According to the Galaxy Digital report, the daily fees for transactions in the Bitcoin network have fallen by more than 80% from April. Since August 2025, almost 15% of blocks are “free”, which means that they are mined with minimal transactional fees or without any transaction fees, only one satoshi on a virtual byte or less.
Lower Bitcoin (BTC) fees for transactions benefit users, but reduce miners’ revenues, increasing concerns about the sustainable development of the long -term network security model.
The motivational structure of Bitcoin consists in compensating miners for their work through block prizes and transaction fees. But thanks to the prizes crossing the middle of April 2024 to 3.125 BTC for the block, miners are strongly based on the market and dries.
“When the block prizes are shrinking, more weight will fall on transactions,” said Cointelegraph, Pierre Samaties, business director at Dfinity Fundect. “If the use is not growing, this base and the guarantees weaken. The bandwidth is necessary so that the system can defend itself.”
Related: Bitcoin 2025 Builders predict that DEFI will remove conventional finances
Bitcoin Onchain Activity
Bitcoin’s activity has significantly slowed down since the decline in non -monetary trends, such as boards and runes. Galaxy report notes These transactions OP_RETURN, used firmly during the boom of ordinance 2024, currently constitute only 20% of the daily volume, compared to over 60% at the peak.
Meanwhile, alternative layers 1, such as Solana, gain adhesion for high -frequency uses such as memecoins and NFT. In addition, ETF growth on Bitcoin Spot, which currently have over 1.3 million BTC, has pushed more offchaines of BTC volume, limiting traffic that would otherwise generate fees.
The Bitcoin fee market is pliant from design, which means that the fees are growing when the demand increases and falls when it slows down activity. However, if the demand is shrinking, miners may remain too miniature to secure the network. Galaxy noticed that almost 50% of the last blocks were not full and MEmpool’s activity remains tardy.
Against this background, a recent hope appears in the form of BTCFI, Bitcoin-Native Defi. Unlike DEFI on Ethereum or Solan, which uses bright contracts on these chains, BTCFI uses Bitcoin as a basic resource when building financial applications, such as loans, trading and generation of crops on layers or protocols that affect the Bitcoin network directly.
“Each BTCFI action requires Bitcoin transfer,” explained Samaties. “Movement drives calculations, calculates the block space, and the space has costs.” In other words, if BTCFI is growing, as well as revenues from activity and fee.
Related: The future of DEFI is not on Ethereum – it is on Bitcoin
From digital gold to financial primitive
Samaties noticed that Bitcoin has long been seen as “digital gold”, a store worth more than useful assets. However, he sees that he transforms into something more fundamental: financial primitive.
“The financial primitive is that programmers can use to design flows, tools and logic,” he said. “In this role, Bitcoin becomes more than an asset for storage, becomes a programmable component in wider financial systems.”
Julian Mezger, marketing director of Liquidium, also said that infrastructure improvements are a scene of change. “The last five years have transformed Bitcoin infrastructure from a simple layer of settlement into a multi-layer ecosystem,” he said. “Now we see the basics of real Bitcoins defo-priests.”
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