Bitcoin leverage hits 5-year high – How ONE move could trigger pullback
- Bitcoin saw a strong uptrend in the daily transaction count compared to the previous cycle.
- The active addresses and volume declined over the past month.
Bitcoin [BTC] recently achieved the impressive milestone of 1 billion transactions. Its total all-time transaction count stood at 1,000,803,494 at press time.
Its price was back above the $62k mark but lacked a strong short-term trend.
The news of one 10-year-old dormant BTC wallet moving its holdings sparked interest.
However, the past two months saw a large buying spree from BTC whales, which sets up the idea of a strong bull run. The network security was also firm.
Examining the transaction count
Source: CryptoQuant
The daily transaction count has slowly trended higher over the past year, seeing a lull from January to March before trending higher from March to mid-April.
It saw a huge spike on the 23rd of April, reaching 921k transactions for the day.
The activity was much higher than what it was four years ago. Also, the past cycle’s bull run transaction count was already overshadowed by the activity of the past year.
This was a positive sign of increased adoption and usage.
Source: CryptoQuant
The hash rate also trended firmly higher. This indicated that miners will need to spend more energy to secure the network, which also makes it harder for external entities to seize control of the network.
This security is hugely comforting for long-term investors and the cornerstone for Bitcoin’s value.
Transaction volume showed a short-term downturn
Source: Santiment
In February and March 2024, the price of BTC rallied from $42.1k to $73k. The 7-day moving average transaction volume also steadily trended higher.
The periodic dips account for the drop in activity during the weekends.
Even though the transaction count was high, the volume has fallen compared to the local peak in March. The daily active addresses have also slowly lost steam in the past five weeks.
Therefore, the activity has trended higher over the past year, but in the past month, there has been a downturn.
Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2024-25
Comparison with other networks shows that BTC pales in terms of daily transaction count.
Ethereum [ETH] has averaged 1.1 million transactions a day in the past two months, reaching a high of 1.96 million on the 14th of January.
