints" have occurred in the past week. Mempool's live data shows over 120,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions, up from less than 30,000 in early October.
This congestion is proving beneficial for Bitcoin miners, whose income is rapidly increasing due to the higher transaction fees. Glassnode data reveals that on Sunday, 8.5% of miners' income came from increased fee rates—the highest daily proportion since early June.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.