Every Block With Fees > Subsidy So Far

[Jon_Hodl]

With the recent fee spike, I have been wanting to know how many blocks have ever had the fees exceed the subsidy. I remember that it happened a few times in late 2017 but now I have the actual data.

A guy in one of the Bitcoin meetups I attend shared a script that pulls all of this data. Full credit goes to him: https://twitter.com/alistairz80aftw

[1714601877]

1714601877

[1714601877]

1714601877

[1714601877]

1714601877

[DooMAD]

I'd imagine the 2011 ones were a case of people not knowing what the value of the coins would become.  People were happy to tip multiple whole bitcoins in transaction fees back then, simply because it wasn't expensive to do so.

But, more recently, Bitcoin has essentially gone a full 5 years without any massive, prolonged spikes in fees and suddenly people are crying that the project is "dead" just because it's been congested lately.  Just goes to show that people don't look at the big picture.  Too much reactionary drama with too little justification.

[Cuenta Alternativa]

Today these are extraordinary events, but there will come a time in the future when the extraordinary will be the opposite. Or does anyone believe that when the block reward is for example 0.0244140625 BTC, the miners will get more from the reward than from the fees?

[Jon_Hodl]

I'd imagine the 2011 ones were a case of people not knowing what the value of the coins would become.  People were happy to tip multiple whole bitcoins in transaction fees back then, simply because it wasn't expensive to do so.

But, more recently, Bitcoin has essentially gone a full 5 years without any massive, prolonged spikes in fees and suddenly people are crying that the project is "dead" just because it's been congested lately.  Just goes to show that people don't look at the big picture.  Too much reactionary drama with too little justification.

Yeah, I believe that all of the early ones are donations, experiments, or learning experiences. Some of the later ones are definitely accidents that were returned by the miners that added those transactions to the blockchain.

For instance, the 200 BTC transaction fee in 254642 was returned by the miner in block 254769: https://mempool.space/tx/b18abce37b48a5f434f108ae7ce34f22aa2bfbd9eb9310314029e4b9e3c7cf95

I think it is going to take like a decade for people to understand the the mempool fee market is an incredibly important part of scaling bitcoin.

[OcTradism]

For instance, the 200 BTC transaction fee in 254642 was returned by the miner in block 254769: https://mempool.space/tx/b18abce37b48a5f434f108ae7ce34f22aa2bfbd9eb9310314029e4b9e3c7cf95

I think it is going to take like a decade for people to understand the the mempool fee market is an incredibly important part of scaling bitcoin.

Mining pools can do the right thing to return mistakenly sent coins to the sender if there is enough proof for Bitcoin return. I remembered I read at least one case like that but there maybe more similar cases.

After 2140, when all 21M bitcoins in total supply will be mined and available, no more new bitcoins will be mined from mining process. Miners after that will receive bitcoins in transaction fee only, no longer receive any bitcoin from block rewards. What will happen with mempools, Bitcoin scalability in 2140 will be vital for Bitcoin miners. They must receive enough from transaction fees to pay for their operational cost.

With what happened around Ordinals, BRC20 tokens and very expensive transaction fees, I believe that miners will be fine with their mining earnings in future.

[BlackHatCoiner]

So, apparently, block 788695 which was mined 5 days ago, rewards more in transaction fees than in subsidy. Quite interesting. If you look into it, you can notice some transactions which were probably sent by mistake. For instance, transaction - 4adef856e1e965a7c5ff4c8a7e5d8fd3aae76ad8fdb1c40cce14628586f95ed0 - spends solely an input of 0.012 BTC, and pays 0.011 BTC the miner, which makes the total output value equal to 88 thousands sats only.

Miners after that will receive bitcoins in transaction fee only, no longer receive any bitcoin from block rewards. What will happen with mempools, Bitcoin scalability in 2140 will be vital for Bitcoin miners.

Transaction fees will be the main source of income much sooner than 2140. More like in about 2 decades.

[Jon_Hodl]

So, apparently, block 788695 which was mined 5 days ago, rewards more in transaction fees than in subsidy. Quite interesting. If you look into it, you can notice some transactions which were probably sent by mistake. For instance, transaction - 4adef856e1e965a7c5ff4c8a7e5d8fd3aae76ad8fdb1c40cce14628586f95ed0 - spends solely an input of 0.012 BTC, and pays 0.011 BTC the miner, which makes the total output value equal to 88 thousands sats only.

I have been seeing a lot of odd things happening with some txs lately but I think it might just be a lot of new users who don't understand how fees work yet.

For instance, I have some sats in a CoinJoin and someone paid more than 100k sats to mix a 100k sat utxo. Wut

[Doan9269]

Today these are extraordinary events, but there will come a time in the future when the extraordinary will be the opposite. Or does anyone believe that when the block reward is for example 0.0244140625 BTC, the miners will get more from the reward than from the fees?

