The number of transactions waiting in Bitcoin’s mempool has been thin since mid-May, a rare event in bull markets.
This prolonged quiet spell has pushed median fee rates down to 1 sat/vB or less, left many blocks underfilled, and revived long-term questions about the health of Bitcoin’s fee market.
A look at recent blocks shows how sparse activity has become. On June 9, several blocks carried fewer than 2,000 transactions and collected barely 0.01 to 0.03 BTC in total fees. Block 900451, mined by MARA Pool, included just 12 transactions.
Other blocks from Foundry USA and ViaBTC accepted transactions paying less than 1 sat/vB, some hovering near 0.01 BTC in fees. With the mempool consistently empty, miners include whatever they can to fill space.
At the same time, a wave of institutional adoption and sustained use of off-chain solutions like Lightning has pulled transaction volume away from the base layer.
Low volatility translates to fewer deposit and withdrawal events, fewer panic moves, and less arbitrage, all of which reduce pressure on block space.
That shift is evident in Bitcoin ownership trends. Individuals held around 247,000 fewer BTC in early 2025 than they did a year earlier, while businesses, funds, and governments increased holdings by roughly 225,000 BTC.
The rise of spot ETFs and corporate treasuries means a growing share of Bitcoin is sitting in cold storage, not moving on-chain. Retail users who sold that BTC are out of the system, and the entities who bought it aren’t making regular transactions. That transition, from millions of smaller holders to a few large custodians, has significantly reduced the number of UTXOs changing hands.
Efficiency gains across the Bitcoin economy reinforce this structural concentration. Exchanges and custodians routinely batch hundreds of withdrawals into single transactions. Many trades settle on internal ledgers and never touch the blockchain.
Layer-2 solutions like the Lightning Network handle an increasing share of routine payments, particularly in regions with high merchant adoption. All of these factors reduce reliance on Layer-1 confirmations.
The speculative activity that previously filled blocks has also faded. The frenzy around Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens in 2024 drove daily transaction counts close to 1 million at their peak. Blocks were consistently full, and fee rates surged above 100 sat/vB. But that hype has vanished.
Inscriptions and experimental token usage have dropped sharply, and no new fad has emerged to take their place. The collapse of memecoin minting and NFT traffic has removed a key pressure point from the mempool.
The result is a free market that pays little. With no competition for block space, users pay the minimum, and sometimes even zero, to get included.
Transaction fees now account for only about 2 % of miner revenue. In mid-2024, at the peak of speculative activity, that share was often well above 10 %. Without meaningful fee income, miners almost rely entirely on the block subsidy of 3.125 BTC.
That reliance raises long-term concerns. The next halving in 2028 will cut the subsidy to 1.5625 BTC. If on-chain activity doesn’t recover by then, fee revenue will need to make up the difference.
The current lull may be temporary, but it’s already prompting debate within the mining community about how to navigate low-fee environments.
Some miners have adapted by accepting low-fee or even non-standard transactions. Marathon’s Slipstream service is one example, allowing users to bypass the mempool and directly submit unusual or oversized transactions to miners.
While controversial, this practice shows that miners are willing to fill blocks however they can when demand drops.
The low number of transactions has also reignited a long-standing debate around transaction relay policy. With blocks consistently underfilled and fees hovering at minimal levels, some miners have begun accepting transactions that would typically be ignored by default Bitcoin Core node configurations, such as those with very low fees, non-standard scripts, or unusual size-to-fee ratios.
This behavior came under renewed scrutiny again in early June after Marathon Digital’s mining pool included several such transactions using its Slipstream pipeline, prompting criticism from some developers and users who viewed the move as enabling spam or degrading network reliability.
The signatories warned against weakening these standards in the name of block fullness, arguing that “filling blocks for the sake of fullness” risks long-term harm to the network’s resilience and decentralization.
For now, users are taking advantage of the low-fee window. On-chain consolidation, dust cleanup, and UTXO management are being carried out at minimal cost.
However, developers and analysts are watching closely to see what breaks the stasis.
A new speculative protocol, a geopolitical shock, or even a parabolic price breakout could quickly reintroduce congestion. So far, none of those catalysts have appeared.
