On June 19, CryptoQuant data showed that Bitcoin network activity has risen to just about 7% below the historical peak of September 2024, and for the first time since mid-2024, it has broken through the long-term trend line, mainly driven by a large volume of small transactions rather than traditional economic payment activities.

By 2026, the daily number of Bitcoin transactions has exceeded 800k, more than doubling the low point in 2025 and approaching the high points of the 2023 to 2025 cycle. CryptoQuant believes this growth has structural characteristics rather than short-term fluctuations.
Among them, small transactions below 0.01 BTC have increased to about 80%, far higher than approximately 44% in 2023. This change is closely related to the near-historical high usage of OP_RETURN. CryptoQuant pointed out that protocols such as Runes, Ordinals, BRC-20, and data timestamp services generate a large number of low-value transactions by writing data to blocks, with some transaction amounts as low as 546 satoshis.
As inscription activity increases, the Bitcoin mempool backlog has risen to about 128k transactions, the highest level since February 2025. Although still below the extreme congestion levels of September 2023 and November 2024, the report indicates that non-financial transactions are occupying an increasing share of Bitcoin network throughput. If this trend continues, it could push up transaction fees for economically time-sensitive transactions.
Meanwhile, the rise in on-chain activity contrasts with capital flows. On June 1, Bitcoin and Ethereum spot funds experienced a net outflow of over $528 million, but institutional investors still view ETF fund flows as the core driver of this cycle and maintain a baseline expectation that Bitcoin will reach $150k by the end of the year.
Bitcoin network activity is once again approaching historic highs, but the driving force has shifted from financial payments to non-economic data writes such as inscriptions. Small transactions (<0.01 BTC) have surged from 44% in 2023 to about 80%, and OP_RETURN usage is near historical peaks, indicating that on-chain data activities represented by Runes, Ordinals, BRC-20, and timestamp services are structurally occupying network throughput.
This trend contrasts with capital flows: in early June, Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs experienced net outflows exceeding $528 million. The key detail is that, although the mempool backlog (about 128k transactions) has not reached the extreme congestion levels of 2023-2024, the report explicitly states that if this trend persists, it will increase transaction fees for real economic transactions that require high timeliness. Essentially, non-financial applications are competing for Bitcoin’s core resource as a settlement layer, and their long-term impact could be more profound than short-term capital flows.

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