We have to go back the the end result that will happen after when all the blocks had been mined completely, which means miners will now have the chance to depend onbthe transaction fee of which i think is already happening with the increase in transaction fee but the difference here now is that this is coming from the introduction of ordinals and not from the one expected after all blocks are mined, but since at every halving, the block reward in reduced by 50% then i think probably that miners would all prefer this experience with ordinals to continue because they milk their income from it higher than expected and will always be even after the entire blocks were mined completely.

[Husires]

The recent increase in transaction fees revealed to us that many of the wallets that you use are poorly programmed and bad in estimating fees. If you read the comments from the previous days, you will discover that many have paid more than 50% of the value of transactions as fees, while they could have reduced those fees significantly if Use another wallet.
Compare the value in dollars, it will be more logical, and it is better to start calculating after 2015.
Technical awareness has increased a lot from the previous days.

[entebah]

So, apparently, block 788695 which was mined 5 days ago, rewards more in transaction fees than in subsidy. Quite interesting. If you look into it, you can notice some transactions which were probably sent by mistake. For instance, transaction - 4adef856e1e965a7c5ff4c8a7e5d8fd3aae76ad8fdb1c40cce14628586f95ed0 - spends solely an input of 0.012 BTC, and pays 0.011 BTC the miner, which makes the total output value equal to 88 thousands sats only.

yeah, maybe he just instantly regrets doing this because the fees were overpaid 13x from the fee rate needed from 653 sat/vB to use 8,667 sat/vB.
I thought that transaction was from BRC-20 then i search it on unisats and i don't see any transaction from this tx.

[SamReomo]

After 2140, when all 21M bitcoins in total supply will be mined and available, no more new bitcoins will be mined from mining process. Miners after that will receive bitcoins in transaction fee only, no longer receive any bitcoin from block rewards. What will happen with mempools, Bitcoin scalability in 2140 will be vital for Bitcoin miners. They must receive enough from transaction fees to pay for their operational cost.

I think the things will be very different after 2140 or even before it. As we all know that the tech world is improving at a very fast rate if the rate continues then things will be totally different in 2140 than the way they are today. As the technology progresses the new jobs are created and who knows that in 2140 the mining operations won't be run by individuals but by the whole governments or or companies. In that case would the transaction fees be enough to fulfill the cost of running those power-hungry Asics?

I think that the current miners will sell their Asics if the mining halts in 2140 because they won't find it lucrative and would lose the interest in their Asics. There will of course be mining operations but who know what the future holds for us.
 

With what happened around Ordinals, BRC20 tokens and very expensive transaction fees, I believe that miners will be fine with their mining earnings in future.

I don't think that the miners will ever be happy with the transaction fees only because that kind of events appears hardly once in a while and in the deep sense these are not good for Bitcoin as they cause more harm than good to the popularity of Bitcoin. Although, the miners will be incentivize for short term but that won't hold for too long.

[Jon_Hodl]

The recent increase in transaction fees revealed to us that many of the wallets that you use are poorly programmed and bad in estimating fees. If you read the comments from the previous days, you will discover that many have paid more than 50% of the value of transactions as fees, while they could have reduced those fees significantly if Use another wallet.

Yes, I agree. More people need a better understanding of how fees work and which wallets they can use to set the fee manually. Too many wallets have fee presets like "low, medium, and high" but those are arbitrary terms while 1 sat/vbyte or 10 sats/vbyte are objective and precise.

I also feel like coin control can help with some of these scaling issues but not enough people know that merging inputs or sending to multiple outputs increases the size of the transaction and inflates the fee.

[BlackBoss_]

The recent increase in transaction fees revealed to us that many of the wallets that you use are poorly programmed and bad in estimating fees. If you read the comments from the previous days, you will discover that many have paid more than 50% of the value of transactions as fees, while they could have reduced those fees significantly if Use another wallet.

If they use centralized exchanges, they have no choice to choose fee rate for their withdrawal transactions. Exchanges will approve their withdrawal request and broadcast those transactions. The withdrawal fee from centralize exchange is always expensive and it is much more expensive than the fee you can use by yourself if you broadcast your transaction from a self custody wallet.

Not all wallets or websites that give fee estimations are good and correct. Some will give you overpaid fee than a more feasible one to use. Don't rely on them completely and always go to mempool sites and check mempools.

Yes, I agree. More people need a better understanding of how fees work and which wallets they can use to set the fee manually. Too many wallets have fee presets like "low, medium, and high" but those are arbitrary terms while 1 sat/vbyte or 10 sats/vbyte are objective and precise.

