Bitcoin (BTC) has been the well-nigh interesting nugget over the concluding decade and on-concatenation analytics can show such a statement. Since its inception, and until the first quarter of 2022, Bitcoin has increased over 1,000,000% in value, climbing from $0.05 to around $ten,000. Nonetheless, it is besides true that Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency for that matter, has ever faced a great recession or depression during its brief history. At least, it has not faced ane in its entirety, since Bitcoin was born in 2009 in the heart of the financial crisis.

Today, we aim to explore some key metrics that translate into adoption. Our goal is not to focus on technical analysis per se, just to look into on-chain metrics and meet how they can impact the current and future toll of BTC.

Related: The Biggest Rises and Falls of Bitcoin, Explained

I hope you're as excited to notice out what drives Bitcoin prices as I am eager to tell you. Fix to swoop deep into Bitcoin's futurity during the new roaring 2022s?

This article was written by Pedro Febrero, with primary co-editing done by Mati Greenspan, founder and CEO at Breakthrough Economic science, and Charles Bovaird, senior contributor for Forbes and vice president of content at Quantum Economics.

Doing on-chain analytics like a pro

First off, allow me define what we hateful by "on-chain analytics." Instead of focusing on price and traditional technical analysis techniques, we'll look into all data that is natively stored on the blockchain.

This data includes (just is non limited to):

  • Details of every cake (timestamp, fees, miner rewards, block weight, addresses, users, etc.)
  • Details of every transaction (sending and receiving addresses, the amount transferred in each transaction, the remaining addresses, block time, etc.)
  • Smart contract invocation and usage (mostly for Ethereum and Ethereum-based tokens).

In other words, the on-chain transaction book is beingness used to judge whether a crypto nugget is actually being used, and when and how that impacts its price and value.

Instead of just crudely measuring the overall usage of a cryptocurrency network, I recall we may use on-concatenation transaction data to figure out who is using Bitcoin, how they are using the network, and when certain metrics point to either bullish or bearish seasons.

In sum, our objective is to translate key blockchain metrics into price appreciation metrics and so that we can use them to predict important toll movements.

What metrics are we looking into?

A great starting point is all the variables directly linked to the blockchain. Initially, we are looking into the four nearly bones, withal crucial, on-chain metrics available:

  1. Addresses — equally in the amount each address holds, the length of fourth dimension the amount has been held, and private behavior.
  2. Transactions, as in the number, amounts transferred and total volume.
  3. Unspent transaction output (UTXO), as in the per centum of holders in turn a profit, the total value created and the total value spent.
  4. Blocks — as in cake superlative and cake weight, or the actual size in bytes of both the total blockchain and a single block.

At that place are plenty of other metrics we'll put together in the time to come, every bit we would like to perform a comprehensive analysis of 3 distinct groups: transaction data, exchange and market data, and mining and fees information.

Bitcoin transaction data

The very commencement on-chain data points we'll be analyzing relate to transaction data. Our core focus will be transaction count and book, and how these metrics relate to Bitcoin toll appreciation.

Bitcoin: Number of transactions per day

Looking at the chart in a higher place showcasing the number of transactions per day from 2022 to February 2022, we can quickly see the trend is quite positive. Some important takeaways are:

  • Transactions peaked at close to 490,000 per day in December 2022.
  • Transaction count reached a low of approximately 132,000 transactions per day at the beginning of August 2022, and then peaked at around 500,000 transactions in mid-December 2022.
  • Daily transaction value at the end of February 2022 was well over $3 billion.
  • Daily transaction value increased over 200% from a depression of $1 billion during April 2022, while price only increased around ii% in the aforementioned period.

What becomes very articulate from the data is that the correlation between price and transaction value seems to be deteriorating. While in the past, daily transaction value was increasing more or less co-ordinate to price, the correlation seems to exist less relevant today. Hence, the delta between cost growth and daily transaction value growth seems to exist increasing.

