Bitcoin's busiest block is now a Post-it note 💸

Bitcoin network activity has climbed to within 7% of its all-time high recorded in September 2024, driven almost entirely by microtransactions below 0.01 BTC that now account for roughly 80% of all daily transactions on the network, according to a Thursday report from blockchain data company CryptoQuant. That share has nearly doubled from about 44% in 2023, the report said. Total and daily average transaction counts have hit near-record highs, with activity previously contracting since December 2024 before steadily rising from January 2026. CryptoQuant's Bitcoin "Network Activity Index" has turned positive for the first time since 2024, marking "the first positive activity regime since mid-2024, contrasting sharply with Bitcoin's ongoing bear market price decline," the firm wrote.

The surge is largely attributed to Ordinals, Runes, BRC-20 tokens, and data-timestamping services that generate large volumes of low-value transactions, including dust-value transfers as small as 546 satoshis. "The economic value of these transactions is, however, disproportionately small," wrote CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno, who added that sustained growth in non-financial activity could "increase block space competition and raise fees for economic transactions." Bitcoin's price has not followed the activity higher: $BTC has fallen 17% over the past 30 days and was recently changing hands at $63,865, down nearly 50% from its all-time high of $126,080.

OP_RETURN usage, an opcode that allows data to be embedded onchain without creating spendable outputs, has climbed to near-record levels in 2026. The field can now carry up to 100,000 bytes of data onchain after Bitcoin Core developers removed a long-standing 80-byte relay limit in 2025, a change that split the Bitcoin community. Critics argued at the time that the revision would make it easier to use Bitcoin for non-financial data storage, while proponents pointed to the rise of Bitcoin NFT activity and time-stamping services. "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.

Bitcoin's mempool, the holding area for unconfirmed transactions, has expanded to roughly 128,000 transactions, its highest count since February 2025, as congestion from inscriptions continues to build. CryptoQuant noted that current congestion remains below the peaks seen during prior inscription booms, including the 2023 surge when Ordinals and BRC-20 activity competed with ordinary transfers for block space, and the late-2024 spike that followed the launch of the Runes protocol. The Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate to around 1% in a 7-1 vote on Tuesday, with the new guideline effective June 17, while flagging inflation risks from higher oil prices as further hikes remain on the table.