Analysis: Bitcoin Network Activity Approaching an All-Time High, Small Transactions and On-Chain Activity Drive Daily Transaction Volume Above 800,000 Transactions

BlockBeats News, June 19th, CryptoQuant data shows that Bitcoin network activity has risen to a level only about 7% below the September 2024 historical peak, and has broken above a long-term trendline for the first time since mid-2024, driven mainly by a large number of small transactions rather than traditional economic payment activity.

Bitcoin's daily transaction count in 2026 has exceeded 800,000 transactions, more than doubling from the 2025 low point and approaching the high points of the 2023 to 2025 cycle. CryptoQuant believes that this growth has structural characteristics rather than being a short-term fluctuation.

Notably, the percentage of small transactions below 0.01 BTC has risen to about 80%, significantly higher than the approximately 44% in 2023. This change is closely related to the usage of OP_RETURN nearing historical highs. CryptoQuant points out that protocols such as Runes, Ordinals, BRC-20, and data timestamp services are generating a large number of low-value transactions by writing data to the blockchain, with some transaction amounts going as low as 546 sats.

With the increase in on-chain activity, the number of transactions stuck in the Bitcoin mempool has risen to around 128,000 transactions, the highest level since February 2025. While still below the extreme congestion levels of September 2023 and November 2024, the report suggests that non-financial transactions are increasingly occupying more of Bitcoin's network throughput. If this trend continues, it could drive up transaction fees for economically sensitive transactions requiring higher timeliness.

Meanwhile, the rise in on-chain activity contrasts with fund flows. On June 1st, Bitcoin and Ethereum spot funds combined saw a net outflow of over $528 million. However, institutional investors still consider ETF flows as the core driver of this cycle and maintain the benchmark expectation of Bitcoin reaching $150,000 by the end of the year.