Bitcoin’s average fee approaches $42 as users flee to other chains.

Cryptocurrency has seen an incredible rise over the last month, growing from a collective market cap of $243 billion to $625 billion at present. Much of this flowed into Bitcoin, which reached an all-time high of over $20,000 and a market dominance percentage of 67.55% in early December. Over the next two weeks, however, that price has fallen to $16,285 and its market dominance now ranks at 43.9% while the net market cap of cryptocurrency has continued its rise unabated.

Average fees have risen across the board, with Dash and Bitcoin Cash remaining lowest

The explosion in the cryptocurrency markets has caused a flood of new transactions, this time distributed across multiple chains. This has resulted in fees rising across the board. As noted above, the average fee for Bitcoin transactions has risen to $41.62. Second place for highest fees is Monero, which ranks an average $10.70 per transaction, becoming the first non-Bitcoin coin to break the ten dollar fee barrier. Litecoin and Ethereum battle for third place, with average fees of $1.50 and $1.40, respectively. Finally, Bitcoin Cash and Dash compete for the lowest average of the top coins with $0.90 and $0.87 respectively.

While figures like mean average and median can deliver a fast, easily accessible metric for fees, they do not always portray an accurate picture of what most people are paying. Bitcoin has the most widely distributed fees, though the vast majority fall close to $27.78 and $30.60. The overwhelming majority of Ethereum fees are $0.70. Most Bitcoin Cash transactions cost $0.02, $0.04, or $0.06, with about 10% at $2.40 and above, driving up the average. The most common Litecoin fees by far are $1.44-$1.46, comprising about half the network’s transactions. Finally, the most common fee by a wide margin for Dash is below one cent, with the $0-0.04 range comprising about half of transactions, with about 13% of transactions at $0.68. Only Dash and Bitcoin Cash currently register dominant use of single-digit cent fees and lower.

The “flippening” from Bitcoin

The network congestion of Bitcoin due to stagnant on-chain capacity has resulted in a flight to other coins. Over the past week, Dash and Bitcoin Cash have nearly doubled their market caps, as well as risen significantly against Bitcoin (Dash from 0.054 to 0.091 and Bitcoin Cash from 0.11 to 0.21). Bitcoin’s on-chain transactions per day are currently at 370,000, nearly the same as one year ago. Meanwhile, just Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin alone comprise 73% of Bitcoin’s transaction volume. Ethereum, meanwhile, continues to be the leader in total transactions for the top coins, recently rising past a million transactions per day.