In June, Bitcoin mempools have been emptying more frequently than usual over the past six months. This short-term trend of empty mempools follows bitcoin’s price drop down to roughly $30,000 through the end of May and early June.

  • Mempools have emptied 11 times so far in June.
  • June marks the most times mempools have emptied since November 2020 when mempools cleared over 40 times.
  • Mempools didn’t clear from mid December 2020 through the end of May 2021.
Bitcoin mempools have stayed full since mid December 2020.

On Twitter, a tracking bot called @mempool_alert is a handy tool for monitoring when mempools are emptying.

Read: What is a mempool?

Empty mempools coincide with a significant drop in hashrate as miners migrate out of China and Chinese officials continue announcing strict regulations of mining in various provinces. Usually declining hashrate correlates with an increase in the number of transactions sitting in a mempool. But hashrate has dropped along with daily bitcoin transactions, leaving mempools to empty more often than usual over the past several months.

Daily bitcoin transaction count since May 2018

Why do empty mempools matter? In short, it’s a signal of the sleepy state of the market.

The slowness of summer, the continued exodus of hashrate from China, and slump in the markets have together created a market where Bitcoin mempools are emptying frequently. When any or all of these dynamics change, mempools will likely start filling up again.