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The average transaction fee per Bitcoin (BTC) transaction made a complete 360-degree over nearly two years to settle down at $1.039, a number which was last recorded back in June 2020.

The BTC transaction fee is the cost to transfer any amount of BTC, which is also directly proportional to the time it takes to validate and complete the transaction.

As evidenced by data provided by Blockchain.com, the average BTC transaction fee saw a steady decline from an all-time high of $62.788 in April 2021 before coming down to an eight-month average of $2 in July 2021.

Average BTC transaction fee in U.S. dollars. Source: blockchain.com

Before April 2021, Bitcoins average transaction fees peaked in Dec. 2017, standing at $54.638. The sudden spike in the transaction fees at the time mirrored the significant decline in the Bitcoin network hash rate. However, at the time of writing, the Bitcoin network hash rate maintains its newly attained all-time high of 248.11 EH/s.

All-time high BTC average transaction fees. Source: blockchain.com

As a result of the above combination, Bitcoins highly resilient network can process secure BTC transactions at lower costs. BTCs price volatility has also shown greater stability as it oscillates between the $35,000 to $45,000 mark throughout the year, as seen below based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.

BTC market price chart 2022. Source: TradingView

With more jurisdictions ready to ease up on the Bitcoin ecosystem along with timely network updates, the resultant increase in participation will further ensure a stronger network while playing a deflationary role in Bitcoins price.

Quantum computing firm Multiverse Computing ran simulations around the adoption of BTC and Ether (ETH) in Canadian markets to study their viability as a mainstream payment method.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Multiverse Computing chief technology officer Sam Mugel suggested that non-financial institutions could carry out "a high uptake of crypto in the short term" when considering digital assets for payments.

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Bitcoin average transaction fees lowest in two years at $1.04 - FXStreet

Alena Vorobiova hadn't thought much about bitcoin before Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Fast forward to border closures and shelling on her hometown, cash shortages at ATMs across the country, and the central bank suspending electronic cash transfers and she decided to give bitcoin a try.

Whereas money providers often charge transfer fees of 10% or more when you send $100 from the U.S. to Ukraine, bitcoin's Lightning Network, which is a payments platform built on bitcoin's base layer, slashes the cost of transactions to virtually zero.

Vorobiova and CNBC decided to put Lightning payments to the test with the expertise and translation skills of bitcoin developer Gleb Naumenko, who is currently hiding out in the western part of Ukraine as the war rages on.

The bottom line? It really does work as well as bitcoin boosters say it does.

The process of downloading a crypto wallet onto Vorobiova's phone, transferring bitcoin over the Lightning Network from the U.S. to Poland, and withdrawing the equivalent in Polish currency from a bitcoin ATM from the southwest city of Wrocaw took less than three minutes.

Alena Vorobiova withdraws Polish zloty from a bitcoin ATM in Poland.

Last August on a road trip from Houston to Dallas, Peter McCormack founder and host of the popular What Bitcoin Did' podcast taught CNBC how to use the Lightning Network to make instant payments to anyone in the world.

The tutorial took less than 60 seconds and involved four basic steps: We downloaded the Blue Wallet app and generated a one-time invoice in the form of a QR code. McCormack scanned that QR code using a similar app on his own phone, and then transferred 100,000 satoshis, or sats (the smallest denomination of bitcoin, about 0.00000001 BTC) from his account to ours. The total transfer was equivalent to about $50.

Eight months later, from a hotel room in Miami on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference, CNBC decided to pay that knowledge and some of those sats forward.

On a three-way video call with Naumenko in Western Ukraine, Vorobiova in Southwest Poland, and CNBC in Miami, we followed a very similar sequence of events.

With the guidance of Naumenko, Vorobiova downloaded the Muun wallet app, a different type of self-custodial wallet for bitcoin and Lightning, made a four-digit pin, and generated an invoice as a QR code. CNBC then captured that QR code using the scan mode in the Blue Wallet and transferred over 50,000 of sats from McCormack. The fees amounted to fractions of a penny. (For purposes of the experiment, Naumenko transferred another 50,000 because the bitcoin ATM had a minimum withdrawal amount.)

Bitcoin developer Jeff Czyz tells CNBC that Lightning wallets are compatible because they all have to implement the Basis of Lightning Technology, or BOLT, specification, which defines a layer-2 protocol for sending payments across the Lightning Network.

"A Lightning wallet app is akin to a bank, in that sending money between banks requires them to speak the same language," said Czyz, a developer with Jack Dorsey's team known as Spiral (formerly Square Crypto). That common language is the BOLT specification.

"The Lightning Network consists of nodes connected by payment channels, which are used to forward payments across the network without the need to trust intermediaries," continued Czyz.

Alena Vorobiova withdraws Polish zloty from a bitcoin ATM in Poland.

Just like the tutorial in the car, the process of transferring sats from Miami to Wrocaw also took about a minute.

From there, Vorobiova who followed her sister and niece to the Polish city of Wrocaw to help them get settled went to one of the fifteen bitcoin ATMs in Wrocaw and requested a withdrawal.

