Bitcoin Network Processed $3 Trillion Worth of Payments in 2021

Bitcoin bulls got another reason to celebrate last week after a report from NYDIG highlighted a steep rise in BTC’s annual transaction volume. According to the report, the BTC network processed more than $3 trillion worth of payments in 2021, compared to $886 billion in 2020.

With that, Bitcoin has surpassed American Express and Discover in terms of annual transaction volume. Last year, American Express and Discover processed $1.28 trillion and $504 billion, respectively. Visa and Mastercard, the world’s financial payments giants, has processed more than the Bitcoin network in the last 12 months.

“Bitcoin has jumped into the number three spot in this ranking through significant growth in transaction volume. That transaction volume growth, while not always even year-to-year, has kept up at a torrid pace when looking at 5-year compound annual growth rates. At the end of 2021, transaction volumes have been growing by nearly 100% annually over the past 5 years,” NYDIG's report highlighted.

In terms of growth across annual transaction volumes during the last 5 years, BTC has surpassed every single financial services provider on the list.

Bitcoin Network

With growing retail and institutional popularity, the Bitcoin network witnessed a monumental jump in the total number of users during 2021. The latest jump in annual transaction volume was backed by strong whale movements and exchange flows. While the price of the digital asset has dropped substantially in the last few weeks, the latest surge in exchange outflows indicates that BTC whales have started moving the crypto asset away from trading platforms.

“40,785 BTC coins were moved away from exchanges in the past week. This was the highest week of Bitcoin exchange outflow since the 2nd week of September. The continued trend of coins moving to cold wallets is historically good for long-term price movements,” Santiment, the on-chain crypto and blockchain analytics firm, noted.