Just a week ahead of halving, the bitcoin network fees skyrocketed. In the past month, it has jumped over 650% and 924% in 2020 so far.

On April 30th, the Bitcoin average transaction fee spiked to $2.94 and is currently sitting at $1.80.

Source: Bitinfocharts

The last time the fees were this high was in July 2019. Actually, during the period of May to July 2019, the fees remained above $2, climbing to a high of $6.50.

At the same time, the price of BTC exploded to the 2019 high of $13,900 in late June.

The highest ever average transaction fee on the bitcoin network was on December 22, 2017, at $55.60 when the BTC price was around $15,000.

However, just like the fees, the unconfirmed transactions reached 74.5 million, the day bitcoin network fee jumped higher. This much of unconfirmed transactions were last seen in November 2019.

Source: Blockchain

Other Factors: HODLing strong

Just a week before the halving, bitcoin fundamentals are surging. Besides price and unconfirmed transactions, the hash rate of the world made a new all-time high and the network difficulty is already closer to the peak of 16.5 trillion (from March 10-24 this year) at 15.96 trillion.

Another positive momentum was seen in the open interest on regulated bitcoin futures platform, CME Group.

It surged to a new yearly high on Friday, back to the pre-crash levels, just above the level seen in February.

“This is the highest level seen since the price peak in 2019 and shows that professional traders are coming back into the bitcoin market,” said Arcane Research.

Bitcoin perpetual swaps volume also saw a big recovery last week, recording an increase of a staggering 255%.

Meanwhile, the majority of the bitcoin addresses are HODLing strong. Those addresses with a holding period of over a year are HODLers and the number of long-term BTC holders has increased to its highest level in 52 weeks.

“As of April 29, 19.07 million addresses have been holding 10.87 million BTC for over a year. This number is 25.8% higher than the same date last year,” noted IntoTheBlock.

Moreover, from the 30.2 million BTC addresses with a non-zero balance, 63.19% of them hold 8.24 million BTC for more than a year, 28.43% hold 4.42 million BTC from 1 to 12 months, and 8.38% holds 2.4 million BTC less than a month.

Price-wise bitcoin couldn’t sustain the $9,000 level and is currently trading around $8,750. However, as per The Glassnode Compass, “over the last few days, BTC has been moving strongly towards the bullish quadrant.”