Bitcoin (BTC) NFTs will have a positive impact on Bitcoin ecosystem by improving its security and incentivizing developers to build on the network, according to independent developer Udi Wertheimer. The number of newly created Ordinals, also referred to as "inscriptions", have been spiking in recent weeks, causing a surge in transaction fees and average block size on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Wertheimer, Bitcoin NFTs are going to be beneficial for Bitcoin's security budget: by driving up transaction fees, the creation of Ordinals will incentivize miners to secure the network while the revenue from mining reward will be decreasing with …

Bitcoin’s average block size has hit all-time highs above 2.5MB for the first time since its inception in 2009, driven by the launch of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) protocol Ordinals in January 2023. Block size data from Blockchain.com reflects a jump in Bitcoin block size from the beginning of February 2023, increasing over 2MB in the weeks following the launch of the Ordinals Protocol. As Cointelegraph previously reported, participants from the Bitcoin mining ecosystem have already made over $600,000 processing transactions of Ordinals, which have been dubbed as Bitcoin-based nonfungible tokens. Related: Bitcoin hits record 44M non-zero addresses, thanks to Ordinals: …

How does the hash rate affect Bitcoin price? The main drivers of Bitcoin’s price include computational power, mining profitability and network difficulty. Since miners are compensated in Bitcoin while incurring costs in local currencies, the hash rate follows the price. That said, the more computational power the Bitcoin network employs, the higher its value is. Moreover, rational miners are only willing to mine BTC if it is profitable, which implicitly means that any other cryptocurrency with no demand for it would have zero value and miners would redirect its resources elsewhere. Additionally, the network difficulty can be used as a …

In the early days of Bitcoin (BTC), crypto enthusiasts only required a basic personal computer with an internet connection to generate new BTC tokens through a distributed computing process known as mining. However, with more people chasing the same number of block rewards, Bitcoin’s mining process has become more challenging with time. In fact, the quantum of rewards will progressively reduce by half every four years, making it less rewarding for individual miners who will need to allocate greater computational resources with time. Available on blockchain protocols that employ a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, this mining process requires application-specific integrated …

Your favorite trader is saying Bitcoin (BTC) bottomed. At the same time, the top on-chain indicators and analysts are citing the current price range as a “generational buy” opportunity. Meanwhile, various crypto and finance media recently reported that Bitcoin miners sending a mass of coins to exchanges are a sign that $17,600 was the capitulation move that pins the market bottom. There’s so much assurity from various anon and doxed analysts on Crypto Twitter, yet Bitcoin price is still in a clear downtrend, and the metrics don’t fully reflect that traders are buying every dip. A critical component of BTC …

It’s a great time to move Bitcoin (BTC) between wallets and exchanges. Bitcoin transaction fees have hit all-time lows in BTC, according to research by Galaxy Digital. #bitcoin fees are at all-time lows. the craziest thing? fall 2021 was the first bull run not accompanied by a major spike in fees. how is that possible? what does it mean? here's a thread explaining the most confounding (and awesome) chart in bitcoin. (remember june 2021) pic.twitter.com/gnWssTckX2 — Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) April 5, 2022 As shown on the graph below, the Bitcoin mean transaction fee has plummeted to 0.00004541 Bitcoin ($2.06) in …

SegWit has come a long way since its first appearance during the 2015-2017 blocksize war. However, despite its relative success as a Bitcoin upgrade, crypto exchanges including Binance and Gemini are still not committed to using SegWit addresses for sending Bitcoin (BTC). Implemented in 2017, segregated witness (SegWit) is a soft fork upgrade that separates “witness” data from the base transaction. In an “explain like I’m five” kind of way, SegWit allows for a safer and faster Bitcoin, making scaling the network easier. While most exchanges and individuals were quick to upgrade their infrastructure to take on SegWit, reaching the …

The Bitcoin network difficulty is determined by the overall computational power, which co-relates to the difficulty in confirming transactions and mining BTC. As evidenced by the blockchain.com data, the network difficulty saw a downfall between May and July 2021 due to various reasons including a blanket ban on crypto mining from China. The Bitcoin (BTC) network has recorded a new all-time high mining difficulty of 26.643 trillion with an average hash rate of 190.71 exahash per second (EH/s) — signaling strong community support despite an ongoing bear market. However, as the displaced miners resumed operations from other countries, the network …

Bitcoin is set to undergo a major network upgrade, Taproot, in nearly two days, i.e., on Nov. 14 or 255 blocks later, as per data from Taproot.watch. This is the first significant upgrade since the Segregated Witness (SegWit), which eventually culminated in the development and launch of the Lightning Network in 2018. The original Taproot proposal was made by Bitcoin core contributor and former Blockstream chief training officer Gregory Maxwell on Jan 23, 2018. While the previous SegWit upgrade was aimed to resolve transaction malleability and improve the scalability of the Bitcoin network, the Taproot upgrade is targeted to improve …

It’s undeniable that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are currently the two most dominant cryptocurrencies, and as a result, they receive most of the attention from the mainstream media, institutional investors and retail investors, but this doesn't mean that the sector leaders are not occasionally challenged by competitor networks. Two forked projects that once sought to challenge Bitcoin and Ethereum for their seats at the top are Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). In the past week, both coins have demonstrated that they are still capable of generating excitement and producing big gains. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView …

What factors contribute to transaction fee sizes? The two main factors affecting fees are the size of a transaction, and demand for block space. Given that some networks can only contain a limited amount of data in each block, miners or validators are restricted on the number of transactions they can include. When there are many users sending crypto funds simultaneously, demand for block space increases, and there are more transactions waiting for confirmation. Sometimes, demand for block space can get so high that networks experience congestion, and fees surge to unsustainable levels. Larger transactions require more space in the …

As Bitcoin (BTC) continues to pick up mainstream traction, the asset's blockchain scalability remains an issue, according to Decred co-founder Jake Yocom-Piatt. "There is enough demand for on-chain Bitcoin transactions during peak demand times to completely fill blocks and drive fee rates up substantially," Yocom-Piatt told Cointelegraph, noting the struggles Bitcoin's network may face during times of increased activity, given the number of interested parties. Bitcoin scaling has been an issue for years When it comes to mass adoption, Bitcoin's ability to work effectively under high traffic conditions has been in question for a number of years. The debate caused …