To prove our bespeak, allow'due south take a await at the total Bitcoin transfer book.

Bitcoin transfer volume

What we detect is the following: As price increases, total volume increases as well. Nonetheless, since less Bitcoin is needed to attain the same dollar equivalence, we could expect either fewer transactions with increased value or additional transactions with less value.

During bullish periods, value increases exponentially, while total value diminishes significantly in bearish periods, as expected.

Hence, in terms of transaction information, what we conclude is that while the total number of Bitcoin transactions has been steadily increasing, volume seems to be much more volatile, meaning the current toll of Bitcoin is a speculative one.

Bitcoin address data

Bitcoin addresses show the behavior of BTC holders. The chief data we'll be looking into is the number of active addresses and how much each ane holds. Such metrics may help usa understand how people conduct during bullish and surly seasons.

Number of Bitcoin active addresses

The offset chart we need to look at is the number of active addresses. Information technology not just shows an increasing interest by people in general, but the drib betwixt late 2022 high to the present isn't too meaning. Substantially, the number of agile addresses savage about 25%, while Bitcoin price dropped a whopping 66% in the same period.

This suggests that long-term users of the cryptocurrency intendance niggling virtually price swings.

Additionally, let's compare the in a higher place to the number of total addresses. How practice yous think information technology has been growing in terms of non-zip balance addresses?

Number of Bitcoin total addresses

If you answered "exponentially," you would be right.

If this trend line reminds you of the Coronavirus, also known as COVID-nineteen, infection charge per unit, that's because it'southward quite like. Every year, the total number of addresses is almost doubling.

Even though this metric cannot exist linked to the number of active users, it clearly shows how much the network is existence used.

Otherwise, the number of addresses created shouldn't be every bit swell. Farther, let me finalize the addresses department past looking at two additional metrics: the number of addresses holding over ane BTC and the number of addresses holding over 1,000 BTC.

Number of Bitcoin addresses with >1 BTC

The to a higher place nautical chart shows the number of addresses belongings over one BTC. It seems the growth rate increases by a factor of one every year. Interestingly, since the Dec 2022 price peak, the number of addresses holding over one Bitcoin has increased past close to 10%, from 718,000 to 787,000.

This simply means more people desire to concur a single Bitcoin.

What almost the number of institutional investors? Practice y'all retrieve they have been interested in buying or selling Bitcoin? Permit'south take a expect.

Number of Bitcoin addresses with >1,000 BTC

The chart above showcases the number of addresses holding over 1,000 Bitcoin. We can clearly run across that even though there was a sell-off during 2022 and 2022, institutions have nevertheless been ownership after. Heavily.

Since early 2022, the number of addresses holding more than than ane,000 BTC has increased by over 50%. Substantially, it went from nether i,750 addresses to a high of virtually ii,250 addresses.

At that place are not probable many people with the capability to have purchased such an incredible corporeality of Bitcoin since 2022. Hence, probabilistically, such addresses are likely associated with institutions.

Do you personally think whales correspond smart or dumb money, by and large speaking? If you answered "smart coin," then you already have a strategy laid out: Follow it.

To conclude this section, I've shown how total addresses are not but growing in number, but also in value: The number of holders with over one Bitcoin is almost doubling every year, and the amount of institutions holding over 1,000 Bitcoin has increased by over 50% since 2022.

Bitcoin UTXO data

Data for unspent transaction output, or UTXO, is one of the most interesting sources of information to expect into, at to the lowest degree in our stance. For starters, information technology helps us understand the long-term behavior of Bitcoin holders, which comes in handy as our goal is to predict when to buy and when to sell.

UTXO shows the addresses that accept received BTC and not spend it subsequently.

Let's start with the Hodl Waves nautical chart.

