The renewed interest in Bitcoin has also had a now classic negative fallout: the increase in fees.
It should be remembered that the cost of the fees on transactions in BTC does not depend on the amount of the transactions, but on the level of network congestion.
Until now, such a level of congestion had remained very low, while yesterday there was a peak.
The fees on Bitcoin
Every transaction in BTC that needs to be recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain requires the payment of a fee, that is, a commission.
These fees are paid to miners so that they choose which transactions to include in the blocks.
It is important to highlight that generally a block is mined and added to the Bitcoin blockchain approximately every 10 minutes, and the size of these blocks is very limited, so much so that they rarely manage to host more than 4,000 transactions each.
For example, at this moment there are more than 24,000 transactions waiting to be confirmed, and as long as they are not picked by miners and included in a valid block, they will not be confirmed.
The recent record
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Starting from December 2024 the number of transactions recorded daily on the Bitcoin blockchain did not exceed 600,000 units, with minimum peaks in March below 300,000 units. In fact, in the last ten days, the number of daily transactions turned out to be below this latter figure three times.
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Yesterday, however, the single largest daily peak of 2025 occurred, with almost 630,000 transactions recorded in one day.
This is a true and proper sudden surge, most likely linked to the local peak of the BTC price, which briefly touched above $107,000.
In these cases, in fact, many rush to move BTC to exchanges to sell them and thus take profit, causing the number of transactions to suddenly spike.
To tell the truth, the peak of the average daily fees did not occur yesterday, most likely because it was Sunday, but last Monday, then replicated on Friday. In fact, those who pay more fees are often those who request the on-chain registration of higher value transactions, and these usually occur during weekdays, because they are carried out by large companies, and not by small investors.
The cost of transactions
Note that the average amount of fees per transaction during 2025 had reached a minimum peak in mid-March below $0.74.
Already in the second half of April, however, there was a peak above $2.5, and last Monday it even rose above $3.5.
Although the data regarding the average fees is absolutely correct, and in theory the best data to monitor for this type of analysis, private citizens who operate with Bitcoin are certainly much more interested in the median data rather than the average, because it is much more in line with their expectations.
The local minimum peak of the median for 2025 occurred in mid-April, when it even dropped to $0.22. This is a level that hadn’t been seen since December of last year.
In the second half of April, there was a peak above $1.2, which has not yet been surpassed in May.
So although the number of transactions has risen significantly recently, also increasing the average cost of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, the median in recent days has often remained below $1. This means that for small investors, the cost is not yet prohibitive at all, and it’s enough to choose the right moment to make a transaction paying less than $1 in fees, provided that the transaction is simple.