Six weeks at the floor

4 October 2026 · Block 969,839 · Dubai

Every number in this brief was generated from our own Bitcoin node — bitcoind, Fulcrum, and mempool running on hardware we control. No third-party data vendors. You can verify all of it against your own node.

The Week in Numbers

Metric	Value
Price	$85,268 · AED 313,147 (+0.5% w/w)
Blocks mined (7d)	1,002 (−15 w/w)
Fee to confirm next block	2 sat/vB (30-min: 1 · economy: 1 — unchanged)
Weekly median block fee	1 sat/vB (sixth week)
Mempool backlog	74,435 tx · 40.7 vMB (+4.4% by count · +5.2% by weight w/w)
Hashrate	945.3 EH/s (+0.2% vs 30-day avg · −1.1% w/w)
Difficulty	Last: −0.03% (we projected −1.96%) · 7.1% into new epoch · est. −6.09% around Sun 18 Oct
Miner revenue (7d)	3,173.9 BTC — 99.25% subsidy, 0.75% fees

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Fee & Mempool Read: six weeks at the floor

The cheap window is still open. The median fee across this week's 1,002 blocks was 1 sat/vB — the sixth week running — and the node's recommendations did not move: 2 sat/vB for the next block, 1 for anything that can wait half an hour.

Last week we showed that most of the backlog pays less than the quoted 1 sat/vB floor. Run the same sum this week and the gap widened. The queue grew — 40.7 vMB, up 5.2% by weight, 74,435 transactions, up 4.4% — but the fees in it fell 17.4%, to 0.0606 BTC: 6.06 million sats, about AED 19,000 for the entire backlog. If every byte paid at least 1 sat/vB, that queue would carry at least 40.7 million sats. So at most 6.1 vMB — about six blocks — pays 1 sat/vB or more, and at least 85% of the backlog pays under it. Last week that line ahead of you was about seven blocks; this week it is about six. The mempool is getting longer at the back, not the front.

The top end was a little livelier than last week, but still tame: a typical block's 90th percentile held at 3 sat/vB, and the spikiest block of the week printed a 90th percentile of 20 sat/vB, against 12 last week. No repeat of the 444 we flagged three issues ago.

What to do with this: same as last week. 1 sat/vB for anything that isn't urgent, 2 for the next block. If you have been meaning to consolidate UTXOs, sweep an old wallet, or pull coins off an exchange, this is the sixth consecutive week the network has made it cheap — and these windows have never lasted forever. Set the fee yourself rather than leaving it to someone else's batching policy.

(How to consolidate safely — including the privacy trade-offs of merging UTXOs — is still on the list for a future issue.)

Mining & Security: the cut that wasn't

First, the scorecard. Last week we projected the 3 October adjustment at −1.96% and said to expect it "within a point or so of −2%". It landed at −0.03% — flat. We missed by about two points, outside the range we gave. The reason is visible in the block count: the last 859 blocks of the epoch came in faster than its first 1,157, pulling the epoch average back to roughly ten minutes. Over the full week the network found 1,002 blocks — an average of just over ten minutes each, which is what an unchanged difficulty looks like.

So treat the new number with the same caution. We are 7.1% into the new epoch — 143 blocks in, 1,873 to go — and the estimate reads −6.09% at block 971,712, around 13:00 Dubai time on Sunday 18 October. Blocks have averaged 12m 03s so far. That is almost exactly where we stood one epoch ago: at 6.9% through, 12m 21s blocks, projecting −7.27%. That one finished at −0.03%. The last early reading was loud and wrong; we will have a better one next week.

Hashrate does not argue for a big cut either. It printed 945.3 EH/s, down 1.1% on last week's series high but 0.2% above its 30-day average of 943.7. Our six readings: 912.4, 929.6, 942.6, 915.0, 955.5, 945.3 — a gentle climb with noise, not a retreat. Price was flat, up 0.5%.

Fees did their part again: 23.88 BTC of the 3,173.9 BTC earned this week, 0.75% of miner revenue — a new high for our series for the second week running (0.62, 0.62, 0.59, 0.60, 0.69, 0.75), and still under one percent. That rise came with 4.0% fewer transactions confirmed (4.51 million), so it is the top of the mempool paying a little more, not a fee market forming. The security budget remains the 3.125 BTC subsidy.

Pool concentration: Foundry USA (25.8%), AntPool (21.0%) and F2Pool (16.2%) — 63.0% of blocks between three coordinators. Our readings: 59.3%, 58.5%, 58.4%, 60.6%, 61.3%, now 63.0% — a third straight rise, a third week above 60, and a new series high. This week's movers were Foundry (+1.6 points) and F2Pool (+1.4), while AntPool gave back 1.3. The top two sit at 46.8%. Below them ViaBTC edged up to 9.8% and SpiderPool slipped to 7.2%. The standing caveat: pool ≠ owner of the hashrate, and miners can switch — but three weeks of the same direction is now a trend in our data, and we will keep printing it.

The UAE Angle

At AED 313,147 per coin, an AED 1,000 monthly DCA buys ~319k sats this week, barely changed from ~321k. Five issues: 341k, 355k, 338k, 321k, 319k. A quiet week for price is a good week to notice the point of the plan — the number you get is mostly decided by how long you keep doing it, not which week you start.

Withdrawals cost what they did. A typical single-input self-custody withdrawal (~150 vB) costs about 150 sats at 1 sat/vB and 300 at 2 — roughly AED 0.47 and AED 0.94. Under a dirham, sixth week running. If your exchange lets you choose the fee, 1 sat/vB is fine for a withdrawal that can wait; with only about six blocks of paying traffic ahead of you, the queue in front is short.

The comparison that matters hasn't moved either. Across 2,270 fills we measured, buying directly in BTC/AED cost +63 bps over reference against +19 bps via USDT (100 bps = 1%). On an AED 10,000 buy that 44 bps gap is AED 44 — about ninety times a 1 sat/vB withdrawal. Six weeks of near-free block space have made the network fee irrelevant to your all-in cost; the rail you buy through still isn't.

For the diary: the next difficulty adjustment is projected around Sunday midday Dubai time, 18 October. It changes nothing for a holder. If you run or host machines in the region, last epoch's lesson applies — the early −7% became zero. Don't plan on the −6% until it is a lot closer than two weeks out.

Go deeper

A 1 sat/vB withdrawal costs under half a dirham — the 44 bps rail spread on an AED 10,000 buy costs about ninety times that, and we measured it. The Real Cost of Buying Bitcoin in the UAE — 2,270 measured fills, direct BTC/AED +63 bps vs +19 bps via USDT. Free excerpt: https://bitcoiners.ae/intel/uae-rails-report · Full PDF, AED 149: https://buy.polar.sh/polar_cl_fXKk8gcM8YVJQ2tG3HXcAnp6cQnLGNJ5Vhhyc0djHk3

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Generated from our own node at block 969,839 · 4 Oct 2026, 16:00 GST.