Bitcoin worth $2 billion moves for just $0.78

Published at: Sept. 14, 2021

Block data from Blockchain.com reveals that a colossal Bitcoin (BTC) transaction worth $2 billion was processed on Monday night. Despite the enormous financial value, the unknown wallet holder only paid 0.00001713 BTC fees equivalent to $0.78.

Although it is unknown what the purpose of this transfer was, or indeed which individual or entity enacted it, what has clearly been showcased is the enormous potential of financial transactions utilizing cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

However, this is not the first instance of a transaction of this magnitude with minimal fees. Back in August 2020, a Bitcoin transaction worth $1 billion was recorded with a nominal fee of just $4.

Attempts to transfer money of this value in traditional fiat markets would simply be futile. Anchored to anachronistic models, the financial ecosystem stands as a stark outlier to the instantaneous, largely inclusive, modern information services experience.

An international fiat transfer often takes one to four working days to process and includes a hefty transaction fee of 1%–3%. For a transaction worth $2 billion, this would come at the cost of between $20 million and $60 million.

Alongside this, banks and governments hold central influence over the activity of financial infrastructures, unlike Bitcoin, and as such, arguably threaten the privacy, autonomy and principles of a free market.

According to BitInfoChart, the average price of a transaction fee on Bitcoin’s base-layer blockchain stands at 0.000058 BTC ($2.67). This has been a consistent floor level across the last two months but was not been printed before that since the beginning of the market’s bullish surge in October 2020.

For context purposes, the average transaction fee for the second-largest crypto by market capitalization, Ether (ETH), remains several multiples (770%) higher at 0.0061 ETH ($20.44).

Technical data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro reveals that Bitcoin surmounted a challenge to reestablish $46,000 on Tuesday morning after registering price lows of $43,380 on Bitstamp in the wake of major market volatility.

This bullish sentiment falls in line with an additional data point that reserves of Bitcoin on major cryptocurrency exchanges have recorded new multi-year lows this week — akin to the transaction fees — levels not witnessed since the inception of the bullish surge in October 2020.