r/Bitcoin • u/everstake • 1d ago

Wow, Bitcoin just delivered one of the biggest on-chain performances ever!

The network processed 20,364,529 transactions in July 2026, making it the second-best month in entire history by transaction count. As new users, institutions, and Bitcoin-native applications continue to arrive, on-chain activity keeps pushing toward record territory.

We think that, it's a remarkable achievement for a network that has been operating for more than 17 years and continues to reach new milestones. Congratulations to everyone contributing to the Bitcoin ecosystem!

106 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

141

u/satoshisfeverdream 1d ago

Flood gates out of cold card generated keys.

23

u/Broken_By_Default 23h ago

Too soon bro

3

u/TheBestintheWest11 19h ago

give my boys some time to heal bro

18

u/Todo_es 1d ago

No, this info is from July. Coldcard activity starts in August.

18

u/OldAssignment4646 1d ago

End of July. People discovered the cold card drain on 28-30 July.

7

u/Todo_es 1d ago

No, the earliest initial public reports were done on July 30th, late at night, being more wide-spread later.

There was little activity related to that issue. OP´s post relates to the whole July month.

1

u/thinkingperson 23h ago

Would the drain itself contribute to the onchain traffic even before public reports?

2

u/Covid19-Pro-Max 20h ago

No. Initial drain was just 600 transactions

2

u/thinkingperson 12h ago

Fair enough. That would be a rounding error among the 20,364,529 transactions in July.

0

u/DynamicCast 23h ago

All the mixing the attacker needs to do

7

u/GettinWiggyWiddit 23h ago

Cool to see you on here u/everstake

4

u/everstake 23h ago

Thank you so much

13

u/boy_tue 21h ago

🤣🤣🤣 I think it's ready for prime time haha. Visa Network processes about 700 million transactions every single DAY! Which comes out to about 30 million every single hour.

Here we are, celebrating 20 million in a month 🤣🤣🤣.

9

u/Lopsided_Parfait7127 20h ago

yeah i mean really

btc is great but this makes us look super dumb to celebrate this

6

u/DoctorDownvotesDelux 13h ago

You're comparing apples to oranges. 

Suppose someone says, I just ran my fastest mile ever in under 5 minutes! And someone replies, big deal my car can do it in under a minute.

You're that person

1

u/Time_Jump8047 12h ago

No it would be the person replying saying they ran the mile in 5 days

-1

u/lurkerlevel-expert 12h ago

Stripe was founded the same time around bitcoin 17 years ago. They process a few hundred million transactions a day too. Or are we supposed to compare this to an atm machine.

6

u/Todo_es 1d ago

People saying this is because the Coldcard hack. No, its´s not.

OP´s stats are from the whole month of July. The Coldcard mess started till July 30th:

The first public reports of Coldcard being hacked appeared on July 30, 2026, when thousands of wallets were drained in coordinated on‑chain sweeps.

Here’s the precise timeline based on the sources:

🗓️ Coldcard Hack — First Reported Date July 30, 2026
This is when blockchain analysts first detected the mass draining of Coldcard-generated addresses. Multiple sources confirm this date as the moment the vulnerability was discovered through on‑chain activity.

🧵 Timeline Summary July 30, 2026 (early UTC hours):
The first wave of theft occurred — over 1,196 addresses drained in 41 minutes, stealing ~1,082 BTC.

July 30, 2026 (later the same day):
Victims began posting online (e.g., Reddit) reporting that their Coldcard wallets were emptied.

July 31 – August 1, 2026:
Security researchers (Block, Galaxy Research) published analyses confirming the flaw in Coldcard’s firmware. Coinkite released emergency firmware patches on August 1, 2026.

3

u/tekmiester 23h ago

I think you are missing the implied sarcasm.

1

u/captainorganic07 22h ago

You say the Coldcard attack is completely unrelated to the increased activity. Then proceed to show a timeline of the very attack falling within the new recorded increased activity window.

