The total number of Bitcoin addresses with a balance greater than zero BTC reached a new high of 28.39million, thus surpassing the previous record of 28.38 million recorded on January 10, 2018. Analyst Alex Thorne draws attention to this, citing data from the CoinMetrics portal.
Given the pseudonymity of addresses on the blockchain, this metric can serve as one of the best indicators of the number of cryptocurrency users, although it also has its own significant limitations.
On the one hand, one address may containmultiple transaction exits (UTXO), in one bitcoin wallet there can be many addresses, and one user can own several wallets. Recommendations on the use of bitcoin suggest that for each individual BTC transaction, the user must create a new address. Therefore, the number of addresses defined in this way can exceed the actual number of users, since several addresses can be associated with one person.
On the other hand, many Bitcoin holdersThey prefer to use the services of third-party custodians and exchanges, which can have one unified address for storing all the assets of their customers. In this case, several users may represent one address, which will not allow to take them all into account when calculating the total number.
These two factors play against each other and, according toby and large, are not amenable to balanced balancing. According to the analyst, the high demand for cryptocurrency exchanges as a means of storing assets means that the number of bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance is lower than the number of users.
“In general, although the metric is“ addresses with any“positive residue” is not ideal, it is one of the best data metrics on the blockchain for estimating the total number of bitcoin users. Its increase over time can be seen as an indicator of the continued spread of bitcoin. ”He concludes.
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