She accomplished this by using a QR code that the ATM spit out. She scanned the QR code into her phone using the Muun app, transferred her bitcoin into the ATM's account, and the ATM in turn issued the money. She ended up with 170 zloty, the Polish currency, worth about 100,000 sats or $40. The ATM company took a fee of 10 zloty, or about 5.5% of the total transaction.

"That's the same flow as making a payment for a good or service using Lightning," explained Czyz.

For Vorobiova, this was more of a fun experiment. She is able to go back and forth from Ukraine to Poland, and she tells CNBC that she is following the guidance of Ukrainian regulators to just use credit cards for the time being.

But the process illustrates how refugees with no cash and no way of accessing their belongings can use crypto wallets for banking.

Some Ukrainians use it to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, while others have found that Lightning is a cheap and fast way to receive donations and remittances from anywhere in the world. In Poland, for example, there are more than 175 bitcoin ATMs, allowing refugees who fled with bitcoin to cash it back out for fiat currency.

"Me sitting in California, I can still send you any amount of money instantly to your phone anytime," said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer for the Human Rights Foundation, which has been supporting activists in Ukraine since 2009.

"We don't have to worry about the fact that you're a refugee. It doesn't matter that you don't have a Polish passport or a bank account. None of these things matter," continued Gladstein.

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We sent bitcoin from Miami to a Ukrainian in Poland who withdrew it as cash, all in less than three minutes - CNBC

The below is an excerpt from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine Pro, Bitcoin Magazine's premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

Today, were providing an in-depth breakdown of realized market capitalization. Traditional asset classes along with bitcoin itself are often quoted in terms of their market capitalization, which is calculated by finding the product of price and circulating supply. With bitcoin, and the introduction of a completely transparent set of property rights, you can calculate the realized market capitalization, which values each unit of supply at the price it was last moved across the network.The realized market capitalization of bitcoin is one of the best ways to quantify the monetization process of the asset, as the infamous volatility of the asset is seemingly only occurring to the upside. The fluctuations in the exchange rate are not nearly as volatile as the gradual-then-sudden appreciation of the realized market value of the asset.

The realized market capitalization of bitcoin is one of the best ways to quantify the monetization process of the asset, as the infamous volatility of the asset is seemingly only occurring to the upside. The fluctuations in the exchange rate are not nearly as volatile as the gradual-then-sudden appreciation of the realized market value of the asset.

Bitcoin realized market capitalization drawdown since 2012

Currently the realized cap of bitcoin is $467 billion, a mere 0.20% off of its all-time high. Despite falling by more than 50% off of the highs since November, the realized market value of bitcoin has only fallen from peak to trough by 2.62%.

A closer look atBitcoin realized market capitalization drawdown since December 2019

A thread written in December 2021 covers this dynamic extensively, citing the patterns of realized price during bitcoin market cycles.

We can also break down realized capitalization into different cohorts including long- and short-term holders. Under the surface, were seeing the largest drawdown in long-term holder realized capitalization in bitcoins history.

Although long-term holder supply is fairly neutral since the start of the year, up 0.6% as accumulation and coins aging into this group continues, the data shows that theres been plenty of selling too. Long-term holders realized capitalization and realized price falls as coins with higher cost basis are sold. This lowers the overall average cost basis which is down 11.49% over the last 30 days.

Long-term bitcoin holdersrealized market capitalization drawdown since 2012

Long-term bitcoin holders realized market capitalization drawdown since January 2020

30-day percentage change in Bitcoin realized price for long term holders.

With this data and the process by which long-term holders are quantified, the class of 2021 holders that recently aged into the cohort are the ones moving their holdings.

Re-accumulation has been our base case since the start of Q1 2022, and the state of these metrics continue to support that market outlook despite the recent rise in long-term holder selling pressure.

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A Quantified Look At The Monetization Of Bitcoin - Bitcoin Magazine

All Bitcoin transactions are public, anyone can look at them. Whirlpool bitcoin mixing breaks deterministic links to past transactions and provides forward-looking anonymity. This article demonstrates the easiest way to Whirlpool your bitcoin so that you can take steps to preserve the censorship-resistant and permissionless attributes of Bitcoin, demonstrating how to install and set up a new Samourai Wallet on Android.

Samourai Wallet is a mobile-first, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet. Additionally, connecting Samourai Wallet to the Desktop Whirlpool graphical user interface (GUI) will be covered. Some of the privacy-enhancing tools built into Samourai Wallet include:

The Whirlpool implementation can be used directly from the mobile Samourai Wallet application without any additional configuration. However, if you are not using your own node then you are trusting someone else's. Using Samourai Wallet in connection with your own Dojo on the RoninDojo Tanto provides you with the most privacy-conscience solution, as you are not trusting someone else's node, you are using your own node.

