Bitcoin Sees Spike in Transaction Costs Due to Ordinals Craze

The cost of executing Bitcoin transactions has climbed to its highest point in almost half a year, driven by a surge of new “inscriptions” vying for space on the blockchain.

As of November 7, information from BitInfoCharts reveals that the average transaction fee for Bitcoin is nearing the $6 mark, propelled by the resurgence of Bitcoin Ordinals.

Bitcoin Ordinals, which have returned to prominence this week, are bringing about a significant uptick in transaction fees. This situation mirrors the congestion experienced in the second quarter, with Ordinals inscriptions—essentially non-fungible tokens (NFTs) embedded directly on the Bitcoin blockchain—taking up valuable block space.

These BRC-20 Ordinals introduce substantial data loads for miners to handle, leading to a crowded mempool and heightened contest for transaction confirmations.

As a consequence, users are paying higher fees to accelerate their transactions, while those opting for lower fees face slower-than-usual confirmation times.

Data from GeniiData highlights that there have been nearly 1 million Ordinals “mints” within the last week alone.

Notably, the landscape of active projects is constantly evolving, with BEES, gpts, and HALV currently at the forefront of minting activity.

The Bitcoin mempool, which is essentially the waiting area for pending transactions, is now backlogged with over 120,000 transactions still awaiting confirmation, as per the real-time statistics from Mempool.space.

This marks a significant increase from the start of October, when the mempool queue was under 30,000 unconfirmed transactions.