On-Chain Bitcoin Transaction Count “Inches Upward”
With another week, comes another insightful report from Diar, the crypto industry’s leading newsletter. In the publication’s most recent edition, which was released on Monday morning, Bitcoin (BTC), the so-called “king” of the crypto market, evidently remained a topic of focus.
We’ve published our latest issue for your read:
Grayscale Sees Record Inflows, But Interest Slightly Wanes#Crypto Exchange Funding Passes $1Bn Mark Post Coinbase Raise#Bitcoin Hashrate Stalls, Transactions Inch Up
-Op-Ed by Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson)https://t.co/JPGwQXd9XR— Diar (@DiarNewsletter) November 5, 2018
Interestingly, Diar’s researchers touched on a lesser-known side of Bitcoin — the number on-chain transactions, which have seemingly waned and fallen to multi-year lows during 2018’s dismal bear market. Citing data compiled by Coinmetrics and Blockchain, Diar’s authors noted that the number of on-chain BTC transactions throughout Q3 has breached a quarterly year-to-date high, ousting Q1 by a relatively mere 70,000 transactions.
As seen in the chart above, the total number of BTC transactions in the past three months amounted to 20 million, which is up 13.6% from Q2’s 17.6 million, potentially indicating that consumers are finally finding reasons to transact BTC in their day-to-day yet again — a rather bullish sign in and of itself. Interestingly, since February, the number of BTC transactions has been on a near-continual uptrend, with month-over-month growth often surpassing 5%.
This rising transaction volume could be potentially attributed to the Bitcoin Network’s dropping average transaction fee, which can be likely chalked up to the rise in adoption of Segwit-enabled addresses and the Lightning Network.
But, as always, it isn’t all cut and dried. While transaction count is undoubtedly on the rise, the estimated U.S. dollar value and the number of BTC in all of the network’s transactions has fallen considerably, at -37% and -61% respectively. To put the latter figure into perspective, during Q1, $167 billion worth of BTC was shuttled through the blockchain, while Bitcoin “only” saw $65.38 billion worth of transactions in the past fiscal quarter.
Adding fuel to the anti-Bitcoin flame, Diar also noted that the “king” could come under pressure in the digital payments realm due to the arrival of stablecoins, some of which have been backed by major platforms, like Coinbase and Circle, that have the capital and resources to “release man power for infrastructure development, marketing, merchant onboarding, lobbying, and compliance.”
Regardless, as noted by Diar, the bottom line is that there have still been $315 billion in this year’s BTC-related transactions so far, which isn’t a sum to scoff at, to say the least.
The Growth Of Bitcoin’s Hashrate Slows
However, it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, so to speak, as additional data gathered by Diar also indicated that the Bitcoin Network’s growth cycle has somewhat stagnated… or at least on the mining front.
After Bitcoin’s hashrate — the level of computing power actively processing blocks — established a record high in August, the mining subindustry has slowed, with hashrates now fluctuating between 40-60 exahashes/second. Per Diar, the “biggest intra-monthly swings” have just occurred, with Bitcoin’s hashrate figure starting November in a slight decline.
Still, in spite of the stalling growth, the network’s hashrate hasn’t fallen drastically as of yet, indicating that bigwig miners still hold their belief in the value of “digital gold” and its future as a leading decentralized network.
Title Image Courtesy of Andre Francois via Unsplash
