Bitcoin

Achieved 1 billion Bitcoin transactions

adminMay 6, 2024

The Bitcoin network has processed its one billionth transaction, a huge milestone 15 years after the network was created.

Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard shows that 1,000,000,000 mined transactions were reached at block 842,241 on May 5 at 9:34 PM (UTC).

The total number of transactions processed on the Bitcoin network. Source: Clark Moody

This marks 15 years, 4 months, and 4 days since Bitcoin (BTC) pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined the network’s first block on January 3, 2009.

This means that over the 5,603 days Bitcoin has existed, there have been an average of 178,475 transactions per day.

However, the number of transactions does not include transactions made on the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s Layer 2 network primarily focused on micropayments.

Data from Bitcoin-only exchange River shows that the Lightning Network processed 6.6 million floor transactions in August 2023 alone. This could suggest that hundreds of millions of transactions have taken place on Lightning since its launch in January 2018.

Bitcoin’s daily transactions surged around the network’s fourth halving event on April 20, including an all-time high of 926,000 transactions processed on April 23.

Much of this demand was driven by the launch of the Runes protocol, a new Bitcoin token standard, at block 840,000.

That said, the number of daily transactions for Bitcoin has decreased to 660,260 since May 4th.

Despite being the oldest cryptocurrency network, Bitcoin is not the first cryptocurrency network to handle 1 billion transactions.

Bitcoin’s biggest competitor, Ethereum, has processed more than 2 billion transactions since its launch in July 2015, according to Etherscan data.

Related: Impact of Bitcoin Halving Event on Transaction Confirmation Times

According to CoinGecko, the price of Bitcoin is currently at $63,750, up more than 12% since hitting a two-month low of $56,800 on May 2.

However, it is still down 13.6% from the all-time high of $73,740 set on March 13th.

Bitcoin price movement over the past 12 months. Source: CoinGecko

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