Key Points
- Bitcoin has reached a significant milestone of processing over a billion transactions.
- The milestone was reached 15 years, four months, and four days after Bitcoin’s launch.
Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, has achieved a significant feat by processing over a billion transactions. This information was confirmed by data from Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard.
The billionth transaction was mined into block 842,241 at 9:34 pm. UTC on May 5. This implies that it took the Bitcoin network 15 years, four months, and four days to reach this milestone. Bitcoin was launched on January 3, 2009, by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto who mined the network’s genesis block.
Bitcoin’s Daily Transactions
Given the 5,603 days the Bitcoin network has been in existence, it means that an average of 178,475 transactions take place daily. The recent milestone is a testament to the current situation around Bitcoin. It is generally having a great time for various reasons, including the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs. This launch has created a bullish sentiment for the token over the past year.
New protocols like Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes have been increasing activity on the world’s first blockchain. This doesn’t even take into account the buzz that came with the network’s fourth halving event that took place on April 20. All these events have led to heightened levels of daily transactions on the network. On April 23, barely three days after halving, Bitcoin processed a record-high 926,000 transactions.
Comparison with Ethereum
Despite Bitcoin setting the pace in the crypto world, reaching the one billion transaction milestone is one aspect where it has struggled. For perspective, its biggest rival Ethereum, which was launched over six years after Bitcoin, has processed nearly 2.4 billion transactions as Etherscan data shows.
Bitcoin had a longer journey to the billion transaction milestone. However, it’s worth noting that Bitcoin’s transaction count did not include those made on its layer 2 Lightning Network. According to data from the Bitcoin-only exchange, River, the Lightning Network processed nearly 6.6 million transactions in August 2023 alone. This monthly figure suggests that hundreds of millions of transactions may have been processed on Lightning since its launch six years ago.
