Ethereum is burning next to nothing. In the 24 hours to Sunday evening, October 25, exactly 9.67 ETH in base fees left circulation for good, according to data from ultrasound.money, worth around $22,600. Over the same period, 2,956 new ETH were created. On balance, supply grew by 2,946 ether in a single day.
The price says little about any of this. Ether traded at $2,341.78 or €2,090.31 on Sunday evening, 1.7 percent above the previous day, after slipping below the $2,300 mark on Saturday. Over 30 days it is still down 12.8 percent. Where the price can go over a horizon of months is something our Ethereum price prediction puts in context.
What makes this Sunday interesting is not the price but what sits underneath it. Fees on Ethereum have fallen so low that the mechanism meant to make ether scarcer since 2021 barely works in arithmetic terms. That has two concrete consequences: one for valuation, and one for the fees you pay today.
The base fee stands at 0.044 gwei
Gwei is the usual unit for Ethereum fees, a billionth of an ether. For this article we read the base fee straight from the blockchain through a public endpoint, on Sunday at around 16:51 UTC at block 26,270,970. Across the last 20 blocks it ranged between 0.0426 and 0.0556 gwei. The 24-hour average comes to 0.0444 gwei, measured across 1,441 data points, with a daily low of 0.0287 and a peak of 0.1652 gwei.
For context: in the weeks after fee burning started, typical base fees sat between 20 and 100 gwei, and far higher at the peaks. What the network sees today is roughly three orders of magnitude smaller.
Utilisation explains it. Every block has a gas target set at half its capacity. When demand falls below that, the protocol lowers the base fee block by block automatically. Our measurement across the last 20 blocks produced an average utilisation of 45.1 percent. The network is running below its target, which is precisely why the fee keeps falling.
One objection is obvious: Sunday evening is always quiet. True, but it does not carry far enough. Over 30 days the burn adds up to 2,018 ETH, around $5.24 million. This is not a weekend effect but the normal state of this autumn.
What EIP-1559 burns and what issuance sets against it
Since August 2021 an Ethereum fee has had two parts. The protocol sets the base fee itself, and that part is destroyed rather than paid out to anyone. On top sits a voluntary tip that goes to the validator proposing the block. Only the first part shrinks supply.
Issuance pulls the other way. Anyone who stakes ether and secures the network receives new ether in return. That reward runs regardless of how busy the blockchain is, and it keeps flowing even when nobody sends a transaction.
9.7 ether burned against 2,966 newly created
The two figures can be set against each other. Supply rose between Saturday and Sunday, each at 16:44 UTC, from 122,158,084.66 to 122,161,040.80 ether. That is 2,956.14 ether net. Add the 9.67 burned ether back in, and gross issuance comes to roughly 2,966 ether.
That yields a number which describes the state of things better than any chart: the burn currently covers 0.33 percent of new issuance. Of every 1,000 ether freshly created, just over three disappear again. The remaining 997 stay.
13.61 gwei marks the break-even point
There is a level at which the two cancel out. ultrasound.money publishes it as a threshold, and on Sunday it stood at 13.607 gwei. Only once the base fee stays above that value does Ethereum burn more than it pays out, and supply shrinks again.
From 0.0444 gwei, that is 306 times away. The gap does not close through a rising price, because the threshold depends on demand for block space rather than on the price. What it would take is a return of activity to the main network, and that is exactly what has been migrating for years to the layer-2 networks, which buy block space in bundles and therefore more cheaply.
Supply is growing at 0.88 percent a year
Extrapolate the daily figure and around 1.08 million ether arrive over twelve months, or 0.88 percent of a circulating supply of 122.16 million. The measured periods support that order of magnitude: a gain of 20,607 ether over seven days and 87,208 ether over 30 days, equivalent to 0.071 percent a month.
That is a long way from the double-digit inflation rates of some altcoins, and it is lower than Bitcoin’s. It is also the opposite of what the idea of money growing scarcer promises. Investors who rest their case for ether on this mechanism are resting it on something that is not currently running.
A transfer currently costs less than a cent
The second consequence concerns your own fees, and it is the more pleasant one. A simple ether transfer needs 21,000 gas. At a base fee of 0.0444 gwei and a tip of 0.0046 gwei, the average from our measurement, it costs around 0.0000010 ether. At a price of $2,341.78 that works out at about 0.24 US cents.
