A metric of the Bitcoin holder (BTC) points to prices growth in the coming months, even if the activity on the blockchain falls at its lowest in one year, noted a cryptocurrency analysis this week.
The company’s Bitcoin network activity index is down 15% since the November 2024 record and amounts to 3,760 from Friday morning, its lowest level since February 2024. The index is a cumulative measure of active addresses, the number of transactions, the size of the blocks and the costs among other Bitcoin metrics to indicate growth or a drop in the use of bitcoin.
A drop in activity was marked by a sharp drop in the number of transactions. The total daily number of transactions is 346,000 to this Friday, down 53% compared to a summit of 734,000.
A low network activity is also obvious in Bitcoin Mempool, or a collection of all unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions waiting to be included in a block by minors. Mempool volumes went from 287,000 in December to only 3,000 to only Thursday, a slide of almost 99% at the levels that we have not seen since March 2022.
Cryptochant said that the lower use of the Runes protocol, a relatively new way of emitting fungible tokens directly on Bitcoin, can be behind the dive.
“The decline in the activity of the Bitcoin network can be mainly explained by the collapse of the use of the Runes protocol for the fracture of the tokens on the Bitcoin network,” he said. “This is obvious in the total daily number of OP return codes in Bitcoin transactions, which the Runes protocol uses to write data on mints and tokens transfers on the network.
“When the Runes protocol emerged in April 2024, the daily number of OP return codes increased to 802K. However, the number of OP return code has dropped because, with only 10k OP of return of the codes used, ”added the company.
However, the drop in activity may not directly affect Bitcoin prices, which are considered to grow, as the demand for long -term accumulation addresses has increased in recent weeks.
Such a peak is historically associated with a rally in the price of the BTC and signals the overall perception of the asset as an investment or value reserve. Permanent holders are addresses that accumulate BTC over time and never engage in expenditure transactions, indicating a long -term maintenance strategy which creates a lack of pressure on the sale.
