Bitcoin Transaction Fees: Are They Currently Low? (March 2019)

With Bitcoin (BTC) you can pay more to expedite your transaction. Here in 2019 if you don’t mind waiting you can send BTC for about a dime. Meanwhile, even for a next block transaction it is little more than a quarter in fees on average.

And this is all for on-chain transactions, never mind using a platform like Lightening Network to send (very low fees) or sending from a Coinbase Account to a Coinbase account (free).

Look at the current average fees being paid here in March 2019. See that chart above. You can see that if you want your transaction mined in the next block, you have to pay a little over thirty cents. However, if you don’t mind waiting a few blocks, you can pay as little as ten cents at times.

The data showing above is based on average fees paid, so some will pay higher or lower fees.

Further, the sender dictates the fees, and miners generally choose which transactions to add to blocks based on fees (it is essentially a bidding system), and that means if you try to low ball, you could end up with your transaction sitting around unconfirmed for longer than you would like.

Point being though, this idea that it costs a lot to send BTC is becoming less and less true over time as improvements like Lightening Network and Segwit take weight off the network and other improvements are made.

TIP: For more info on fees see… https://bitcoinfees.info.

IMPORTANT: The actual cost of a transaction fluctuates. Check the average costs in the moment before including a transaction fee.