Bitcoin (BTC) Continues Downtrend Despite Daily Transactions Nearing All-Time High

While Bitcoin (BTC) has continued a downtrend, the asset has recently recorded a high volume in daily transactions nearing its all-time high. According to a report by on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, “Bitcoin daily transaction counts are approaching All-time-highs, seeing an explosive uptick in 2023.’

Regardless of this news, Bitcoin has continued to move downward after its weekend plateau of trading at just between $29,300. The asset trading volume has also surged slightly indicating a possible violent sell-off.  

Bitcoin Records Daily Transactions Nearing Peak Levels

According to Glassnode, on the 30-day moving average, Bitcoin daily transactions have reached an amount of 348,700. While the peak level which was seen in 2017 remains at 379,000 transactions per day. This has proved Bitcoin’s daily transactions are beginning to near the all-time high last seen about 5 years ago.

Bitcoin (BTC) daily transaction count.

Furthermore, according to the Glassnode report, this surge in Bitcoin daily transactions is thanks to the Ordinal inscriptions. The Ordinal inscriptions also known as Bitcoin non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or Ordinals, are inscriptions (digital artifacts) inscribed on satoshis (sats) – little units of Bitcoin.

Glassnode noted the inscription accounts for approximately 30% to 40% of mined transactions and 10% to 20% of fees paid. Meanwhile, the remaining majority of transactions are monetary in nature, frequently conducted through exchanges. 

According to Glassnode, compared to Ordinals activity on the Bitcoin blockchain, BTC exchange activity is relatively low, representing roughly 30% of fees and transactions.

The trend of creating inscriptions initially gained popularity in February when users started inscribing NFTs on satoshis. However, the recent resurgence has been dominated by inscriptions that are based on text.

Glassnode noted:

Bitcoin transaction counts, address activity, Inscriptions, and Mempool congestion are all elevated. As is the degree of HODLing, and supply acquired below $30k. Conviction remains.

BTC Continues Downtrend

Bitcoin (BTC) is yet to make any significant move in the past few days. Instead, it has only seemed to pick up from where it left off in its downward trend in recent weeks. Over the past 24 hours, the top crypto has plummeted nearly 4% with a market price of $28,435, at the time of writing. 

Bitcoin (BTC) price chart on TradingView

This downtrend follows a notable fall from the $30,000 region in recent weeks. So far, Bitcoin has a 24-hour range between a low of $28,315 and a high of $29,944.

Meanwhile, the BTC market cap is still in the green while its trading volume signals selling pressure, indicating a possible continuous bearish trend. 

Over the past week, Bitcoin’s market capitalization has surged from a low of $528 billion on April 24 to as high as $550 billion as of today. Its trading volume has also spiked from a daily trading volume of $15.4 billion to $19.8 billion, over the same time period.

Featured image from Unsplash, Chart from TradingView

Lightning Speed: 5 Ways To Make Money/ Earn Sats Using The Lightning Network

Earning sats for the first time is a magical experience and NewsBTC is here to guide you through it. The Lightning Network gave bitcoin real micro-transactions with extremely low fees. That opened up new avenues for the bitcoin network to expand through, avenues that the world is just beginning to explore. In the following text, we will present seven projects that pay their users or allows them to get tips from the community. In sats, using the Lightning Network.

Unlike most altcoins, bitcoin is truly scarce, has a hard total cap, and wasn’t pre-mined. The rewards that the following projects offer are low compared to million-dollar NFT collections and unreal 20% yields. However, you will earn real bitcoin by exploiting your hobbies. Cross your fingers, let’s hope this first guide has something for you. 

Before advancing, though, let’s quote Stacker News’ FAQ for a definition of sats AKA satoshis. “Sats are the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. Just like there are 100 pennies in 1 dollar, there are 100,000,000 sats in 1 Bitcoin.”

1.- Earn Sats Playing Games With Thndr

Go to Thndr, download and play classic games, like Snake, or new and original ones like Turbo84 or Bitcoin Bounce. Because of Android App store’s restrictions, the company can’t give you sats directly. You can earn them, though. “Each ticket you collect is an entry into the daily prize draw.  The more tickets that you collect, the more chances you have to win the bitcoin jackpot.”

It certainly beats playing retro videogames and not getting paid for it.

Thndr → https://www.thndr.games/

2.- Get Tips For Your Pictures With Starbackr

Publish your pictures and videos and get rewarded by the community on Starbackr. Tips in sats might not be the ideal way to support creators, but then again, maybe it is. Let’s experiment and see what the market says. And speaking about experiments, it seems like this service is just the first stage and not Starbackr’s final form. The company’s About Us says:

“We build the platform of choice for digital content creators with instant payments, low friction, and free of moral censorship. Building on the Bitcoin Lightning network allows us to deliver a content monetization platform that is dramatically less expensive, faster, and more creator-friendly.”

So, don’t lose faith if you’re not a photographer. We might hear from new services from Starbackr again in the not-so-distant future.

