Bitcoin transaction fees at 3-year lows, a signal of bear market?

Although the cryptocurrency market has turned green overall today, some crypto experts are seeing signals that the current bearish trend may persist for some time, at least for the market’s flagship digital asset – Bitcoin (BTC).

Specifically, Bitcoin transaction fees are currently at historically low levels, ranging at the same levels last witnessed in September 2018, “right before the Nov 2018 capitulation,” according to a tweet published on June 8 by the prominent crypto analyst Ali Martinez.

Indeed, the chart he posted alongside supports the information from the tweet, in which Martinez also states that “transaction fees tend to rise in an uptrend/bull market,” indicating that we could be in for more bearishness looking ahead.

These developments are happening at the moment when Segregated Witness (SegWit) – a change in the transaction format, payment batching, and Lightning Network “are in full effect on the Bitcoin network.”

Negative sentiment but a sign of hope?

At the same time, the relatively negative Bitcoin sentiment among holders has also been observed in a new Santiment chart shared by a Twitter crypto analytics profile cafe.springer on June 8. However, the tweet also states that:

“This can sometimes be a recipe for unexpected swings to the upside especially with the current recipe of high leverage ratio + over average negative funding rate.”

Bitcoin still dominates market capitalization

Meanwhile, Finbold reported that Bitcoin’s market capitalization dominance has neared a year-high of 47.52% on June 6, which is its highest market share since July 2021. Notably, this is the opposite of Ethereum (ETH), whose market cap reached a new low of 17.74%m the lowest since October 2021.

Still, the price of Bitcoin is not experiencing any meaningful upward movements. As things stand, it is trading at $30,446.23, which is up 2.80% on the day, but a loss of 3.71% across the previous week, according to CoinMarketCap data. Its market cap is currently $581.96 billion.

Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.