Down 53% From Its All-Time High, Bitcoin Usage Is Still Growing
The recent rally in Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) price makes it difficult to remember that the leading cryptocurrency is still down 53% from its all-time high and that it remains in the midst of a bear market. But while Bitcoin's price fluctuates, there is one metric that has remained steadfast in its growth: the total number of unique addresses on the Bitcoin network.
Unlike publicly traded companies, which are required to release quarterly earnings reports so investors can gauge their financial health, we can look at data derived from blockchains to get a glimpse into a cryptocurrency's key metrics.
One basic yet effective measure of Bitcoin's growth is the number of addresses created on the blockchain that have some amount of Bitcoin. Rather than looking at say only Bitcoin addresses with more than 1, 5, or 10 bitcoins (which focuses on only investors with large reserves), looking at all addresses account for those with even a small amount of bitcoins. These are known as addresses with a non-zero balance and few other statistics are so simple yet so meaningful.
Source Fool.com
