Bitcoin Fees Soar Over $50 as OKX Tests ‘Collection Program’

OKX’s experimental program on Bitcoin’s network has led to a dramatic increase in transaction fees, pushing the average cost to over $50 per transfer.

On Friday, Bitcoin transaction fees skyrocketed, with data from mempool.space indicating an average of $52 per transaction. This surge necessitated the payment of over 5.4 BTC (approximately $400,000) to miners for a single block generation. The anomaly in transaction fees was traced back to crypto exchange OKX, which admitted to testing a new “collection program” on the Bitcoin network.

The revelation came from OKX’s Chinese account on X, formerly known as Twitter, where they confirmed their involvement and announced the termination of the test. However, the specific mechanism through which OKX influenced the Bitcoin network’s fee structure remains undisclosed.

Web3 analyst @1999_eth speculated that a faulty script might have been deployed by OKX, causing the unexpected fee hike. This incident has significantly affected the Bitcoin network, leaving over 330,000 transactions unprocessed at the time of reporting.

Network congestion on Bitcoin often spikes during high transaction volumes or major market events. A notable instance was in 2017, when Bitcoin’s surge to $20,000 resulted in a mempool backlog of about 180,000 unconfirmed transactions, leading to multi-day delays.

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