Cryptocurrencies have been facing a bearish market for a while, however, they still continue to thrive amidst the price decline. According to a report issued by Coinmetrics, in 2018, $1 trillion of bitcoin and an approx of $500 billion of Ether has been transferred.
Though all transactions are treated equally on the bitcoin blockchain, the report did not compute the total value of all bitcoin transactions. Instead, Coinmetrics ignored unimportant transactions or unnecessary transactions such as transactions involving mixers or other privacy enhancement tools along with the transactions where exchanges moved large amounts of crypto such as Circle bought Poloniex earlier this year.
“From the perspective of the blockchain, all transactions are equally valid – but from the perspective of an analyst or economist, it’s useful to isolate only the meaningful economic transactions, so that’s what we’ve done here.”
First of all, Coinmetrics manually summed up data using shortcuts. Later they underestimated the final figure to try to come up with a conservative number. To put it in simply, the total value of all bitcoin transactions so far in 2018 is likely to be well over $1 trillion and quite a few transactions among them are less meaningful. Approximately $50 to $150 billion of meaningful transactions were done per month throughout 2018, providing the final total of around $800 billion for the year to date.
For instance, around $220 billion worth of Bitcoin transactions were done in January. The transaction volume has been steadily dropping since then with $140 billion in February, $100 billion in March, April, and May. June and July witnessed a drop to $70 billion, while August halfway through the month is stuck around $30 billion transaction volume.
A similar trajectory was observed for the Ethereum. In January around $120 billion of Ethereum was transferred. The transaction volume was halves in February and March with $60 billion and $30 billion respectively. However, In May, Ethereum managed a surge and rose to around $60 billion transaction volume. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum remains steady with a monthly transaction volume of approximately $30 billion.
Notably, the price of the token affects these sums. The transaction volume could have a vast difference (as per the price) even if the same number of bitcoins are transferred each month. For instance, 2018 began with approximately 20 million ETH being transferred each day. Today, an average of 2 million ETH is being transferred each day, which means approximately $600 million worth of ETH – at today’s prices – is being transferred daily.
To keep the playing field level, Coinmetrics tried to take other transaction aberrations into account. For example, when Circle acquired Poloniex a lot of tokens were moved to new wallets; Coinmetrics analyzed such transfers and tried to minimize it. Coinmetrics’s report puts forwards the real, useful transactions taking place on the bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
Though decline is also connected to declining prices, the data shows a steady decline as the year is progressing. As per the derived numbers, over the last few months, the decline has halted, implying that the transaction volume remains relatively steady.
For more information on the transaction volume for 2018, visit Coinmetrics.io.
Arshmeet Hora
The idea of expressing one’s views and reviews through words is beyond intriguing. What started as a creative let out has now become a passion and a profession for Arshmeet K Hora. In her own words ” with every word, every article that I write, my passion towards this medium has grown stronger.” Arshmeet covers latest crypto news and updates as well as what happening new revolving around Blockchain Technology.
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