Bitcoin has moved more than $100 trillion in value across the network in its entire history. It is a statistic that highlights the power and scalability of the Bitcoin network. However, on-chain analyst David Puell points out that we should not assign too much value to the statistic.
Special milestone
It is a special milestone that indicates that the Bitcoin network is starting to take shape. But on the other hand, not every transaction is a so-called economic transaction. Even when people or exchanges reorganize their wallets, the transactions count towards the total, while in fact these are not transactions between two parties.
Actual economic transactions, according to David Puell, are well below $100 trillion. If we correct for that, the total comes to $7.3 trillion. Still an impressive number, but it represents ‘only’ 7.3 percent of that $100 trillion. On the other hand, trades on stock exchanges are not included in this.
What is an economic transaction?
You can make an argument that someone who buys Bitcoin from an exchange platform also completes an economic transaction. If this person subsequently chooses to sell, that is also an economic transaction. After all, this person converts fiat money or another crypto into Bitcoin or vice versa.
Still, the $100 trillion figure remains a significant number. After all, all this value has been transferred to a network where people have no help from banks or other financial intermediaries. Bitcoin is a completely independent money network on which people can move value.
In theory, it is possible to send hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to the other side of the world within 10 minutes. That is something that is impossible in the traditional financial system with fiat money, but is also a complete impossibility for precious metals such as gold.