For a token transfer, reckon with three times that. Around 65,000 gas gives roughly 0.0000032 ether, or 0.75 cents. Even a more demanding interaction with a contract stays in single-digit cents on this calculation.
If you have put off moving coins in recent years because each operation cost $30 or $50 in fees, there is a window open now. Three jobs benefit in particular: withdrawing from an exchange into self-custody, consolidating balances scattered across several addresses, and cleaning up old approvals granted to contracts you no longer use.
Your wallet’s fee estimate shows three things
Every common wallet displays the estimated fee before you confirm. Three things are worth a look. First, the total shown in euros rather than the gwei figure, because only that tells you what the operation costs you. Second, the default setting for the tip: many wallets apply a standard value that sits well above what is needed in these market conditions. Third, the timing, because the peak in our measurement reached 0.1652 gwei, four times the daily low.
A word of caution unrelated to the fee question: moving into self-custody shifts responsibility entirely to you. If you use a hardware wallet, test recovery with a small amount before the whole balance makes the trip. A recovery phrase written down incorrectly otherwise only shows up at the moment it is needed.
Holding period and the tax office: moving coins is not a sale
For investors in Germany there is a tax question attached to this, and the answer is a welcome one. Private disposals under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act require a disposal to take place. A transfer between two addresses that both belong to you is not one. It triggers no taxable event and does not interrupt the one-year holding period.
What matters is documentation. Record the date, the amount and the transaction hash, together with evidence that both addresses can be attributed to you. Without that evidence the tax office can treat the arrival at the destination address as an acquisition, and the period starts again from scratch. The fee itself is a side note in that calculation, and at 0.24 cents effectively zero.
Staking ether for a yield is a different matter. Anyone running balances through a staking platform earns income that has to be recorded separately, and depending on the arrangement the holding period applies differently there. That is a topic of its own and does not belong in the same calculation.
What has changed since yesterday
Our article on Saturday focused on the funding rate for leveraged ether buys, which had fallen to zero for the first time since October 13. The price then stood at around $2,300. Ether has since gained 1.7 percent to $2,341.78, with a daily low of $2,313.32 and a high of $2,368.07.
The $2,311 mark identified yesterday as the dividing line has therefore held. On the upside the daily high of $2,368 is the next hurdle, while on the downside the daily low of $2,313 marks the line below which yesterday’s situation applies again. Ether remains 52.7 percent away from its all-time high of $4,946.05 set on August 24, 2025.
The fee side is new, and it points in a different direction from yesterday’s derivatives data: a vanished leverage premium is a short-term signal, a burn that has been extinguished for weeks is a structural one.
Our assessment of the fee situation
In the view of our editorial team, the scarcity narrative around ether is not currently supported by the numbers. The evidence for that: the 0.33 percent of new issuance covered by the burn, the distance from 0.0444 to 13.607 gwei, and the measured supply increase of 87,208 ether over 30 days. Against it stands the point that low fees are not a defect but the declared aim of the layer-2 strategy. A network settling transactions for fractions of a cent is more usable than one charging $50. The burn was never the product; it was a side effect of scarce block space.
What follows: holders of ether should examine the reasoning behind that position. If it rests solely on the argument that supply is shrinking, it rests on a figure that has shown the opposite for weeks. If it rests on usage, on staking income or on the expectation that activity will eventually find its way back to the main network, this measurement leaves it untouched. None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell, and a total loss remains possible with any cryptocurrency.
Fee window: a transfer costs less than a cent
Three things follow from today’s position:
- Clear the moves you have postponed. At 0.24 cents per transfer, the cost argument that stood for years against consolidating balances or withdrawing from an exchange disappears. Test recovery with a small amount first.
- Keep the holding period in mind. A transfer between your own addresses is not a sale. Record the date, the amount, the transaction hash and the attribution of both addresses, otherwise the one-year period may start again.
- Watch the fee threshold. 13.61 gwei is the point from which Ethereum burns more than it pays out. While the base fee sits two orders of magnitude below that, supply grows, and anyone relying on staking income is helping to fund that growth.
(As of October 25, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
Be the first to comment