Bitcoin reached an all-time high this week but it's not what you think
Bitcoin price has been soaring last 8 weeks and has returned more than 150% per year so far. But, still, it has yet to reach an all-time high. However, Bitcoin reached an all-time high network fee collected this week and is comparable to Ethereum network fees.
Bitcoin transactions reached a cost of over 350 satoshis per vByte (sat/vB) recently. A vByte is a measure of block weight and transactions, with one vByte equal to four weight units and Satoshi is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin available ( 0.00000001 BTC). Each Bitcoin block can store 4 million weight units of witness data in total, with the standard SegWit-based transaction weighing just 1 weight unit. Also, Mempool data shows that the weight of Bitcoin’s mempool (where still unconfirmed transactions are stored) reached a new high of 390 megabytes (vMB) on Tuesday. That’s a sign of major blockchain congestion, meaning slower BTC settlement times and more costly transactions — which destroys the feasibility of smaller on-chain payments.
In a nutshell, this year, not only is the cost of buying Bitcoin hitting record highs but is also the cost of moving it. Blockchain data shows that the price for Bitcoin block space has touched a new all-time high in BTC terms — largely due to massive demand created by Ordinals transactions.
