The story of how Bitcoin surpassed Visa

• Bitcoin recorded parabolic shifts in on-chain transactions in 2023. 
• Bitcoin awaited a decision on the several spot ETF applications submitted to the SEC

Battling skeptical views since its inception, the Bitcoin [BTC] blockchain was steadily emerging as a popular medium for transaction settlement.

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Bitcoin beats Visa

Popular on-chain analyst and co-founder of Reflexivity Research, Will Clemente, took to social platform X to highlight the remarkable growth trajectory of the network.

It was revealed that Bitcoin’s annual transaction volume surpassed that of Visa, one of the world’s largest payment networks.

Source: Reflexivity Research

On-chain transactions jump in 2023

A closer look at the graph showed two key phases which caused an eruption in Bitcoin’s network traffic. The first was the bull market of 2017, and secondly the historic phase of 2021 during which the king coin exploded to its all-time highs (ATH).

However, the biggest spike in transactions came in 2023, driven by the popularity of BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals. As evident, early May saw an unprecedented rise in network traffic. While the subsequent low volatility period produced a fall, there has been a robust comeback over the last month.

In fact, the past week was a record-breaker, with transactions exceeding 700,000 for the first time ever on 15 September.

Source: Glassnode

Healthy retail demand

Bitcoin has navigated the ebbs and flows of the crypto market with remarkable resilience. It was predicted that the crypto winter of 2022 would be its biggest challenge in terms of user retention and network growth.

However, demand for first-generation blockchain has remained unaffected. According to a recent update by Glassnode, the number of BTC wallets holding a minimum of 0.01 coins hit a fresh ATH.

This also indicated Bitcoin’s robust retail demand. If the network were to compete with payment giants from traditional finance, acceptance by the general public was critical.

Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2023-24

The largest digital asset by market cap mopped decent gains of 2.75% over the past week, settling at $26,554 at the time of writing, per Santiment data, per data from CoinMarketCap.

The coin and the broader market were eagerly awaiting a decision on the multiple spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed decisions on the same until October.