According to data provided by Blockchain. com, over $410 billion was transacted in Bitcoin (BTC) in 2018, averaging over $13,000 per second.
This was noted in a tweet by Jameson Lopp, a bitcoin developer and CTO at U.S.-based blockchain security startup Casa.
https://t.co/vFLd6EtIff estimates (by removing likely change outputs) that over $410 billion was transacted via BTC in 2018, averaging over $13,000 per second. pic.twitter.com/wjnDOQlXEi
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 24, 2018
Additionally, during 2018 the number of known Lightning Network channels has grown from 0 to over 19,000 while their capacity has increased from 0 to over 500 BTC, says Lopp.
The number of known (advertised) Lightning Network channels has grown from 0 to over 19,000 while their capacity has increased from 0 to over 500 BTC during 2018. It’s not possible to compile statistics for unadvertised channels. pic.twitter.com/uXLE4Smrlb
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 24, 2018
He also noted a significant growth of RSK and Liquid sidechains. RSK sidechain was launched in January 2018 and is now merge mined by 43% of bitcoin’s hashrate and capitalized with 250 BTC, while Liquid, which is developed by Blockstream, is currently capitalized with 25 BTC from the net value of over 100 peg transactions.
The Liquid sidechain is only 3 months old and still bootstrapping; it’s currently capitalized with 25 BTC from the net value of 100+ peg transactions. https://t.co/sgJ7HnKVbW pic.twitter.com/7QikCCuELq
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 24, 2018