New record: Bitcoin processes 1.6M confirmed payments in a day

The launch of Bitcoin Runes played an important role in the spike in the total number of transactions over the Bitcoin network.

Amid increasing Bitcoin (BTC) use for day-to-day purchases, the Bitcoin network recorded the highest number of confirmed payments on April 23. 

Three days after stepping into the new halving cycle on April 20, the Bitcoin network processed over 1.6 million unique transactions between sender and receivers.

Comparing data from Blockchain.com and Glassnode shows a direct correlation between the launch of Bitcoin Runes — an alternative to Bitcoin Ordinals and the BRC-20 protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain — and the spike in daily Bitcoin transactions.

According to Dune Analytics data, Runes represented 81.3% of all Bitcoin transactions on April 23.

However, BTC eventually reclaimed the lion’s share of transactions over the network. As of April 29, BTC represented 77.8% of all Bitcoin transactions, while Runes contributed 18.8%. Other transactions on the Bitcoin network comprise ordinals (1.2%) and BRC-20 (2.3%) transactions.

Check out this Cointelegraph guide to learn more about Bitcoin Runes and how they differ from BRC-20 tokens.

The increase in the number of Bitcoin Runes transactions has worked in the favor of the mining industry. Two of the biggest mining firms operating in the United States, Stronghold Digital Mining and Marathon, highlighted the positive influence of Runes from both a financial and functional perspective in correspondence with Cointelegraph.

Rune transactions have added over 1,200 BTC worth of transaction fees to miners since the Bitcoin halving took effect.

Related: Omnity rolls out integration for no-fee Runes trading

While the hype around Runes is evidently subsiding, the pseudonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher Ignas sees it as a real market opportunity. Ignas wrote in an April 17 X post:

“Runestone, RSIC, and PUPS are already pumping, promising holders shiny new Rune token airdrops. And FOMO threads keep coming. But, like the NFT frenzy post-JPEG reveal, the market could soon cool off.”

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.