Bitcoin network activity is climbing back toward record highs, driven not by large transfers but by a flood of tiny transactions — many worth a fraction of a cent — according to a CryptoQuant report.
Microtransactions below 0.01 BTC now account for roughly 80% of daily transactions, up from about 44% in 2023. Some are as small as 546 satoshis. The shift has pushed CryptoQuant's Network Activity Index into positive territory for the first time since 2024.
Bitcoin's mempool — the queue of pending transactions — recently reached around 128,000 transactions, its highest level since February 2025 and just 7% below the all-time high set in September 2024.
What is driving the surge
The increase is largely the work of data-inscription protocols. Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens drove a wave of activity that peaked in 2023, and the Runes protocol, launched in late 2024, triggered another spike. Data-timestamping services and near-record use of OP_RETURN have added to the load.
These protocols embed data into the Bitcoin blockchain, generating large volumes of low-value transactions rather than conventional payments.
Small value, real cost
CryptoQuant's head of research, Julio Moreno, noted that “the economic value of these transactions is, however, disproportionately small.” In other words, the network looks busy, but much of that activity moves very little money.
The concern is congestion. A high volume of dust-value transactions competes for the same limited block space as economic transfers, which can raise fees for users sending genuine payments.
For a systematic firm, the signal matters more than the headline: raw transaction counts can mislead. Distinguishing economic throughput from inscription traffic is essential before reading on-chain activity as a measure of genuine demand.