Bitcoin, the oldest blockchain on the market, has achieved a record by surpassing one billion transactions.
According to Clark Moody’s data dashboard, the Bitcoin (BTC) network has processed nearly 1,000,427,568 transactions in its 15 years of operation. This is an average rate of 6 transactions per second, based on data from the last 30 days, and 178,475 transactions per day.
The milestone event took place on May 5, eight hundred weeks and one day after Satoshi Nakamoto, the mind behind Bitcoin, officially launched the cryptocurrency on January 3, 2009.
Achieving this record-breaking figure signifies a moment of great excitement for the original cryptocurrency.
The Bitcoin network has generated enormous interest due to the rise in popularity of the Ordinals and Runes protocols, which are used to create both NFT assets and memecoins on the Bitcoin blockchain. This boom has increased activity on the network and consequently skyrocketed transaction fees to levels never seen before.
For its part, the Bitcoin cryptocurrency has witnessed an upward price movement recently, largely driven by new Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. market. Bitcoin hit a record price near USD $73,000 in March amid investor motivation for ETFs.
A few weeks ago, the Bitcoin network completed its fourth halving, the event held every four years that halves the miners’ subsidy. The event took place last April 20, reducing the reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block, and producing an almost immediate effect on new cryptocurrencies entering the market.
Daily transaction volume in Bitcoin soared around the time of the halving, reaching a record 926,000 transactions processed on the 23rd of last month. The launch of Runes, which coincided with the halving event, was primarily responsible.
With the growth in the number of transactions also came an increase in fees. While, since the hype of the halving fees have normalized, the seven-day moving average is still high relative to most of Bitcoin’s history.
Bitcoin is also not the first blockchain to surpass one billion completed transactions. Ethereum, a blockchain that relies on a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism, unlike Bitcoin, which relies on proof-of-work (PoW), has processed approximately 2.4 billion transactions.
