Bitcoin trading activity and increasing demand for ordinals have driven up the number of daily transactions within the network.
The number of transactions occurring every hour on the Bitcoin network has hit a new 5-year high. On Friday, this metric surpassed 16.497 transactions per hour, according to data from blockchain research and analytics platform GlassNode.
The increase that this metric has experienced in the last week seems to be related to the commercial activity that the cryptocurrency has gained with the rise in prices in the market and the growing demand that ordinal registrations are experiencing within the blockchain.
According to GlassNode, the previous 5-year high in the number of Bitcoin transactions was an average of 16.383 transactions per hour over a one-week period and was seen in May 2019. At the time, BTC was experiencing growth of approximately 78% since the beginning of the year, leading to the cryptocurrency trading close to $5.700 per BTC at the time.
Bitcoin is currently experiencing a similar situation. So far in 2023, the price of BTC has appreciated by more than 70%, trading at around XNUMX ... $ 29.400 dollars at the time of writing this article.
The increase in the number of Bitcoin transactions coincides with the rise in the price of the cryptocurrency on the market, as can be seen in the graph released by the GlassNode platform via Twitter.
Source: GlassNode
Currently, the number of Bitcoin transactions taking place daily within the network exceeds 300.000 transactions, according to data from the same platform.
The number of Ordinals registrations in Bitcoin grows
The number of ordinal registrations on the Bitcoin blockchain reached 240.000 units last Sunday, April 30. This figure represents an all-time high for the Bitcoin NFT protocol.
Currently, the ordinals registered in this blockchain exceed 2,63 million units, according to data consulted on the Dune Analytics platform.
Ordinal registrations in Bitcoin appear to be one of the main catalysts for the network's growth.
The Bitcoin network is becoming increasingly secure
Besides the number of transactions, another important metric that has marked new recent highs on the Bitcoin network is the mining difficulty. This is a value used to measure how secure the Bitcoin network is. Specifically, mining difficulty refers to the complexity of solving the hash of a block on the blockchain network.
The mining difficulty is automatically adjusted based on the available computing power or hash rate of the miners connected to the Bitcoin network. With a current hash rate of 372,7 exahashes per second (EH/s), Bitcoin mining difficulty recently adjusted to an all-time high.
Data platform CoinWarz shows that Bitcoin mining difficulty was adjusted in the middle of this month to 48,7 trillion (T) or billion, currently.
Source: CoinWarz
Over the past few months, Bitcoin's mining difficulty has been adjusting to an upward trend, as the cryptocurrency moves away from the crypto winter of 2022 and regains some of its value in the market.
At the beginning of October last year, Bitcoin mining difficulty stood at 35,6 T, as reported by this outlet, which represents a current growth of 36%. With this new value, mining 1 BTC on the blockchain network has never been as difficult as it is now.
Continue reading: Bitcoin has potential to continue growing, says Bank of America
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