- Transactions below 0.01 BTC now represent roughly 80% of daily Bitcoin network activity, nearly doubling their share since 2023.
- The surge, largely fueled by data inscription protocols like Ordinals and Runes, has pushed CryptoQuant‘s Network Activity Index into positive territory for the first time since 2024.
- Sustained non-financial activity increases block space competition, raising fees for standard transactions while disproportionately small economic value is transferred.
- The trend has led to renewed network congestion, with the mempool holding around 128,000 unconfirmed transactions, its highest count since February 2025.
Microtransactions now dominate the Bitcoin blockchain, as transactions below 0.01 BTC account for roughly 80% of daily activity and push transaction volumes close to record highs despite weak price performance, according to a Thursday report from CryptoQuant. This surge has pushed the firm’s Network Activity Index into positive territory for the first time in over two years.
Consequently, this growth is largely fueled by protocols like Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens. These data-inscription methods generate large volumes of low-value transactions, explaining the sharp rise in the microtransaction cohort.
However, the economic value of these transactions is “disproportionately small,” wrote CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno. Sustained growth in such non-financial activity could “increase block space competition and raise fees for economic transactions.”
Meanwhile, the trend has renewed network congestion, pushing Bitcoin’s mempool to roughly 128,000 transactions. This represents its highest transaction count since February 2025, though it remains below peaks seen during previous inscription booms.
Furthermore, the OP_RETURN opcode, which embeds data without creating spendable outputs, has reached near-record usage levels in 2026. This technical change followed a contentious 2025 update where Bitcoin Core developers removed a long-standing 80-byte relay limit.
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