Four out of every five Bitcoin transactions are now tiny. Not small. Tiny. We’re talking transfers below 0.01 BTC, which at current prices barely qualifies as pocket change.
CryptoQuant reported on June 18 that microtransactions, defined as those under 0.01 BTC, now account for roughly 80% of all daily Bitcoin transactions. That figure sat below 50% as recently as 2023, meaning the composition of Bitcoin’s transaction base has fundamentally shifted in under three years.
What’s actually driving all these tiny transactions
The surge is being driven almost entirely by protocol-level activity, specifically Runes, Ordinals, and inscriptions.
OP_RETURN usage, a Bitcoin feature that lets users embed non-monetary data directly into the blockchain, is approaching all-time highs.
