Bitcoin's blockchain has processed 1 billion transactions, 15 years after its creation

The Bitcoin network has achieved a significant milestone today by processing its one billionth transaction, marking a momentous occasion in the cryptocurrency's roughly 15-year history.

The milestone was reached on May 5, 2023, at 9:34 pm UTC, when transaction #1,000,000,000 was mined into block 842,241.

This landmark event comes 15 years, four months, and four days after Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the network's first block on January 3, 2009. Over the course of its 5,603-day existence, Bitcoin has processed an average of 178,475 daily transactions.

Notably, though, this transaction count does not include those made on the Lightning Network, a Bitcoin layer 2 network.

The milestone comes at an exciting time for Bitcoin, which has seen heightened levels of daily transactions over the past year as novel protocols like Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes attract more activity to the world's first blockchain. The launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs has also contributed to bullish sentiment for the token.

Daily transactions on Bitcoin spiked around the network's fourth halving event on April 20, including a record high of 926,000 transactions processed on April 23. Much of this demand can be attributed to the launch of the Runes protocol, a new Bitcoin token standard, at block 840,000. However, Bitcoin's daily transaction count has since cooled off to 660,260 on May 4.

Bitcoin is not the first blockchain to process over a billion transactions though. Ethereum, for instance, has processed well over 2 billion transactions, despite being launched roughly six years after Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is currently trading at the $63,700 level, easing into a 12% increase in price rebound since its two-month low of $56,800 on May 2. It is still down by 13.6% from its previous all-time high of $73,740 set on March 13 this year.