The Bitcoin network has achieved a significant milestone by processing its one billionth transaction, marking a momentous occasion for the network 15 years after its inception. According to Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard, the billionth transaction was processed in block 842,241 at 9:34 pm UTC on May 5. This achievement comes exactly 15 years, four months, and four days after Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin (BTC), mined the network’s first block on January 3, 2009.
Throughout its 5,603-day existence, the network has processed an average of 178,475 daily transactions. However, this count does not include transactions conducted on the Lightning Network, a layer-2 payment protocol for Bitcoin that enables faster transactions. Data from the Bitcoin-only exchange River indicates that the Lightning Network processed an estimated minimum of 6.6 million transactions in August 2023 alone, suggesting that hundreds of millions of transactions have been made on Lightning since its launch in January 2018.
The number of daily transactions on Bitcoin experienced a surge during the network’s fourth halving event on April 20, reaching a record high of 926,000 transactions on April 23. This increased demand was largely driven by the launch of the Runes protocol at block 840,000. However, Bitcoin’s daily transaction count has since declined to 660,260 on May 4.
Although Bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency network, it is not the first to process one billion transactions. Ethereum, Bitcoin’s main competitor, has processed well over two billion transactions since its launch in July 2015, according to Etherscan data.
As of now, Bitcoin is priced at $63,750, experiencing a 12% increase since reaching a two-month low of $56,800 on May 2, according to CoinGecko. However, it is still down 13.6% from its all-time high of $73,740 achieved on March 13.