Bitcoin Network’s Active Entities Approach Peak Levels

Bitcoin prices are battling against resistance levels following a week of consolidation. BTC’s much-anticipated block-reward halving event is now less than five days away — and both network activity and on-chain metrics are looking healthy. According to industry metrics provider glassnode, the number of unique entities that were active either as a sender or receiver on the Bitcoin network has risen sharply. @glassnode tweeted:

“The number of active entities on the #Bitcoin network is the highest it’s been since the 2017 $BTC bull run.”

Healthy Fundamentals

The industry metric provider describes ‘entities’ as a cluster of addresses that are controlled by the same network entity — estimating them “through advanced heuristics and proprietary clustering algorithms.” The metric is essentially a measure of activity on the network, which is very loosely correlated with its price. Currently, the number of active entities has surpassed the 2019 peak — when Bitcoin prices approached $14,000 — and it is moving towards the next all-time high, which occurred in December 2017. The transaction count chart is very similar and can almost be overlaid onto this one, with glassnode reporting the current number of transactions at 316,656. This number, however, is still quite a ways off the peak number of 406,953 in December 2017. The number of active addresses has also shot up recently and is currently 937,904, according to the glassnode’s figures. It too peaked along with price two years ago at 1,190,302 active addresses.

Bitcoin Hodlers & Hash Rate Growing

One interesting Bitcoin-specific chart is the number of addresses with a non-zero balance. This has steadily increased over the past two years, despite a prolonged bear market.

This may be taken as a clear indication that more people are using and holding Bitcoin over time. Other on-chain metrics, such as hash rates, are also looking healthy. According to bitinfocharts.com, the BTC hash rate is just below its all-time high at 129.41 EH/s. It is the second-highest it has ever been, according to these particular measurements. Hash rate may take a hit next week, however, if miners decide to power down when their block reward halves. This will all depend on prices and markets — and whether they can maintain the bullish momentum seen over the past month.