Transaction fees for Bitcoin dramatically decreased after the halving event on April 20, falling from a record high of $128 to just $8-10 the next day.
This means that the reduction in block rewards from 6.25 to 3.125 Bitcoin did not impact miners right away.
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Fees spiked in the 840,000th block, mined by ViaBTC, which recorded 3,050 transactions averaging nearly $800 each and generated a total of 37.7 Bitcoins or about $2.4 million.
This block drew a lot of attention due to the excitement surrounding the launch of the Runes protocol, which facilitated the creation of memecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
While the fees remained high until about block 840,200, they soon stabilized to a more lower range of 1-2 Bitcoins per block.
In the week leading up to the halving, Bitcoin's network fees exceeded those of Ethereum, totaling $17.8 million in fee revenue, skyrocketing to $78.3 million on halving day—over 24 times more than Ethereum's total fees collected.
Despite the high stakes and significant network activity on the halving day, the overall market price of Bitcoin was relatively unaffected, showing an increase of 1.72% to a price of $65,820 at the time of writing.
The normalization of transaction fees after the halving highlights the network's capacity to adapt, balancing the interests of miners with the costs to users.
Before the halving, major Bitcoin mining companies saw a drop in stock values, possibly due to investor fears of profitability.
