An Attack on Bitcoin? Transaction fees are increasing
The increase in transaction fees on the Bitcoin network that started on Saturday (May 6) and continued on Sunday (May 7) is still ongoing. Meanwhile, some Bitcoin maximalists claim this is an attack to scare retail investors away.
An Attack on Bitcoin? Transaction fees are increasing
The increase in Bitcoin transaction fees and Binance’s two suspensions and resumption of BTC withdrawals caused a mild panic in the crypto markets. While the largest cryptocurrency fell below $28,000 in the morning hours of Monday (May 8), the fall for altcoins was much bigger. Pepe Coin , the star of the last week and especially on Friday (May 5) when the Binance listing came down, fell more than 50 percent.
Although there has been an unprecedented congestion on the Bitcoin network lately, experts believe it could be a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. As is known, this style of attack is usually carried out by sending a large number of requests to the system. The goal here is to damage a network. Here some bitcoin maximalists now agree that this is just such a type of attack.
What are the long-term effects of the DoS attack?
The user named @proofofjogi , one of the holders of this widely talked about claim on Twitter, explained that this was done to alienate retail investors: «Bitcoin is currently under a DoS attack. The attackers are playing the trump card of high transaction fees to anger and hit retail investors. The mechanism seems to be supported by «shitcoins» in ordinals. We are now in the “they will fight you later” phase of the bitcoin era.”
As is well known, the Bitcoin maximalists and supporters divide the Bitcoin period into four phases. The first of these is described as “They don’t take you seriously”, the second as “They laugh at you”, the third as “They fight you” and the fourth as “You win”. Journalist Dylan LeClair, another maximalist, also said it was an attack. However, this will not damage the system in the long term: “This is a very clear attack. But nothing will change in the long run. The miners also thank the attackers».
On the other hand, the data from mempool.space should not be ignored. Because: The congestion and density in the Bitcoin network continues in the same way. Currently (as of Monday (May 8), 2:10 p.m.) there are over 436,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting in the network. The average fee for high-priority transactions is reported to be just over $12.60. This means miners make more money for each confirmed transaction. Certainly beneficial for miners who have come back from the brink of bankruptcy in recent months. And some of them even took off their chips. Some people only breathed a sigh of relief when the Bitcoin price rose. Now, these events represent an opportunity to make significant profits.
