Bitcoin (BTC) Mempool ‘Practically Empty’ as Transaction Activity Plunges to March 2020 Lows

Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, has noted that Bitcoin's mempool, a queue of pending transactions, is "practically empty."

Bitcoin transaction activity has hit its lowest point since March of last year, with the mempool—a queue of pending transactions—practically empty, according to CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno.

Bitcoin transaction fees have also fallen to just 1 sat/vB.

Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp said that the empty mempool is an indication of extremely low sovereign usage of the flagship cryptocurrency.

While some have attributed the low activity to the “hodl” mentality within the community, with users opting to stack sats rather than spend them in anticipation of price appreciation, Loop noted that the people buying Bitcoin do not appear to be withdrawing it to self-custody.

According to him, the total number of unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) are dropping significantly, indicating that fewer coins are being spread across individual wallets.

Despite Bitcoin's unusually low fees, البعض have expressed concerns. Bart Mol, founder and host of the "Satoshi Radio" podcast, adopted a more alarmist tone, arguing that the digital gold narrative is "slowly destroying the foundation of Bitcoin."

However, Canadian Bitcoin developer Peter Todd suggested that the low activity could be due to the increasing popularity of the Bitcoin network.

“Almost every transaction buying goods or services that I've done with Bitcoin in the past few years has been with Lightning. None of those show up in the blockchain,” said Todd.