Bitcoin has reached a milestone! The blockchain powering the world’s most popular cryptocurrency officially processed its 400,000,000th transaction overnight.
That’s right. Check the records – at pixel time, there have been at least 400,251,742 transactions sent via Bitcoin’s independent, censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Right now, Bitcoin is averaging around 350,000 transactions per day. Its blockchain is handling roughly 14,904 transactions every hour (just over four per second), with no down-time, and no holidays.
Bitcoin is fitting more transactions into blocks than ever before
Earlier in April, Bitcoin fans rejoiced as the cryptocurrency market finally saw positive movement, after its price broke $5,000 for the first time in nearly five months.
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Almost simultaneously, the Bitcoin network was making huge moves. On March 31, the daily average amount of transactions contained within Bitcoin blocks hit 2,746, exceeding previous all-time highs twice in 10 days.
The latest data shows that 1,956,321 BTC ($10.2 billion) has been transacted via Bitcoin’s blockchain in the past day; the amount makes up more than 11 percent of its overall market cap.
Bitcoin is processing over 360,000 transactions every day, with 81,513 BTC ($424 million) shifted every hour. The average transaction value is 5.44 BTC ($28,316).
The average cost of Bitcoin transaction fees is around $2.60
There are also more Bitcoin transactions processed today than at any point last month. Indeed, for most of March, Bitcoin was accepting well below 300,000 transactions each day. Today, it will process over 357,000.
This jump in activity coincided with the sharp increase in price. Typically, traders flock to exchanges to buy and sell Bitcoin when its price rises.
This means the average cost of using the Bitcoin network has also increased, although not by much. Bitcoin fees actually doubled during the first week of April, from around 0.000169 BTC ($0.88) to 0.00043553 BTC ($2.27).
Still, today’s average cost of Bitcoin transactions remains below 0.0005 BTC ($2.60). Those using the network (right now) will pay roughly 0.00036217 BTC ($1.88) in transaction fees. Not bad, all things considering (like censorship resistance).
So, while Satoshi Nakamoto celebrated a “birthday” last Friday, and Bitcoin itself turned 10 earlier this year, we shouldn’t forget that the network itself is still breaking records and setting milestones almost daily – and that’s pretty dope.
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