Bitcoin's Network Is the Busiest It's Been Since 2024 — Mostly Because of JPEGs and Jokes 📦

Microtransactions below 0.01 Bitcoin ($BTC) now account for roughly 80% of all daily transactions on the network, according to a Thursday report from blockchain data company CryptoQuant. The surge has pushed the firm's Bitcoin "Network Activity Index" into positive territory for the first time since 2024, even as price performance has remained weak. Transactions under 0.01 $BTC represented about 44% of daily Bitcoin transactions in 2023, and their share has nearly doubled since, fueled largely by Ordinals, Runes and other data-inscription protocols.

CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno, who authored the report, said sustained growth in non-financial activity could "increase block space competition and raise fees for economic transactions." He added that "the economic value of these transactions is, however, disproportionately small." Bitcoin's overall network activity sits 7% below its all-time high recorded in September 2024.

The current congestion remains below peaks seen during earlier inscription booms, when users embedded images, text and token information directly onchain. Backlogs surged in 2023 as Ordinals and BRC-20 activity competed with ordinary transfers for block space, and another spike emerged in late 2024 following the launch of the Runes protocol. According to the report, Runes, Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens and data-timestamping services generate large volumes of low-value transactions, helping explain the rise in microtransactions.

OP_RETURN, an opcode that allows data to be embedded onchain without creating spendable outputs, has climbed to near-record usage levels in 2026. The opcode split the Bitcoin community in 2025 after Bitcoin Core developers removed a long-standing 80-byte relay limit, with critics arguing the change made it easier to use Bitcoin for non-financial data storage. "The OP_RETURN opcode embeds up to 100,000 bytes of data onchain without creating spendable outputs, making it the standard mechanism for Bitcoin data-layer protocols," Moreno wrote. These protocols generate high volumes of dust-value transactions, as low as 546 satoshis, directly driving the surge in the low-value cohort. The trend has also pushed Bitcoin's mempool to roughly 128,000 transactions, its highest count since February 2025.