The 15-month long bear market isn’t affecting bitcoin adoption and usage, new data shows, as on-chain transactions have hit their highest since early January 2018.
bitcoin Usage Has Been Climbing for 15 Months
bitcoin network usage continues to rise contrary to the drop in bitcoin price since its historic run-up to nearly $20,000.
The latest data from shows the latest spike to nearly 400,000 confirmed on-chain transactions in a period of 24 hours. This is the highest network activity since price was well above $10,000 USD in early January 2018.
It’s also worth noting that the proportion of bitcoin payments made using Segregated Witness (SegWit) has also been gradually since its activation in summer 2017. These now comprise of all on-chain bitcoin transactions, according to the latest data.
SegWit has proven to be a successful step in mitigating transaction fees on the network. Since peaking in December 2017, the cost of using has been at despite the network processing more transactions on average.
1MB+ bitcoin Block Size is the New Normal
The BTC network is now also regularly producing blocks block size limit that was in place before SegWit activation that made 4MB blocks possible.
The latest daily average block size, for example, has spiked to 1.2MB, though blocks well over 2MB and greater are now quite common.
Earlier this week, Bitcoinist that independent ratings agency Weiss Ratings, has upgraded ’s tech/ rating to an ‘A’ in light of rising network metrics.
Weiss noted:
Since February 2018, the volume of user (on-chain) transactions among the ten most widely used has grown by 245 percent.
The agency also notes that is a “proven leader in ” and that “its value is not controlled by monetary authorities, and it can be a safe haven in times of turmoil.”
Unlike [gold], it costs virtually nothing to or transport.
VeriBlock Likely Behind the Spike
Indeed, rising network usage, in addition to some notable in recent weeks, has kept the buyoant, particularly as of late.
However, some analysts have once again noted that VeriBlock may be responsible for the spike in block size and transaction count.
As Bitcoinist last month, Veriblock is a startup that uses ’s OP_RETURN outputs to embed additional data for their ‘proof-of-proof’ miners. Regardless, ’s network is open-access, therefore, anyone can use it for whatever reason as long as the miner fees are paid.
Earlier this yer, Casa CTO Jameson Lopp was one of the first people to that the startup comprised a large share of on-chain transactions.
“VeriBlock miners posted 783,000 transactions to ’s in December and are on track for 1,500,000 in January,” he wrote
Meanwhile, developer Nic Carter, noted today the expanding mempool – the size of the cache of ’s unconfirmed transactions – is increasing rapidly, something which pushes up fees.
Mempool filling up. Veriblock back to 20% of transactions. The era of low fees won’t last forever. Consolidate your inputs while you still have time.
— nic carter (@nic__carter)
“The era of low fees won’t last forever. Consolidate your inputs while you still have time,” he on social media.
Is price starting to catch up with rising network statistics? Do these metrics suggest real is taking place? Share your thoughts below!
Images courtesy of blockchain.com, Shutterstock
Published at Fri, 29 Mar 2019 16:54:15 +0000