Bitcoin UTXO age distribution

For reading the graph above, allow me to use Unchained Capital letter's own definition:

"The colored bands show the relative fraction of Bitcoin in beingness that was last transacted within the time window indicated in the legend. The bottom, warmer colors (reds, oranges) represent Bitcoin transacting very recently while the top, cooler colors (greens, blues) represent Bitcoin that hasn't transacted in a long fourth dimension."

The chart's chief points of interest seem to be the post-obit:

  • The number of enthusiasts holding for between three and five years, or for five years or more, has been showing the fastest growth charge per unit. At the time of writing, the two groups combined represent more than 20% of all Bitcoin addresses. It's incredible that so many folks have been holding for such a long period of time, considering the brusque life of the token.
  • Price appreciation peaks are ever followed past major sell-offs. The number of addresses property Bitcoin for less than one year during these periods substantially increased. At the fourth dimension of writing, about twoscore% of all addresses have traded Bitcoin in the past 12 months.

Hence, what we can look is that smart money will accumulate during bear markets and sell during bullish seasons. Much similar what I concluded in the previous point when looking into the number of addresses holding over 1,000 BTC.

Bitcoin block data

Earlier we conclude this slice, we would like to take one last dive into the Bitcoin blockchain information. This time, we'll look at blocks.

We believe the starting point should be block weight. How much information does each block hold, on average? To answer such a question, nosotros'll plow to our pals over at Bitinfocharts, one of the all-time repositories for blockchain charts.

Bitcoin block size (block weight)

At ane.2 megabytes, Bitcoin'due south block weight, or the number of bytes of each block in the Bitcoin blockchain, is currently reaching its maximum.

Block size peaked during late 2022 and early 2022, before many exchanges and other key players adopted Segregated Witness, or SegWit, shown beneath. The information shows an increasing adoption of SegWit, which removes the signature data from the block header, freeing upwards space for additional transactions.

The really interesting affair we noticed from observing this data is that it seems to correlate with the graph above.

Number of Bitcoin transactions on SegWit

Starting in October 2022, SegWit started getting adopted. Today, over 50% of all players use SegWit addresses. At the same fourth dimension, cake size started dropping in late 2022.

Hence, it seems Bitcoin is further developing key improvements to its working mechanics, allowing for more transactions per cake. Such improvements may adjust more users, which may help with furthering adoption.

Lastly, permit's take a look at the cake elevation, which adds the previous blocks.

Bitcoin block height

What this data shows is that non just has the Bitcoin blockchain been working nonstop for the past x years, but over 600,000 blocks have been created.

In add-on, the terminal fourth dimension price touched the block height line, a massive balderdash run took place, taking BTC from less than $0.01 to nigh $8,000.

If history rhymes, we could potentially see Bitcoin making way for brand new highs during late 2022, early 2024 and late 2027.

Determination

Looking at some cardinal metrics relating to Bitcoin transactions, addresses, UTXO and blocks, we conclude that we're in for an heady couple of years.

Arguably, the latest cost drop that took Bitcoin beneath $5,000 on CoinMarketCap provided our final opportunity to purchase BTC below $10,000. Especially since the halving is almost coming. Hence, let me summarize this commodity's findings:

  • Transactions are not only increasing, but the amounts being transferred are as well. The impact on price appreciation has been quite positive during the past 10 years.
  • The number of total addresses is growing too every bit the amounts held by both dumb and smart money. Hence, there has been a positive impact on cost.
  • A bully deal of Bitcoin is locked away by holders who simply sell almost peaks, significant there'south little room for farther falls until a new loftier is reached.
  • Blocks are getting full and new techniques are allowing for more transactions to exist added per block.

Safe trades!

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the writer'southward alone and practise not necessarily reflect or correspond the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment communication or recommendations. Every investment and trading motility involves risk, y'all should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Pedro Febrero is the founder of Bityond, a recruitment portal with a decentralized governance model, and an analyst for Breakthrough Economic science. He has penned over 600 articles in the cryptocurrency space and been involved with blockchain engineering since 2022.