Small transactions less than 0.01 Bitcoin ($BTC) now accounts for approximately 80% of all daily trades on the network, and trading activity is near all-time highs despite weak price performance.
The surge pushed CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin Network Activity Index into positive territory for the first time since 2024, according to a report on Thursday. report By blockchain data company.
Transactions less than 0.01 $BTC accounted for approximately 44% of all daily Bitcoin transactions in 2023, but its share has nearly doubled since then, driven primarily by Ordinals, Runes, and other data-writing protocols.
The report, authored by Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, states that continued growth in non-financial activity could “increase competition for block space and increase fees for economic transactions.”
“However, the economic value of these transactions is disproportionately small,” Moreno wrote.
Bitcoin network activity is 7% below the all-time high recorded in September 2024. Source: CryptoQuant
Bitcoin is seeing registration congestion again
Current congestion remains below peaks seen during previous Bitcoin registration booms, when users embedded data such as images, text, and token information directly onto the blockchain.
transaction backlog increased rapidly In 2023, another surge occurred in late 2024 following the launch of Rune Protocol, as Ordinal and BRC-20 activity competed with regular transfers for block space.
According to the report, Runes, Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and data timestamping services are generating large amounts of low-value transactions, helping to explain the surge in microtransactions.
OP_RETURN, an opcode that allows data to be embedded on-chain without creating consumable output, saw usage rise to near-record levels in 2026. The Bitcoin community split in 2025 after Bitcoin Core developers removed the long-standing 80-byte relay limit. Critics argued that this change would make it easier to use Bitcoin to store non-financial data.
“The OP_RETURN opcode has become a standard mechanism in Bitcoin’s data layer protocol because it embeds up to 100,000 bytes of data on-chain without creating useless output,” Moreno wrote.
These protocols generate large amounts of dust value transactions (down to 546 satoshis), directly explaining the proliferation of low value cohorts.
As a result of this trend, the number of transactions in Menpool, the storage area for Bitcoin’s unconfirmed transactions, reached approximately 128,000, the highest number of transactions since February 2025.
