Bitcoin fees are so low even Mempool.space is having trouble showing them

[The Hidebehinder]

Checking mempool.space to finally see Bitcoin's mempool getting empty and looking at the the last blocks I saw this
https://mempool.space/mempool-block/7



I assume that they never thought of all tx in the last -6 blocks down the queue to be all 1 sat/vb or something like that but it's pretty enjoyable to see this nowadays after so many months.

[uchegod-21]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

[d5000]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

Normally the correlation between fees and price in any direction is low. But in some special situations, according to my observations, there can be an effect: When there is a strong bullish sentiment / FOMO, fees tend to be higher, above all in the final stretch of the FOMO phase when people begin to move BTC to the exchanges to take profits. The best example until now was the end of the late 2017 bull market where fees reached all time highs which never were reached later (but this has also to do with Segwit adoption). The reason is probably a wave of new users transferring their first Bitcoins and exchanges managing lots of deposits and withdrawals (and thus, needing space for consolidation transactions).

You can't, however, conclude that low fees indicate bearish sentiment, much less a crash. Low fees are currently relatively "normal" if there is no major wave of data-heavy transactions (Ordinals, Runes ...).

[joniboini]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price.

Mempool.space is just a Bitcoin explorer. You can see more or less the same fee rate for other explorers since they're looking at the same thing. CMIIW.

I'd like to add that even in a bearish market the fees can be high if people want to move their coins quickly, either to sell or jump into an opportunity like the ordinal thing back then. I'd suggest not to use it as an indicator to sell or buy more Bitcoin at all. DWYOR.

[pooya87]

I'm not sure why you call it "having trouble" because that looks like an accurate chart even though it is not common to represent fee rates like this. Keep in mind fee rates can have fraction like 1.1 sat/vb or 1.32 sat/vb this is why some tools report fee rates as sat per kilo byte.

In any case if you want to see a representation of mempool I always found the following site better:
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight

In any case fees are lowest possible rates and everyone should take advantage of it. I personally consolidated over 100 small outputs recently

[john_egbert]

I would call it calm before the storm..
But, truly, it's a great opportunity for everyone.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

Not exactly like this.

Bitcoin mempools have low or high fee rate waiting transactions, it only depends on demand of Bitcoin users to move their bitcoins only. In bear market for example in a market crash, demands to move bitcoins can be high, and fee rates in mempools won't be too low. In bull market, when price suddenly goes up, demands can be high and fee rates can be high, but if price creates thinking that it will move up more, people will have less demand to move bitcoin on chain, fee rate will be low.

[Frankolala]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

Not at all, the market is not crashing. It's only when there's an attack on the blockchain by those shitcoins that we do have high fees, because the blockchain will be congested giving miners the opportunity to select transactions with high transaction fees first, and abandon transactions with low fee. Currently, people are not making use of the blockchain that much.

[Charles-Tim]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

It would be good if you refer to it as memo lol instead of mempool space or mempool.space which is a website and not mempool.

Did you remember when China banned bitcoin mining? The hash rate fell significantly and there was congestion at the time which increased the fee rate. That has nothing to do with bitcoin price.

See this time that bitcoin increased to $106000 yesterday and still above $104000. Altcoins are really falling. ORDI, SATS, RATS that spammed the network are really in the decline which also helped and has nothing to o with bitcoin price this time.

But when bitcoin price is increasing and people continue to buy, this can make the mempool become congestion and result to increase in fee. But you will be surprised that that not all the time the mempool will be congested.

Abrupt fall in price can lead to congestion of the mempool.

So it depends.

[DeathAngel]

It won’t last for long, when the bull run hots up & retail arrives with FOMO, fees will increase. It’s nice to take advantage of low fees whilst they last though. Wasn’t long ago all those Ordinals spammers were causing fees to be over 300 sats per byte.

[Yaunfitda]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

Not sure if there is correlation, even when we reach all time high last January 20th, we didn't see mempool or the tx fees going up unlike before. Obviously, the fees will fluctuate as high as 5-7 sat/vB but will go down around 1-2 sat/vB.

Right now the supposedly high priority is 4 sat/vB, but if you are not in a hurry, you can get your transaction as low as 2 sat/vB.

For the ordinals spamming, just a matter of time, and as we can see they can't sustained that run.

[Plaguedeath]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

It's no longer relevant to correlate the fees and Bitcoin price since most people buy and hold Bitcoin in centralized exchanges, some of them buy the ETFs version. They didn't move their coins to cold storage or their own wallet, which make the fees are keep lower and lower.

Or it has other meaning, like most people choose to hold Bitcoin and there are not a lot new money invested.

[Synchronice]

I assume that they never thought of all tx in the last -6 blocks down the queue to be all 1 sat/vb or something like that but it's pretty enjoyable to see this nowadays after so many months.

Yes, that's very enjoyable. With such a low fees, I don't have to stress myself about Bitcoin transactions, I can consolidate my UTXOs and I can buy things with it. But these low fees are good arguments for those who are against the idea of increasing block size. So, first of all, we need to actively adopt Bitcoin payment method and increase the number of Bitcoin payments (we should use it whenever we can) and then I believe that transaction fees will be good for everyone and miners will also collect a good fee from blocks.

Normally the correlation between fees and price in any direction is low. But in some special situations, according to my observations, there can be an effect: When there is a strong bullish sentiment / FOMO, fees tend to be higher, above all in the final stretch of the FOMO phase when people begin to move BTC to the exchanges to take profits. The best example until now was the end of the late 2017 bull market where fees reached all time highs which never were reached later (but this has also to do with Segwit adoption). The reason is probably a wave of new users transferring their first Bitcoins and exchanges managing lots of deposits and withdrawals (and thus, needing space for consolidation transactions).

That's a very logical explanation because of so many reasons. First of all, not your keys, not your coins. When I want to profit, I send coins from my wallet to an exchange, convert them, withdraw money and that's all. There are also moments when I convert money, wait for price to fall, then buy Bitcoin again and then withdraw to my wallet. I think that many people are like that and that explains why fees increase during bull market.

[bSpend]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

Well, from my own personal understanding, when the market is low, like when the price of bitcoin is declining, what this means is that people are selling, but it's actually a few person, maybe there are no buyers at that time, but this also means that less transactions are happening on the bitcoin network, which is why the transaction fee at that moment is always down.

When there are alot of buyers in the market and the price of bitcoin is climbing up, there is always a lot of activities on the bitcoin network which is what causes the transaction fee at that moment to shoot up in a very short period of time.

[NotATether]

I'm beginning to think if there's a relationship between mempool space and bitcoin price. Does it mean that when the transaction fee is so low, the market wants to crash or is it the reverse. Could it also be that it is very unconnected.

High fees usually = high prices, while the reverse may not be true.

Fees are basically the result of people using the blockchain. If you've got a lot of people making transactions at once, fees will go up, but this usually happens during a bull season and not directly as a result of the price going up.