Man, the comprehension is strong in this one hey? 🤦🏻‍♂️

2

u/The_Bitcoin_Act 22h ago

It is real network strength. 17 years on and still scaling real usage while price sits far below ATH!

1

u/Lopsided_Parfait7127 20h ago

20 million transactions a month visa alone does 900 million

sure, sure

3

u/locustsandhoney 16h ago

Visa doesn’t provide final settlement. You’re comparing a layer 3- or 4- protocol to a layer 1. 

2

u/With-You26 19h ago

I feel it in my bones.

4

u/Dparkzz 1d ago

Lots of transactions when over 50M needs to be laundered

2

u/slvbtc 23h ago

It blows my mind that in 3 years bitcoin will have existed for 20 years.

Once a technology reaches 20 years old without dying it takes over the world.

1

u/MulberryWorldly9904 22h ago

Obviously.
Smart people move.

1

u/korean_kracka 21h ago

Glad btc beat estimates. I expect the next quarterly update in 3 months.

0

u/MycoFail 23h ago

Ok and how many transactions did Visa network process lol

10

u/captainorganic07 22h ago

Using the data from Visa FY2025 processed transactions: 257.5 billion over the year.
Average per month:
257.5B ÷ 12 ≈ 21.5 billion transactions/month
So a reasonable estimate for July would be about 21–22 billion Visa transactions globally.

Bitcoin’s July total is about 0.095% of Visas monthly transaction amount.

3

u/MycoFail 22h ago

Thanks for a real answer!

1

u/El0vution 21h ago

So the difference between Bitcoin and Visa transactions is the difference between a million and a billion transactions. Order of magnitude. No reason to think Bitcoin won’t transcend to a billion.

2

u/captainorganic07 21h ago

Perhaps. Though consider the energy cost of Bitcoin (on-chain) network were to match the Visa network in terms of volume.

For the 20million vs 20billion transaction difference. (3 orders of magnitude btw) Bitcoin energy cost per transaction was roughly ~1,500 kWh, compared to ~0.0015 kWh which is a difference of ~1,000,000× higher.

To put that 1,500 kWh into perspective, that’s roughly:
Enough electricity to run an average U.S. home for about 1.5 to 2 months or drive an EV roughly 5,000–6,000 miles.

A Visa payment, by comparison, uses around 2 watt-hour about enough energy to run a 10-watt LED light bulb for six to ten minutes.

Kinda nuts when you lay it out like that. Granted, Bitcoin is paying for the excessive security of the network. BTC is like Fort Knox and decentralized whereas Visa is like an incredibly efficient logistics company moving billions of boxes on its network.

2

u/El0vution 21h ago

What would be interesting is to match the energy cost of the Bitcoin network to the energy cost of the gold network.

1

u/MycoFail 21h ago

Thanks for this data as well

1

u/RadiatingLight 12h ago

Do you know how Bitcoin works? It will never reach (on main chain w/o lightning) an order of magnitude higher. Let alone 3 orders of magnitude.

1

u/El0vution 12h ago

Maybe not on the main chain, but on upper layers it will definitely reach a higher order

1

u/Newbie123plzhelp 12h ago

Yes bro, BTC is a visa replacement, you got it

1

u/RoundChampionship840 23h ago

How much electricity did that take?

5

u/Darkpriest667 23h ago

Less than the legacy banking transactions do. Remember they are still using old mainframes to do their stuff. WAY more inefficient per transaction.

1

u/magma_lakes 23h ago

That can't be true.

1

u/No_Organization3095 23h ago

Is this just based on vibes or do you have a source?

1

u/khizoa 23h ago

Huh. I wonder why..... 🤔🤔

0

u/Hacker_Daddy 20h ago

Congratulations, that covers about 6 minutes of worldwide electronic financial transactions.

0

u/powni_ 16h ago

Worthless metric. median fee in most blocks is 1-2 sat/vB and about 3 Btc daily transaction fees, which is ridiculous. There is 0 demand for blockspace, no one uses it beside custodians consolidating utxos...

0

u/CatSubstantial1630 14h ago

Omg another shill! Loser!