Key Points
- Bitcoin transaction costs have decreased nearly tenfold following the recent BTC halving.
- Despite high expectations, the BTC Runes protocol has shown disappointing results post-halving.
After the recent halving of Bitcoin (BTC), the cost of sending transactions on this cryptocurrency has significantly decreased.
This was reported by Mempool.space, an on-chain analytics provider, which noted that BTC gas fees for low-priority transactions were around $9.51 and $10.07 for medium-priority transactions on the largest decentralized network.
Decrease in Transaction Costs
High-priority transactions were priced at approximately $10.44, according to data available at the time of the report.
This represents a significant reduction compared to the fees immediately after the halving, where participants had to pay over $146 for medium-priority transactions and over $170 for high-priority ones.
CoinMarketCap reported that the price of BTC remained relatively stable after the code change designed by Satoshi Nakamoto to increase scarcity and control token inflation.
In the week following the halving, BTC’s value increased by approximately 2.4%, trading at around $66,000.
Runes Protocol Underperforms
A major concern prior to the BTC halving was the potential reduction in miners’ revenue due to a 50% cut in block rewards.
The Runes protocol, developed by Casey Rodarmor, was presented as a potential solution and was scheduled to launch simultaneously with the halving to boost on-chain activity.
Rodarmor’s Runes allows users to create UTXO-based fungible assets on BTC’s blockchain, offering another potential avenue to stimulate decentralized finance (defi) on the world’s largest blockchain.
However, the Runestone NFT collection, part of the Bitcoin Runes, saw nearly 50% of its floor price value drop days after the halving.
According to MagicEden, the average cost of a Runestole fell from 0.073 BTC to 0.035, indicating a decrease in interest following the initial excitement.
