Bitcoin has seen a sharp correction in recent days in favor of Bitcoin cash. The percentage of Bitcoin dominance was reduced by 10% to Bitcoin Cash, which went from 5% to 13% dominance. But that's not all, since according to Blockchain.info, there are now 115,000 unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The bitcoin mempool overloaded
It had been more than 3 months since the mempool had not been so overloaded. According to Tradeblock, these unconfirmed transactions amount to 110,611 BTC, valued at more than $ 700 million. Whenever bitcoin mempool is full of unconfirmed transactions, mining software selects transactions that have paid the highest fees. This means that users who want to send important Bitcoin transactions are currently being asked to charge higher fees for them.
According to estimates, the fastest and cheapest transaction fee - at the time of going to press - would be 480 satoshis / bytes. Considering an average transaction size of 226 bytes, this translates into a cost of 108,480 satoshis, which equates to almost $ 7. The higher the fees, the faster the transaction is processed.
Bitcoin attacked?
Some users claim that what is currently happening on Bitcoin looks like an attack. The value of Bitcoin Cash soared to $ 2,500 per token, while it was only $ 300 last week. This boom does not seem natural, especially when you notice that most volumes come from South Korea. Bithumb, for example, totals 36% of the transaction volume and if you add the South Korean exchanges, Coinone and Korbit, the total volume is around 50%.
Some argue that the number of unconfirmed transactions is increasing due to pollution - spam - of the network by false transactions. The managers of the r / bitcoin channel write:
"Spam transactions in abundance; fud on every Reddit crypto; hash power temporarily diverted to B cash. Honestly, we've seen all that. Nothing is different. Whenever this happens, novices panic and buy altcoin (s) and then they are left in their place when the value returns to bitcoin and a new wave of users comes in, which drives up the price to new heights. It's a cycle that keeps repeating itself. "
So, what do you think ? Bitcoin attacked or Bitcoiners paranos? We will keep you informed if we know more.