The average transaction fee for Bitcoin has risen to $30.91 — a level not seen since April 2021, according to data from ycharts.com.
The period leading up to April 2021 was marked by a mania with Bitcoin rising to $64,900 – likely driven by Coinbase’s NASDAQ listing and the narrative of crypto becoming mainstream.
This run ended abruptly when China extended its anti-crypto policy to ban Proof-of-Work mining, followed by Elon Musk announcing that Tesla would stop accepting BTC for vehicle purchases due to concerns about miners using fossil fuels.
Today, meme coin mania is driving activity on the Bitcoin network through the recently released BRC-20 standard.
What is BRC-20?
In March, the BRC-20 standard was created by an anonymous person known as “Domo.”
While Bitcoin has traditionally been a single-asset blockchain, the Ordinals protocol, through the Taproot soft fork, has enabled fungible BRC-20 assets to operate on-chain.
Taproot launched in November 2021 to make transactions faster and more cost-effective while laying the foundation for smart contracts and dApps.
In February, Taproot’s capabilities were used to store jpegs and videos directly on the blockchain, creating a non-fungible market on Bitcoin – much to the chagrin of purists.
At the time, commentators warned that this would eventually lead to higher transaction costs and bloat – with BRC-20 added to the mix, that situation plays out.
According to the brc-20.io website, BRC-20 tokens have a total market cap of $693.2 million. The top three tokens are Ordi, Nals, and Pepe, valued at $411.3 million, $42.3 million, and $34.7 million, respectively.
If you scroll through the list, you will see tokens named d*ck, P*SY, sexy, and f*ck, indicating the general triviality of the BRC-20 space at the moment.
Bitcoin casino
Nevertheless, following a comment from RamenPanda, febar strongly believes that BRC-20 tokens will be a major factor in Bitcoin’s rising dominance, making Ethereum irrelevant.
“The next bull market will be powered by Bitcoin and BRC20 tokens
Bitcoin dominance will skyrocket above 70%
Ethereum will become irrelevant.”
Likewise, The Spartan one expressed a “can’t beat them, join them” attitude to BRC-20 – saying that if you’re going to memecoin, you might as well do it on Bitcoin.
“TThe final conclusion of the janky brc20 experiment will be that it is better to use shitcoin on a chain built specifically to house and facilitate a full-suite shitcoin casino.“
Willy Wow said there are pros and cons to the current situation. He explained that block rewards will one day be zero, meaning an alternative source of mining income is needed to keep miners incentivized.
At the same time, the trade-off is “bad for nodes and decentralization— adding that the impact of Ordinals comes at a time when mining rewards are still high.