Top 5 Crypto News Of The Day: Bitcoin Fees, Ether ETF, And More

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Here are the top crypto news of the day curated by CoinChapter.com.

Bitcoin Fees Soar to Record Highs of $128 on Halving Day

Bitcoin transaction fees experienced extreme volatility around the latest halving event on April 20th. On halving day, average fees spiked to a record $128 as the new Runes protocol for minting tokens on Bitcoin caused massive network congestion. Miners received a windfall, with one miner earning over $2.4 million in fees from the halving block alone.

The debut of Runes protocol drove up Bitcoin transaction fees to record levels. Source: Y Charts

However, just one day later on April 21st, fees had crashed back down to around $8-10 for normal transactions.

Hong Kong Asset Manager Reveals Proposed Bitcoin and Ether ETF Fees

Hong Kong investment firm Victory Securities has disclosed the proposed fees for its planned Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs). If approved, the ETFs would charge 0.5%-1% for primary market transactions with a $850 minimum, and 0.15%-0.25% for secondary trading.

These rates are comparable to spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, which range from 0.19% to around 0.9% in annual fees. The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) charges a higher 1.5% fee.

Another Top Crypto News of the Day: Bankman-Fried Cooperates in FTX Celebrity Lawsuit

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has agreed to help investors suing celebrity promoters of FTX in exchange for dropping civil claims against himself. Celebrities like Tom Brady, Larry David and others are accused of improperly promoting FTX’s unregistered crypto securities.

Bankman-Fried is hoping his cooperation helps plaintiffs recover some losses from the exchange’s November 2022 collapse. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud earlier this year.

Solana Presale Memecoins Abandoned After Raising Millions

According to blockchain analyst ZachXBT, creators abandoned at least 12 Solana-based memecoin projects within the last month. All projects had raised a combined $26.7 million from investors through controversial presale funding rounds.

One of the most egregious cases involves the project “I like this coin” with the ticker LIKE. Its anonymous founder, pokeee.eth, managed to raise 52,220 SOL worth around $7.7 million at current prices from the presale. The memecoin launched on March 17th with an initial market cap of $577 million. However, the coin’s value plummeted by over 90% within just 8 hours of trading.

Playing Classic Games on Bitcoin Becomes a Reality

The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol has allowed developers to inscribe over 65 million pieces of media onto the blockchain, including playable retro video games. Projects like Pizza Ninja have inscribed full emulators for classic consoles like Super Nintendo and N64 that can be accessed by purchasing certain Ordinals assets.

The recreations require users to supply their own game ROMs. They also offer a novel way to potentially preserve access to classic games on the immutable Bitcoin blockchain.

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