Introducing Surge Pricing

You may have noticed that network fees for BTC, ETH, and particularly ERC20 tokens have gone completely off the rails lately. As I write this, the most recent USDT transfer we sent out cost us $60.

Newton has, historically, covered network fees — however when we started doing this it was rare for us to pay more than $1 per transaction. This is obviously not sustainable at current fee levels. To combat this, we've rolled out a new program that we're calling "Surge Pricing".

How surge pricing works

Basically, we'll cover the first $5 in network fees for crypto withdrawals, and anything beyond that will come out of the withdrawal amount. It's important to note that:

1. You'll only pay the actual cost (minus the $5), no markup
2. You will be able to see the cost breakdown before you confirm your order

When network fees are at normal (historical) levels, withdrawals will still be free. When markets are exploding like they are today and fees shoot up, you'll be presented with a clear summary of the network fees before you confirm a transaction, but we'll still help a little with the fees.

We welcome your feedback

Seriously. Any and all feedback is welcome. We've created a post on our subreddit where we encourage you to contribute your thoughts. Our goal is to keep providing a great, low-cost service, but obviously we can't continue to completely cover fees when they rise to such unprecedented levels.

We're hopeful that layer 2 solutions will start to take off this year and transaction fees will fall dramatically. Until then, we'll continue to find solutions to ease the burden.

Happy trading!

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