AntPool Mines Bitcoin’s Second Busiest Block Ever, but Fees Barely Register

AntPool mined a block on Saturday that held 11,255 transactions, making it the second most crowded block in Bitcoin’s history. Only 984 transactions separated it from the record of 12,239 set by F2Pool in August 2015. Yet the fees were tiny: about 240,533 satoshis, or roughly $180 at Sunday’s price near $75,800. The miner’s total payout was around $237,000, almost all of it the fixed 3.125 BTC subsidy. It was also the second packed block in a week, after a November 4 block carrying 10,573 transactions and paying about $110 in fees.

Why the Bitcoin Block Fees Were So Low

Users normally bid for space by paying a rate per virtual byte, but the median rate in this block rounds to zero. A sample of transactions from the middle showed a run of 80 byte transfers, each paying a single satoshi and carrying a small data output. That sits below the default relay floor set in Bitcoin Core 29.1, though the floor is only a node policy, so such blocks remain valid. Public data does not show how these transactions reached AntPool. By comparison, the 2015 record block collected about 0.226 BTC in fees, around 94 times more, worth about $64 back then.

Miner Income, Difficulty and the 2028 Halving

What Lower Fees Mean for Miners

Miners currently earn about $32 per petahash per day, and difficulty is projected to drop about 4% around November 13 after increases of 5.92% and 5.54% in October. The subsidy will halve to 1.5625 BTC at block 1,050,000, expected around April 2028. Saturday’s fees would cover less than two tenths of 1% of what miners stand to lose at that halving.