Bitcoin Fee Rate (P90)¶
What It Measures¶
Bitcoin Fee Rate (P90) shows the 90th-percentile fee rate paid by Bitcoin transactions on a given day.
It answers the upper-market pricing question:
How aggressive were transactions near the higher end of the block-space bidding distribution?
A 90th-percentile value means that 90% of transactions paid this fee rate or less, while the upper 10% paid more.
The unit is sat/vB.
This is the high-end companion to the canonical Median Fee Rate.
How To Use It¶
This metric is useful when the goal is to read upper-end fee competition rather than the typical clearing level.
It helps answer questions such as:
- How expensive did higher-priority block-space bids become?
- Is the upper end of the fee market tightening faster than the median?
- Are more aggressive users paying sharply above the typical fee rate?
It should be read with:
- Median Fee Rate
- Fee Rate (P99)
Within the fee-rate family:
- Median Fee Rate is the canonical baseline,
- P90 shows the high-end competitive layer,
- P99 shows the extreme edge of urgency.
What It Can Say About Price And Market Regime¶
Rising P90 fee rate¶
When P90 rises, transactions near the top of the fee market are bidding more aggressively for inclusion. That often happens when urgency increases before pressure fully spreads into the center of the distribution.
Divergence from median¶
If P90 rises faster than the median, the upper fee market is heating up earlier than the typical one. That often signals growing congestion or stronger competition among urgent users.
Why P90 matters¶
P90 is the best first tail metric for fee-rate analysis. It shows whether the higher-priority layer of the market is tightening meaningfully without jumping straight to the very extreme edge.
Historical Background¶
As fee-rate analysis matured, percentile views became standard because the fee market is not one-dimensional. The median shows the center. P90 shows the upper competitive tier. This split is especially useful when fee pressure begins to build unevenly.