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Bitcoin just notched a new record for daily transactions amid surging interest in Ordinals, a protocol that expands the blockchain's use case.
The daily number of Bitcoin transactions jumped to 682,300 on Monday, according to data provider BitInfoCharts, after hitting a previous high of 568,300 the day before. This was nearly 78,000 more than its former peak during the bull market of 2017, per Blockworks.
A lot of these transactions — 372,832, or about 54.6% — came from Ordinals, per data from Dune Analytics. Ordinals allow users to embed data into Bitcoin's blockchain, comparable to minting non-fungible tokens. This expands the network's userbase by allowing participants to do more than borderless transfers or simply invest in the cryptocurrency.
Tom Rodgers, Head of Research at crypto ETP provider ETC Group, said in years past transaction amounts sent tended to skew much higher in the range of $1,000-$10,000. Transactions are now much smaller, with a large portion of them being around $1 earlier this week.
"This suggests most Bitcoin users were using the blockchain for trading," Rodgers told Insider in a statement, adding that there's been a "huge increase in Bitcoin velocity — or the amount of Bitcoin being transacted by users, instead of being locked up in cold wallets and held over the long term."