• On April 20, the Bitcoin halving event spilled transaction fees to a record high of $128.
  • High transaction fees were highlighted in extreme cases on social media, where one user paid a $500K fee for a $0.70 transaction, and another paid almost $28K.
  • Transaction fees for Bitcoin dropped significantly the day after the halving, with the average cost for medium-priority transactions settling between $8 and $10 by April 21.

At 12:09 am UTC on April 20, mining company ViaBTC successfully mined block number 840,000 and the most anticipated crypto event of the year—Bitcoin halving—occurred. 

According to a report, on the day of the halving, the average fees paid for Bitcoin transactions reached a record high of $128. By the following day, they had significantly decreased. As of April 21, the average fees for medium-priority Bitcoin transactions have dropped to between $8 and $10.

Source: Bitcoin Average Transaction Fee (YCharts)

Entrepreneur & Bitcoin investor, Lark Davis posted on X (previously Twitter) sharing a screenshot of a Bitcoin transaction of $0.70 where someone paid half a million in transaction fee. 

Co-founder and CEO of Rumi.ai, Vinny Lingham also took it to X to share a similar screenshot. In this transaction, someone paid $27,914 in fees.

While Bitcoin's price remained largely stable above $63,000 following the event, transaction fees on Bitcoin soared due to the introduction of a new protocol named Runes, which triggered a surge of transactions as speculators hurried to mint digital tokens on the blockchain.

In fact, users paid a total of 37.67 BTC in transaction fees, and with the mining rewards included, ViaBTC earned a total of 40.7 BTC—about $2.6 million—for this significant block.

Edited by Harshajit Sarmah