You can use them but you must know what is current status of mempool. Like if the wallet suggest a fee rate for High option is like 10 sat/vbyte but if you check mempool and see from tip of mempool, there are 1 vMB to 15 or 20 sat/vbyte, you can use those lower fee rates to save a little bit satoshi.

[Husires]

If they use centralized exchanges, they have no choice to choose fee rate for their withdrawal transactions. Exchanges will approve their withdrawal request and broadcast those transactions. The withdrawal fee from centralize exchange is always expensive and it is much more expensive than the fee you can use by yourself if you broadcast your transaction from a self custody wallet.

What happens is otherwise, although outwardly it appears as if The withdrawal fee from centralized exchange is always expensive.

In fact, centralize exchange transactions are cheaper in fees compared to individual transactions fees, but these exchanges gain a lot by charging high fees for withdrawal without paying them as transaction fees.

Overpayment in transactions mostly comes from individual wallets which do not allow the user to choose appropriate fees. And the same individual reasons are why some on the first days donate many bitcoins as a transaction fee.This is why block rewards increase on average or make miners earn more bitcoins.

[Jon_Hodl]

You can use them but you must know what is current status of mempool. Like if the wallet suggest a fee rate for High option is like 10 sat/vbyte but if you check mempool and see from tip of mempool, there are 1 vMB to 15 or 20 sat/vbyte, you can use those lower fee rates to save a little bit satoshi.

I totally agree but if your wallet has RBF enabled, then you can broadcast with a low fee and if it doesn't get added to a block, then you can increase the fee to increase the likelihood of getting added to a block.

The more people that broadcast with RBF, the more precise and efficient the mempool fee market becomes because more people will be bidding below the average priority and waiting for a slump in mempool congestion. I have done this a few times in the past couple weeks and it has been working well. The issue is that it will take time to educate everyone how to use fee bumping efficiently and effectively.   

[dragonvslinux]

A guy in one of the Bitcoin meetups I attend shared a script that pulls all of this data. Full credit goes to him: https://twitter.com/alistairz80aftw

That's for sharing. I was reading about this on twitter recently and the general consensus was that it not only hadn't happened since 2017, but that was the first time it had happened as well. So it's interesting to see that this has happened through Bitcoin's history, especially when a lot of mempool data doesn't go back beyond 2017, so it's otherwise impossible to tell when there were fees as high if not higher.

But, more recently, Bitcoin has essentially gone a full 5 years without any massive, prolonged spikes in fees and suddenly people are crying that the project is "dead" just because it's been congested lately.  Just goes to show that people don't look at the big picture.  Too much reactionary drama with too little justification.

My thoughts exactly. Nearly everyone in fud-based threads was claiming that it's been months of a congested mempool and the situation was never going to improve, whereas already within a few days the fees have reduce by over 95% and even last month most of the 1 sat/vB transactions were cleared out, so it hasn't really been months the mempool has been congested what so ever.

We're now closing in on the 10 sat/vB theshold, which when crossed, will likely see the mempool cleared out again within a week or two. People forget how quickly this occurs, because despite the perception that with low fees there will suddenly be high demand, the reality is most of these transactions have already been made and are sitting patiently in the mempool already, so they'll clear quite quickly imo.

[joniboini]

People forget how quickly this occurs, because despite the perception that with low fees there will suddenly be high demand, the reality is most of these transactions have already been made and are sitting patiently in the mempool already, so they'll clear quite quickly imo.

Being worried is understandable, especially if they do weekly transactions with a relatively cheap fee and are suddenly being asked for a lot more. That being said, their worry is definitely overblown. Not sure what the exact reasons are for those who are genuinely asking though. I can only assume the ability to make transactions with cheap fees is very important for their living. I've seen a few threads saying miners don't care about those who don't have the capacity to spend $100 for transactions fee here and there. Maybe they are also new and never see any congestion before.

[BlackBoss_]

What happens is otherwise, although outwardly it appears as if The withdrawal fee from centralized exchange is always expensive.

In fact, centralize exchange transactions are cheaper in fees compared to individual transactions fees, but these exchanges gain a lot by charging high fees for withdrawal without paying them as transaction fees.

They make batch transaction in withdrawal for their users so they save a lot of transaction fees in transaction size reduction. Exchanges save transaction fees for themselves but they charge their users very high withdrawal fees.

If you use non custodial wallet, you can make your transaction with cheaper fee than withdrawal fee you will have to pay on centralized exchange.

I can only assume the ability to make transactions with cheap fees is very important for their living.

$5 means a lot in many countries and $20 can be a week salary for many people. They have reasons to feel sad when paying $20 in transaction fee.

However, they must try to move their coins when fee is cheap and to do that, they must have plans. Plans don't always work but if they have plans, they can save fees more than without any plan.