• Fidelity Digital Assets finds that filtering and adjusting Bitcoin blockchain transaction volume leads to a more realistic measure of Bitcoin economic activity

Fidelity Digital Assets has released a report which shows that cumulative raw transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is overstated by 3.3 times, and that adjusting the transaction volume by using a couple of filters gives a much better idea of real economic activity on the blockchain.

Specifically, the raw Bitcoin blockchain transaction volume includes change transactions, which is Bitcoin being sent back to the same address during a transaction, and therefore does not represent actual transaction volume. Also, transactions may be counted multiple times due to successive spends and transfers resulting from exchange processes and mixers.

Coin Metrics filters out both the change and counting transactions multiple times, and finds that the real Bitcoin blockchain transaction volume since Bitcoin first launched is USD 2.2 trillion, as opposed to raw cumulative volume of USD 7.5 trillion.

That being said, even these adjusted numbers indicate that economic activity on the Bitcoin blockchain has been quite healthy, with over USD 500 billion of real transaction volume during 2018 and 2019, and USD 1 trillion of transaction volume during the bull run of 2017, as opposed to relatively minuscule transaction volumes in the years prior to 2017.

BitcoinNews.com is committed to unbiased news and upholding journalistic codes of ethics. For more information please read our Editorial Policy here.