Bitcoin processes 1.6 million confirmed payments per day.

Amid the growing use of Bitcoin (BTC) for everyday purchases, the Bitcoin network recorded its highest number of payment confirmations on April 23.

In just three days since entering the new halving cycle on April 20, the Bitcoin network has processed over 1.6 million unique transactions between senders and recipients.

Comparing data from Blockchain.com and Glassnode shows a direct correlation between the launch of Bitcoin Ordinal and Bitcoin Loon, an alternative to the BRC-20 protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain, and the surge in daily Bitcoin transactions. A relationship appears.

According to Dune Analytics data, runes accounted for 81.3% of all Bitcoin transactions on April 23.

However, BTC eventually regained the lion’s share of transactions over the network. As of April 29, BTC accounted for 77.8% of all Bitcoin transactions, while Loon accounted for 18.8%. Other transactions on the Bitcoin network consist of ordinal (1.2%) and BRC-20 (2.3%) transactions.

To learn more about Bitcoin Loons and how they differ from BRC-20 tokens, check out this Cointelegraph guide.

The increase in the number of Bitcoin rune transactions has had a beneficial effect on the mining industry. Two of the largest mining companies operating in the United States, Stronghold Digital Mining and Marathon, highlighted the positive impact of Runes from both a financial and functional perspective in their communication with Cointelegraph.

Since the Bitcoin halving took effect, Rune transactions have added over 1,200 BTC in transaction fees to miners.

Related: Omnity Launches Free Rune Trading Integration

With the hype around Rune clearly subsiding, anonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher Ignas sees this as a real market opportunity. Ignas wrote From X’s post on April 17:

“Runestone, RSIC, and PUPS are already promising holders shiny new Rune token airdrops. And the FOMO thread just keeps coming. However, like the NFT craze after JPEG, the market may soon cool down.”

Loon and BRC-20 tokens are new fungible token standards that aim to create more utility for Bitcoin in a new paradigm known as Bitcoin DeFi, or BTCFi for short.

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