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Bitcoin transactions return to dominate the blockchain after the halving
For the first time since the halving in April, BTC transactions have once again dominated the Bitcoin blockchain.
This is what emerges a graph published on Dune which shows the daily percentages of the different types of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Non-BTC transactions
With the latest update of the Bitcoin protocol, which occurred a few years ago, the possibility of recording transactions that do not contain BTC on your blockchain also opened up.
The graph published by user cryptokoryo on Dune divides them into four categories: BTC, ordinals, brc-20 and rune.
BTC transactions are obviously the classic transactions in which Bitcoins are sent from one address to another.
Ordinals are a kind of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, while BRC-20s are tradable tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Ra instead, it is a new protocol that effectively replaces Ordinals and BRC-20 starting from halving.
In fact, the graph shows the various daily percentages of the different types of transactions that are recorded every day on the blockchain Bitcoin.
Before the halving on April 20th there were no Rune transactions, while after the introduction of this protocol the daily number of Ordinals and BRC-20 transactions collapsed, becoming practically irrelevant.
So the non-BTC transactions until the halving were the sum of those of Ordinals and BRC-20, while after the halving they are almost exclusively those of Rune.
Bitcoin Blockchain: The Boom in Non-BTC Transactions After the Halving
At the beginning of 2024, more than 20% of daily non-BTC transactions were already present on the Bitcoin blockchain.
After the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs on US exchanges, this percentage briefly skyrocketed above 70%, peaking even above 75%, before returning to 30% a few days later.
In the months of February and March no significant deviations occurred, except for very short periods, but after introduction of the Rune protocol with the halving on April 20th, non-BTC transactions began to increase again.
For a few days they returned above 70%, with a daily peak even above 80%.
However, these high percentages were never recorded for more than four consecutive days, but starting from the end of May a new surge occurred, after a return to normality a few weeks after the halving.
Specifically, from May 22 to June 15, they slowly increased from less than 20% to more than 60%. This increase is almost exclusively due to Rune transactions.
Since June 16, however, the situation seems to have returned to normal, so much so that even today a percentage of non-BTC transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain has fallen below 10%.
It should be noted that these fluctuations are not due to large changes in the number of BTC transactions, but mainly due to large changes in the number of non-BTC transactions.
Bitcoin blockchain fees after the halving
Due to this latter dynamic, an increase in non-BTC transactions is often followed by an increase in fees.
Excluding the anomalous peak that occurred on the day of the halving (average commission per transaction of $128), due to the launch of Rune, commissions at the beginning of May had returned more or less to normal. In fact, shortly after the middle of the month, they had even dropped below $2.
Since the end of May, however, they have started to rise again, with a new high on June 7 above $87. This increase was also caused by the recent small boom in Rune transactions.
Already on June 9th, however, they had fallen below 7 dollars, and for three days they have also been below 4 dollars.
However, keep in mind that the average amount per transaction is currently over $65,000, so the figure relating to average commissions per transaction is actually not very indicative.
Instead, it is advisable to take the median, and not the average, as a reference, also because the median amount per transaction is less than $200.
Average transaction fees on the day of the halving had skyrocketed above $90, then dropped below $1. The second peak, that of June, stopped around $6, while in the last two days it has returned below $2.
However, these numbers are much higher than those of other blockchains, and especially those of layer-2 Ethereumbut on the other hand, even on the main layer 2 of Bitcoin (Lightning Network) these numbers are much lower.
The return to normality
From this point of view, periods of normality alternate with short mini-bubbles, during which the number of non-BTC transactions skyrockets.
Generally these are very short and rapid waves, lasting a few days at most, but the slowest one at the end of May and beginning of June lasted a few weeks.
However, when these mini-bubbles run out, things return to normal, and currently, the normal is a daily non-BTC transaction rate of less than 20% and median fees of less than $2.
It is very likely that sooner or later other mini-bubbles of this type will occur, which is why it is advisable to transact in BTC when the situation is normal, and not when there are peaks in non-BTC transactions.