The Bitcoin network recorded its one billionth transaction, according to data from Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard.
Bitcoin transactions and their corresponding fees have been a key discussion point among industry participants in recent weeks, in part, due to the introduction of Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes.
The latter, a fungible token protocol launched in tandem with the latest Bitcoin halving last month, raised transaction fees to an all-time record during its debut.
The halving reduces miners’ rewards by 50% roughly every four years, with the latest quadrennial event cutting them from 6.25 Bitcoins to 3.125.
Bitcoin is the world’s first blockchain-based cryptocurrency.
The network’s genesis block was mined by its founder Satoshi Nakamoto in January 2009.
First introduced by the pseudonymous founder as a peer-to-peer payment system, Bitcoin has historically been an inefficient blockchain for tokenized assets such as non-fungible or fungible tokens when compared to other networks like Solana or Ethereum.
The introduction of Bitcoin Ordinals brought a new wave of tokenized assets onto the network by inscribing data onto satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, allowing a rendition of NFTs to exist on the network.
With the launch of Runes, primarily used for memecoins today, fungible tokens can potentially introduce new possibilities to the network, such as expanded applications for decentralized finance.