Bitcoin block nears the 2015 transaction record but pays only $180 in fees

[Daemon82]

A recent Bitcoin block came close to breaking a record that has stood since 2015. CoinDesk reports that AntPool's block 974,961 held 11,255 transactions, close to the record of 12,239 set by F2Pool's block 367,853 on 1 August 2015

Fees in the block came to 240,533 satoshis, about $180, out of a total payout of around $237,000. Almost all of the reward came from the 3.125 BTC block subsidy, and on 4 November block 974,557 held 10,573 transactions for about $110 in fees

Sampled transactions were 80 bytes each and paid one satoshi, below Bitcoin Core 29.1's default relay floor of 0.1 sat per vbyte. CoinDesk notes that the floor is a node policy rather than a network rule, and it is not known how the transactions reached AntPool

In 2015 the record block paid 0.226 BTC in fees, about 94 times as much in bitcoin terms. Mempool.space expects difficulty to fall about 4 percent around 13 November, and at the 2028 halving the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC, which fees like these would barely begin to replace

Packing so many tiny transactions into one block is a neat technical curiosity, and it shows how efficient modern transactions can be. It also highlights the long term question of how miners will be paid as the subsidy keeps halving. Low fees are good for users today, but fee markets will matter more in future

How do you think miners will be paid once the subsidy becomes small? And does it matter how these low fee transactions reached the pool?

A Bitcoin Block Just Neared A 2015 Transaction Record But Paid Only Usd180 In Feeswww.coindesk.com