Daily transactions have rocketed to an all-time high of 682,000 this month, according to data from Glassnode, almost 40 per cent higher than the previous peak in 2017. Bitcoin's dominance, or its share of the overall $1.16 trillion cryptocurrency market, has swelled to 44 per cent from 38 per cent at the start of the year.Enter BRC-20, the first class of crypto tokens to be built on the bitcoin blockchain, besides bitcoin itself.
This new class of crypto has no specific use beyond speculation, akin to memecoins. Yet its nascent popularity points to interest in bitcoin not just as a store of value or payments method, but as the foundation for developing new coins and applications - previously considered the domain of more modern blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana.
"There isn't much utility when it comes to BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals," said CJ Reim, contributor at blockchain firm CoreDAO, though he sees the trend as"promising" in terms of interest in building products on the bitcoin blockchain. "Gas" fees, or transactions costs on the bitcoin blockchain have soared over the past month, with the total dollar-denominated fees paid per day touching near a new all-time-high of $17.8 million per day, according to Glassnode data.