• Bitcoin finished the first quarter with an impressive 70% in gains.
• The core network activity depicted a bullish picture amidst the broader market recovery.
• Active addresses and entities holding less than 10 BTC have both increased.
Q1 Performance
As digital asset markets continued to make big moves, Bitcoin emerged as a clear winner after a rocky end to 2022. In Q1, Bitcoin recorded an impressive 70% in gains and surpassed 800 million transactions for over $107 trillion cumulatively. This is a huge feat for a network in existence since 2008 only.
Network Activity
Despite the bear market, active addresses on the Bitcoin network have been on an uptrend. In terms of distributed supply, the number of entities holding less than 10 BTC has also increased to 17% of the total supply. Meanwhile, adoption and utilization of Taproot was observed with transaction count exploding and expected to generate more revenue for miners in form of transaction fees. An increase in total transaction fees as well as percentage of miner revenue from fees signals sustainable security model of Bitcoin while network hash rate is hovering near all-time highs after hitting record level of 400 Eh/s offering much-needed boost
Taproot Soft Fork
The emergence of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin was enabled by Taproot soft fork which took effect last November. This has been controversial but saw tremendous increase in its adoption and utilization generating more revenue for miners through transaction fees.
All-Time Highs
Network hash rate is hovering near all-time highs after hitting record level of 400 Eh/s offering much-needed boost to security model of Bitcoin which signals sustainability due to increase in total transaction fees as well as percentage of miner revenue from fees
Conclusion
In conclusion, despite bear market conditions, Bitcoin performed remarkably well finishing Q1 with 70% gains along with surpassing 800 million transactions for over $107 trillion cumulatively showing strong bullish picture across digital asset markets due to increasing active addresses and entities holding less than 10 BTC that were enabled by Taproot soft fork resulting into improved security model due to higher revenues generated through transaction fees due to all-time high hash rate levels