Coinbase launches Bitcoin batching amid market selloff

The price of Bitcoin plunged again this morning, as coronavirus fears spread across the United States. Total market capitalization for all cryptocurrencies has been slashed by more than a quarter—and continues to tumble.

But that didn’t stop leading US crypto exchange Coinbase from announcing a new feature on its platform: the long-awaited “Bitcoin transaction batching.”

The company said the feature will lower network fees for users and free up space on the Bitcoin blockchain. “This enables the network to increase transaction throughput, and helps to increase scalability,” the company said in a blog. 

Bitcoin transaction batching works by packaging transactions into one block, instead of a single transaction taking up a block all to itself. “A single transaction that fulfills multiple user send requests occupies less space in each block than each being processed individually,” the company said. “Put another way: the whole is less than the sum of the parts when…