Key Points
- On April 23, the Bitcoin network recorded its highest number of confirmed payments.
- Bitcoin Runes, an alternative to Bitcoin Ordinals and the BRC-20 protocol, represented 81.3% of all Bitcoin transactions on that day.
The Bitcoin network saw a surge in use for everyday transactions, reaching a record high of confirmed payments on April 23.
This surge occurred three days into the new halving cycle that began on April 20, with over 1.6 million unique transactions processed between senders and receivers.
The Impact of Bitcoin Runes
Analysis of data from Blockchain.com and Glassnode reveals a direct link between the introduction of Bitcoin Runes, an alternative to Bitcoin Ordinals and the BRC-20 protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain, and the surge in daily Bitcoin transactions.
According to data from Dune Analytics, on April 23, Runes accounted for 81.3% of all Bitcoin transactions.
However, by April 29, Bitcoin (BTC) had regained the majority of transactions over the network, accounting for 77.8% of all Bitcoin transactions.
Runes contributed to 18.8%, while the remaining transactions were made up of ordinals (1.2%) and BRC-20 (2.3%) transactions.
The Mining Industry and Runes
The rise in Bitcoin Runes transactions has benefited the mining industry.
Stronghold Digital Mining and Marathon, two of the largest mining firms in the United States, noted the positive impact of Runes from both a financial and functional standpoint.
Since the Bitcoin halving took effect, Rune transactions have added over 1,200 BTC worth of transaction fees to miners.
Despite the waning hype around Runes, Ignas, a pseudonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher, sees a potential market opportunity.
Runes and BRC-20 tokens are new fungible token standards aiming to create more utility for Bitcoin in a new paradigm known as Bitcoin DeFi, or BTCFi for short.
