- Over the past week, activity on the Bitcoin network has increased.
- This has resulted in a 61% increase in total reimbursements over that period.
The Bitcoin [BTC] network saw an increase in activity last week, leading to a 61% increase in total transaction fees, on-chain company IntoTheBlock noted in a post on X.
Activity on the chain surged this week, with Bitcoin fees rising more than 60% and Ethereum fees rising nearly 50%. pic.twitter.com/H2kFC6iQge
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) December 8, 2023
According to the data provider, transaction fees recorded during the week amounted to $43.8 million.
The BRC-20 hype had this impact on the Bitcoin network
The increase in activity is due to the double-digit increase in the value of BTC during the week and the recent increase in the adoption of BRC-20 tokens and text-based inscriptions on the Bitcoin network.
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at an 18-month high of $44,261. According to data from the past week, the value of the coin has increased by 14% CoinMarketCap.
This is due to growing demand for the leading coin, whose price has soared to new highs. The coin’s network activity increased as many turned to BTC to take advantage of the price growth.
There was also a lot of interest in BRC-20 tokens on the BTC network last week. During the week, for example, meme coin Ordi [ORDI] became the first BRC-20 token to surpass $1 billion in market capitalization.
Likewise, the price reached an all-time high of $63 during the same period.
The high activity around BRC-20 tokens during the week caused the Bitcoin network to become congested with unconfirmed transactions, clogging the meme pool.
As of December 6, data from mempool.space showed that the memory pool, the temporary storage space for ongoing transactions, reached 1.54 GB, a level significantly above the 300 MB capacity.
Furthermore, average transaction fees on the blockchain rose during the week to the highest level since April.
According to data from December 6, network users paid an average of $19.48 in transaction fees BitInfoCharts. However, this has fallen in the last three days to $16,189 at the time of writing.
Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price forecast 2023-24
Futures market participants maintain bullish sentiment
Open interest has continued to rise in the coin futures market. At $19.7 billion at the time of writing, BTC open interest was at its highest level since April 2022.
The increase in open interest means more traders are entering the market and opening new positions.
Source: Coinglass
Likewise, the OI-weighted funding rate continues to yield positive values. This shows that more traders are taking long positions and betting that the price of BTC will rise further.