Bitcoin Network Activity Is Rising as BTC Falls Nearly 50% Below Peak Price: CryptoQuant

Transaction counts on the Bitcoin network is rising despite top crypto assets trading nearly 50% off its all-time high price of $126,080.

Data collected by crypto analytics firm CryptoQuant indicates that network activity has been steadily increasing since January 2026, recently reaching its highest level since late 2024, which is now just 7% below the highest ever activity level recorded in September 2024.

“This above-trend reading has held for several weeks and marks the first positive activity regime since mid-2024, which is in stark contrast to Bitcoin’s ongoing bear market. price drop,” the company wrote.

Total and daily average transactions have reached near-record highs, according to the company, noting that activity had previously contracted since December 2024.

But while activity is increasing, the economic value of these transactions is remarkably small.

“The economic substance of these transactions differs materially from previous periods of high activity,” the report said.

Transaction cohorts of less than 0.01 BTC and less than 0.001 BTC have each seen significant increases and collectively represent approximately 80% of daily transactions – up from 44% in 2023, according to CryptoQuant data. The company considers this a sign of ‘protocol-driven activity’, which maintains high volumes but low value per transaction.

Further evidence of this drive at the protocol level is the correlated increase in the use of “OP_RETURN,” a Bitcoin transaction output field that allows users to associate information with their BTC transactions.

Although the field previously had a byte limit, it does was removed last year after a controversial debate.

“Usage has risen to near-record levels in 2026,” the analytics firm wrote, highlighting Bitcoin NFT activity and timestamping services among other OP_RETURN usage. “These protocols generate large numbers of high-value transactions, which directly explains the rise in the low-value cohort.”

Although the number of network transactions is increasing, the price of Bitcoin is not increasing. BTC has fallen 17% over the past 30 trading days and recently changed hands at $63,865.