Bitcoin has achieved a significant milestone by processing its one billionth transaction after being in existence for 15 years. It is worth noting that Ethereum was actually the first cryptocurrency to reach this milestone, surpassing two billion transactions in 2023, despite being launched in 2015.
Bitcoin, also known as BTC, reached this monumental milestone in block 842,241, at exactly 9:34 pm UTC on May 5. This comes after 15 years, four months, and four days since the first block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on January 3, 2009. The confirmation of this achievement was reported by Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard.
On average, the Bitcoin network processes 178,475 transactions daily throughout its 5,603 days of existence. However, it’s important to note that this data does not include transactions processed by the Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Lightning Network.
According to River, a Bitcoin-only exchange, the Lightning Network alone processed approximately 6.6 million transactions in August 2023. This, combined with its ability to process one million transactions per second, suggests that the network has facilitated hundreds of millions of transactions since its launch in January 2018.
To further analyze the activities surrounding Bitcoin’s transaction milestone, CNF focused on the network’s fourth halving event on April 20. It was observed that a record high of 926,000 transactions were processed on April 23, with much of the demand stemming from the launch of the Runes protocol at block 840,000.
During this period, Bitcoin transaction fees were 630% higher than the 3.125 block subsidy, reaching a record high of $128 per transaction. However, these fees have since decreased to $4.50. Similarly, the daily transaction count has cooled off and currently stands at 625,998 as of May 5.
In terms of price performance, Bitcoin’s transaction per day has increased from 601,134 a year ago to 625,998. This represents a decline of 5.19% from the previous day and a surge of 4.14% from a year ago. Interestingly, this record figure aligns with the recent price performance, with Bitcoin experiencing a 1.88% surge in the last 24 hours and a 4.3% surge in the last seven days. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $64,981.
In light of this milestone, analyst Doctor Profit has encouraged investors to continue buying the dip, as Bitcoin could potentially reach $68,000. This contradicts the 20% drop prediction made by 10x Research and reviewed by Crypto News Flash.
It is worth noting that Bitcoin is not the first cryptocurrency to process one billion transactions, despite being the oldest. Ethereum has actually processed over two billion transactions, reaching its one billionth transaction in early 2021.
