The Bitcoin network has achieved a major milestone by processing its one billionth transaction, marking a significant moment for the network 15 years after its inception. According to Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard, the one billionth transaction was processed in block 842,241 at 9:34 pm UTC on May 5. This achievement comes 15 years, four months, and four days after the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the network’s first block on January 3, 2009.
In its 5,603-day existence, the Bitcoin network has processed an average of 178,475 daily transactions. However, this count does not include transactions made on the Lightning Network, a layer-2 payment protocol for Bitcoin that enables faster transactions. Data from the Bitcoin-only exchange River suggests that hundreds of millions of transactions have been made on the Lightning Network since its launch in January 2018, with the Lightning Network alone processing an estimated 6.6 million transactions in August 2023.
The daily transaction volume on the Bitcoin network experienced a spike during the network’s fourth halving event on April 20, reaching a record high of 926,000 transactions on April 23. This surge in demand was largely driven by the launch of the Runes protocol at block 840,000. However, the daily transaction count has since decreased to 660,260 on May 4.
Although Bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency network, it is not the first to process one billion transactions. Its main competitor, Ethereum, has processed well over two billion transactions since its launch in July 2015, according to Etherscan data.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is priced at $63,750, experiencing a 12% increase since hitting a two-month low of $56,800 on May 2, according to CoinGecko. However, it is still down 13.6% from its all-time high of $73,740 set on March 13.
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