Every Bitcoin wallet, be it mobile or desktop, needs to gather information about wallet balances and transaction history from a Bitcoin node; it is best practice to use your own node but it is not a requirement as many wallet developers provide publicly-accessible nodes. This section will demonstrate how to use Samourai Wallet without your own node, as this is the simplest and fastest way to start.

Before you get started, it will help to have a recovery sheet or notebook to write your seed phrase and passphrase information.

You can download the Samourai Wallet application from an F-Droid repo, its website or the Google Play Store.

Simply install the application and follow the on-screen system prompts. Once you launch the application, select MAINNET.

Next, you will be greeted with a helpful on-boarding presentation.

Next, you will be asked to choose a directory to store your encrypted wallet backup file. Then allow system access.

Next, you can toggle on the option to enable Tor. Leave the option to connect to your own Dojo toggled off to use the default settings which will communicate with the Samourai Wallet Dojo node instead of your own private Dojo node. Then press the Create a new wallet button in Samourai Wallet. Or, if you have a wallet to import, then select the option to Restore an existing wallet instead.

Next you will be asked to create a passphrase. Using a strong, high-entropy passphrase will help protect your bitcoin in the event that your 12-word seed phrase is ever compromised.

Check the box that says you understand that no one can help you recover a lost or forgotten passphrase. Keep in mind as well that any passphrase you enter will generate a completely different wallet, so make sure you are writing this down correctly and double checking your work. If you ever need to restore your wallet and you enter a passphrase that is off by even a single character, then it will generate a completely different wallet. After entering your passphrase, the app will ask you if you would like to download the recovery sheet.

The next screen will present your 12-word seed phrase. Do not share these words with anyone for any reason. These 12 words are a human-readable representation of your Bitcoin private key. Anyone who gains access to these words and passphrase can take your bitcoin. Do not take a screenshot of these words. Do not take a picture of these words. Do not save them in a text file or other digital format. Make sure that you write these down in order and then secure this seed phrase like it was cash, gold or jewelry. Many people choose to stamp their wallet recovery information (seed phrase and passphrase) into metal that can withstand extreme environments such as fire and flooding. You can find further information on this topic here.

Then you will be asked to confirm the passphrase you entered and then create a PIN. The PIN will be required to access the Samourai Wallet application. Use a strong PIN that is not easy to guess or the same as your primary phone access PIN.

Finally, you will be presented with your unique PayNym, you can claim it so that others can easily connect with you. Then you will be at the home screen, you can click on the blue + sign to see options for Whirlpool, send, receive and PayNym. The receive option for example is where you can generate new Bitcoin addresses.

Now you have a mobile Bitcoin wallet with built-in privacy tools that communicates over Tor. Congratulations, this is a great step along the path to sovereignty. Go out and earn some bitcoin in exchange for goods or services, buy some from an ATM or earn some mining rewards.

Once you have received bitcoin that you would like to mix, simply follow these steps from your mobile Samourai Wallet:

Now your resulting UTXOs from the TX0 will be registered as available inputs to new mixes. Once mixed, your UTXOs will be in your post-mix wallet. From there, anytime you open the Whirlpool client in your mobile Samourai Wallet application, those UTXOs will be registered as available inputs to mixes looking for free riders. The mixing stops once you close the mobile Whirlpool client.

Going a step further, there is a way to achieve 24/7 mixing, even when you close the application on your mobile. You can install the Whirlpool GUI on your desktop, connect it to your mobile wallet and the desktop GUI will keep your UTXOs mixing.

First, you will need to download the Whirlpool client appropriate for your operating system. The different options along with accompanying developer signatures can be found here and detailed installation instructions can be found here. Be aware that you will likely need to install OpenJDK as well which is covered in the installation instructions.

After installing the Whirlpool client application, launch it and then select the Standalone: Standalone GUI option. Then click on Continue.

Give the GUI some time, Tor connections can take a little while. You may need to try this a couple of times before the connection is made. But once the connection is made, you will be presented with a screen asking you to input the Whirlpool pairing payload from your Samourai Wallet. In Samourai Wallet, click on the three-dot menu in the upper right-hand corner and select Settings then Transactions then Pair to Whirlpool GUI at the bottom. This will display a QR code that contains your Whirlpool payload. Simply click on the QR code option in the desktop GUI and this should launch your webcam, then hold up the QR code on your mobile so the camera can scan it.

Once received, then click on Initialize GUI.

Next, enter the passphrase for your Samourai Wallet and click on Sign in.

Once signed in, you should be able to see your balances, mixing activity and then you can set targets for how many mixes you wish to achieve. You can even generate deposit addresses from the Whirlpool GUI.

Now when you initiate mixes from your mobile Samourai Wallet app, you can close the app afterwards and your UTXOs will continue to be registered as available inputs to mixes as free riders so long as your desktop client stays running. This configuration is using the default Samourai Wallet node as a backend. For network privacy, the communication happens over Tor. This can also be configured to use your own node instead.

This is a guest post by Econoalchemist. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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The Easiest Way To Whirlpool Your Bitcoin And Preserve Privacy - Bitcoin Magazine