The ongoing trading frenzy of memecoins like Pepe has triggered an unwanted consequence for Bitcoin (BTC) raising its transaction costs to their highest point in two years. On May 3, the total amount of fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain reached $3.5 million, jumping about 400% from late April. Bitcoins BRC-20 token standard has become the latest trend in the crypto ecosystem amid the rise of memecoins. A total of 8,500 different tokens have been minted using the BRC-20 standard. Gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain have also recently been skyrocketing to new multi-month highs.
Amid an ongoing debate over miner costs and susceptibility to Bitcoin price dips, new figures suggest that miners are firmly in the black in the long term. Calculations from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode suggest that since 2010, fees and block reward subsidies have netted miners billions. Miners total all-time income is almost 40% higher than their estimated costs, coming in at $50.2 billion versus $36.6 billion, respectively.