144 BITCOIN BLOCKS ON OCT. 20, 2026 HELD 709,304 TRANSACTIONS — 73% MORE THAN A YEAR EARLIER — MINERS GOT 2.25 BTC IN FEES, DOWN FROM 2.87

Here's a check anyone can run. Take the 144 blocks from 972,238 to 972,381, mined on October 20, 2026 between 01:30 and 21:30 UTC. They hold 709,304 transactions and paid miners 2.25117474 BTC in fees. Now take the 144 blocks from 919,876 to 920,019, mined on October 20, 2025. Those held 409,664 transactions and paid 2.87040912 BTC.

That's 73% more transactions for more than a fifth less in fees. The average fee per transaction fell from 700.7 sats to 317.4. I pulled the blocks from mempool.space and checked them against the coinbase outputs on blockstream.info. Both give the same totals to the sat.

Fees were 0.50% of what miners earned in the newer blocks, down from 0.63% a year earlier. The subsidy paid the rest, 3.125 BTC a block. At block 972,381 the mempool held 51,466 waiting transactions offering about 0.13 sat per vbyte on average, and mempool.space's estimate for the next block was 1 sat per vbyte.

One day against one day is a snapshot, not a trend. But it's one you don't have to take on trust. It also sharpens an old question. The subsidy halves at block 1,050,000, 77,619 blocks from 972,381, and fees are supposed to carry more of the load over time. In this sample, use went up and fees went down. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $82,908.