AntPool mines the second-highest transaction count block in Bitcoin history, with packing fees of only about $180.

November 10, according to CoinDesk, AntPool mined Bitcoin block 974961 last Saturday, packaging a total of 11,255 transactions. According to mempool.space data, this number is 984 transactions short of the network record of 12,239 set by block 367853 mined by F2Pool on August 1, 2015, making it the second-highest transaction count block in Bitcoin network history. These transactions collectively paid 240,533 satoshis in fees, which at Sunday's Bitcoin price of approximately $75,800 amounts to about $180. AntPool's total revenue from this block was approximately $237,000, almost entirely from the fixed 3.125 BTC block subsidy.

mempool.space rounds the median fee rate for this block to 0. CoinDesk sampling shows that in the middle of the block there is a batch of transactions approximately 80 bytes in size, each paying only 1 satoshi in fees, below Bitcoin Core version 29.1's default relay threshold of 0.1 sat/vB. This threshold is a node policy rather than a consensus rule, and blocks containing lower-fee transactions remain valid. On November 4, block 974557 mined by AntPool also packaged 10,573 transactions with fees of approximately $110.

The record block in 2015 paid 0.22582926 BTC in fees, approximately 94 times that of this instance; at Bitcoin's price of approximately $285 at the time, the fees amounted to about $64, and the 25 BTC block subsidy was worth about $7,100. The Bitcoin block subsidy is expected to halve to 1.5625 BTC around April 2028 at block 1050000. CoinDesk notes that the current fees amount to less than 0.2% of the subsidy reduction miners will face after this halving.