Starbackr —> https://app.starbackr.com/

BTC price chart for 09/01/2022 on Bitstamp | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
3.- Get Sats For Your Content In Stacker News

Stacker News is a bitcoin-focused Hacker News clone that rewards content curation and production. The way it accomplishes this is the fundamental difference between the two sites, “Rather than collecting “upvotes” that are not redeemable or transferable on Reddit or Hacker News, Stacker News users earn sats that can immediately be spent anywhere,” their FAQ says

Each upvote or comment that your content gets rewards you with 1 sat minimum. Publishing is not free, though, it also costs 1 sat. This is one of the most evolved projects on the list, so there’s an economy around it and the team has developed new functionalities. For example, you can pay to boost your content and users can boost their upvote by rewarding more sats. 

Stacker News –> https://stacker.news/

4.- Cut Clips From Your Favorite Podcasts In Fountain

Fountain is a Podcasting 2.0-enabled app that distinguished itself from the crowd by allowing users to earn sats. You can listen to sponsored content and advertisement. Alternatively, you can comment or cut clips from your favorite podcast. If users like those comments or clips, you get a cut. Plus, the satisfaction of aiding in the promotion of your favorite podcast. 

Mind you, another possibility that Fountain and similar apps provide is that you can produce a podcast and get rewarded by the community under the Value-for-Value model. The barrier of entry is much higher, sure, but podcasting might be your calling. 

Fountain → https://www.fountain.fm/

5.- Trade Derivatives In Sats Through LN Markets

If technical analysis is your forte and fundamental analysis excites you, LN Markets offers an easy way to play the markets. “Trading is done directly from any Lightning wallet and enables super fast access to derivatives markets. Open a position by making a Lightning transaction, close the position and receive the money directly in your wallet,” their FAQ clarifies.

Open a trading position only if you know what you’re doing, though. At least watch a few NewsBTC Daily technical analysis episodes to kickstart your learning process. Or use LN Markets in testnet, which is also possible. Whatever you do, remember that playing the markets comes with inherent risk and that even the most experienced traders suffer devastating losses. Don’t use money that you can’t afford to lose. 

LN Markets → https://lnmarkets.com/

Before closing, some of these services assume that you already have a Lightning Network-specific wallet. Go and learn how to set one up before interacting with them. This closes NewsBTC’s first guide to making money through the Lightning Network. If you want more content like this, tell us through NewsBTC’s social media channels.

Featured Image: Bitcoin Bounce screenshot from Thndr Games | Charts by TradingView

“Time To Switch To Satoshis” Says Galaxy Digital CEO Novogratz

It’s been a busy few months for crypto financial services firm Galaxy Digital. From sales to satoshis, the company has been making headlines. Galaxy Digital is fresh off the heels of acquiring digital assets infrastructure firm BitGo, and is one of four firms to lead a recent Canadian petition for an Ethereum ETF.

Now, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz posted over the weekend on a Twitter post that he’d like to see more evolution in the crypto landscape, particularly with how we view Bitcoin on exchanges.

Seeing Satoshis

In his tweet, Novogratz suggests that consumer perception around the dollar value of Bitcoin can be better addressed by reducing units to satoshis (SATS), rather than full units of BTC. No major cryptocurrency exchanges do so, leaving Novogratz to ask, “which exchange will be the first to quote in SATS?”, while tagging some of crypto’s biggest executives in the industry.

Square’s Cash App added SATS last year, but no crypto-dedicated exchanges have followed. Additionally, crypto tracking website CryptoMarketCap tracks SATS, which are valued at 0.00000001 BTC.

Related Reading | Citi Just Realized It Can’t Beat Bitcoin, Considers Joining Instead

Is It Psychological?

The main premise is of course, the psychological aspect around having a more affordable unit to build an individual’s cost basis of Bitcoin around. Billionaire and crypto-enthusiast Mark Cuban explained the hype around Dogecoin around this exact concept, stating that “it’s hard for someone with $100 to get excited about owning a fraction of BTC or ETH. It’s easy with Doge”. Blockchain Research Lab co-founder Ingo Fiedler expressed similar sentiments, stating that “while it makes financially no difference to change the denomination from BTC to Sats, it has a psychological impact that likely helps further adoption”.

Despite this barrier, recent analysis from Glassnode shows that addresses holding less than 1 BTC make up over 5% of the crypto’s circulating supply. Companies like Lolli have aimed at normalizing this unit of value, by way of rewarding consumers with small amounts of satoshis as they spend money with partnered companies.

Alternatively, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell explains that it is not necessarily that simple: “Have to think through the UX, discoverability. 99% of new users coming in will be looking for bitcoin/BTC and have no idea what a satoshi/sat is. Don’t want to confuse them.”

 

BTC has seen stable and steady growth to start the year. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com

Legacy Of The Lexicon

Satoshis come from mysterious BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who has been the center of speculation around the pioneering cryptocurrency since it’s 2008 whitepaper. It was just over a decade ago that Nakamoto sent his final emails to developers stating that he was moving on to other projects. A number of individuals have been identified as potential pioneers that fit the bill of Nakamoto, but none have led to a definitive answer.

Continuous questions remain rooted in the name: who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Does institutional adoption of BTC interfere with Satoshi’s desire of removing a middleman? It was just last month that the U.S. state of Louisiana passed a resolution to commend Bitcoin’s success as becoming the first decentralized trillion dollar asset, but questions still loom around the legendary Bitcoin developer.

Nowadays, the questions reach beyond the origination of the Satoshi Nakamoto moniker, and into the realm of how should we be measuring our crypto holdings.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Moves Sideways, But Looks Set For A Moon Week

Featured image from Pixabay, Charts from TradingView.com