Got some Satoshi to send or Bitcoin (BTC) wallets to reorganize? It’s increasingly cheap to do so. According to an Arcane Research report, Bitcoin “transaction fees have stayed low since July 2021, showing no signs of rising.” There was, however, a small bump in transaction fees last week. Shown as a small jump at the tail end of the graph, clustering of the mempool pushed “up the average transaction fees per day over the past seven days to $691,000, a doubling since last Tuesday.” Nonetheless, the doubling in transaction fees is insignificant: transaction fees remained in a low range. Miners …

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 …

According to analysis by Mark “Murch” Erhardt of Chaincode Labs, 88% of all Bitcoin transaction inputs pay higher fees than are necessary. Erhardt bases his conclusion on data showing just 12% of transaction inputs use the SegWit format, which is less fee intensive than transacting with legacy inputs. Erhardt believes that a reliance on legacy transaction fees keeps Bitcoin blocks smaller than they could otherwise be, contributing to a seemingly growing backlog of unconfirmed transactions. A clogged up Bitcoin mempool containing 107 blocks worth of transactions at one point yesterday serves as a reminder that it is possible to save …

Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, has incorporated Segregated Witness, or SegWit, support for Bitcoin (BTC) deposits. The SegWit support was extended to deposits on Christmas Eve, Binance said in an official statement. The protocol upgrade was initially enabled only for withdrawals. Effective immediately, Binance users can transfer funds to a SegWit (bech32) address by selecting the BTC (SegWit) network. Binance explained: “Please note SegWit should help reduce fees; however, if you incorrectly send incompatible assets to the address, your funds will not be recoverable and will result in permanent loss.” Implemented in 2017, SegWit is …

The Taproot upgrade represents one of the most significant developments for Bitcoin’s mainchain in recent months. Despite seeing very little controversy, the community is still debating on the proper procedure on how to implement it more than six months after the BIPs were published. The issues stem from the necessity of conducting a soft fork that would be accepted by all relevant stakeholders. According to a Reddit thread pinned in the r/Bitcoin community, “the biggest problem with activating Taproot is PTSD from the previous softfork, SegWit.” History of SegWit SegWit consensus in 2017 followed the BIP9 soft-fork procedure, which required …

Bitcoin (BTC) miners openly using AsicBoost are now comprising 63% of its network hashrate. This vindicates community concerns from 2017 that accused Bitmain of using the “covert” version of AsicBoost. The statistic was highlighted on March 9 by Bitmex Research, building on a similar report from December 2018. Though the overt AsicBoost was only used by 30% of miners at the time, the analysts argued that the 2017 controversy was largely settled. They wrote: “If covert AsicBoost was used by some miners to obtain a secret advantage, with significant adverse effects on Bitcoin, this problem now appears mostly solved.” Bitmain …

More Bitcoin (BTC) transactions now use so-called Segregated Witness (“SegWit”) technology than ever before, the latest data shows. According to various resources including SegWit.Space, adoption of the protocol has reached up to 66% of all Bitcoin transactions as of Jan. 4. Two in three BTC payments now SegWit The volume underwent a significant increase in late 2019, jumping from around 40% in September to nearer 60% in October. The statistics, however, are subject to variation. SegWit.Space, a dedicated monitoring resource, lists current SegWit propagation as 66%. Other charts, such as transacationfee.info and Woobull, the data resource by statistician Willy Woo, …

Cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX added support for native segregated witness (SegWit) addresses for Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals, which lets users pay lower transaction fees. According to an announcement on Dec. 12, BitMEX now allows its users to withdraw Bitcoin to Bech32 addresses, the one that natively supports the segregated witness standard. Bitcoin address formats As the announcement explains, the Bitcoin network currently supports three address formats. The first one — Bitcoin’s original address format — is pay to public key hash (P2PKH), which starts with a 1. The second format is the pay to script hash (P2SH), which allows users to send …

Major global crypto exchange Bitfinex now supports Bitcoin (BTC) bech32 addresses generation and deposits to bech32 addresses. Following the launch of Bitcoin withdrawals on bech32 addresses on Oct. 29, Bitfinex officially announced on Nov. 4 that the exchange now also supports Bitcoin deposits to bech32. As previously announced, a bech32 Bitcoin address is a Segregated Witness (SegWit) address format specified by Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 0173. Also known as "bc1 addresses,” bech32 format starts with the alphanumeric characters bc1 and consists only of lowercase letters, making each address not case-sensitive. This updated address format provides better protection against typing errors …

One of the Bitcoin (BTC) space’s best-known and most outspoken developers has pledged to advertise Binance for the rest of the year if the exchange implements specific features. Wertheimer tackles Binance’s lack of SegWit, Lightning In a Twitter debate beginning on Oct. 2, Udi Wertheimer has made an unusual decision to influence development of Binance, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. Appealing to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (known as “CZ”), Wertheimer said he could potentially change his Twitter profile picture to Binance’s logo for the rest of the year, stating: “ok hear me out @cz_binance , if you add …

Are there downsides to SegWit? SegWit is associated with Bitcoin and its core principles, so its strengths and weaknesses will vary depending on who is observing it. SegWit’s ability to give blocks more weight, or transaction density, relies on the idea that some blockchain data will be kept off the original chain, which is instead used as a sort of reference or index. Some believe that offloading data from the blockchain is already a failure, as it’s like admitting that blockchain alone can’t function. From this perspective, SegWit itself is a weakness infecting Bitcoin, and that’s why rather than implement …

The percentage of Segregated Witness (SegWit)-spending Bitcoin (BTC) transactions has reached 50.5%, or an all-time high, according to transactionfee.info statistics. SegWit solution to Bitcoin transactions SegWit is a proposed update to the Bitcoin Core, which is designed to reduce processing and wait times. Originally, the update was aimed at solving transaction malleability, a well-known weak spot in Bitcoin software. However, SegWit offers a range of other advantages and now the focus of attention has shifted from fixing transaction malleability to solving the problem of Bitcoin scaling. Explaining its metrics, transactionfee.info points out that a Bitcoin transaction can have multiple outputs …