BitMEX Is Making Bitcoin Network More Expensive for Everyone, Researcher Finds

Every day, around mid-morning New York time, the average fee bitcoin users worldwide pay to send the cryptocurrency spikes for up to an hour, then returns to normal. A respected researcher thinks he’s found the reason: BitMEX.

If the crypto derivatives exchange used more efficient technologies when broadcasting transactions, users could save as much as roughly 1.7 bitcoin (worth more than $15,000 at press time) in fees every day, or about 7 percent of total daily fees paid, argues pseudonymous bitcoin engineer 0xb10c.

“The daily broadcast has a significant impact on the Bitcoin network and user fees,” 0xb10c wrote in a recent report. 

Nearly every time a user sends a bitcoin transaction, they tack on a (usually) small fee along with it. Fees fluctuate all the time, depending on how much congestion is in the network. That’s because there is limited space for transactions to go through. If there are too many transactions sent at the same time, miners will prioritize ushering through…