The Bitcoin mempool is full, currently 45 blocks worth, and mining power has been taken offline during a time when it’s very lucrative which you’d have to conclude is suspicious. Supposedly the transaction increases are due to Ordinal Inscriptions, a form of NFTs and brand new technology for Bitcoin. I’ve never seen the appeal of NFTs, but its conceivable that there could be good future use cases. Consequently, you can’t even get a low fee transaction included into the mempool right now even if you don’t mind waiting, and if you need one to complete soon you’ll have to pay a high fee to the miners (230 sat per Byte). Eventually people will get tired of paying so much to experiment with the new technology, and below I’ll include my own personal Bitcoin Explorer screenshots from my Bitcoin/Lightning node along with a glimpse at the mining summary.
