BTC Fees Spike Due to OKX Internal Transactions

Bitcoin transaction fees have surged significantly, leading to network congestion and delays. Contrary to previous incidents involving Ordinals and Runes protocols, the current surge is attributed to internal transactions by OKX, one of the largest crypto exchanges. The congestion has resulted in over 333,000 unconfirmed transactions and a fee of $34.08 for medium-priority transactions. This has sparked debate within the crypto community, with some advocating for better layer 2 solutions and side chains to enhance Bitcoin's transaction capacity. However, miners are benefiting from the increased fees, as their earnings per block have risen. The consolidation process employed by OKX, where they combine multiple small outputs into larger ones, has also contributed to the fee increase. Some critics argue that OKX's method is inefficient and costly, suggesting that improved fee management practices could prevent such fee hikes.