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- > Microtransactions Fuel Surge in Bitcoin’s On-Chain Usage
- > Franklin Templeton building dividend-based BTC fund
- > Pudgy Penguin Targets trading card explosion
Microtransactions Fuel Surge in Bitcoin’s On-Chain Usage
If you looked at Bitcoin’s price today, barely half of its recorded peak at $126k USD, one of the last things you’d expect is on-chain activity to be nearing all-time highs.
Yet, over the past weeks, that’s what has happened.
Bitcoin’s blockchain usage has quietly ignored much of the market’s fatigue to witness a rise in activity, with several metrics closing in on heights not seen since the peak of the 2024-25 bull run.
According to Blockchain.com, the average number of transactions per Bitcoin block has surpassed 5,000 for the first time since October 2024.
Similarly, BTC average transactions per day have spiked over the past few weeks, again reaching close to its highest point since late 2024, breaching 800,000. As you’d anticipate, average transaction fees have jumped over the same timeframe, too.
So, what’s behind the move?
According to CryptoQuant, the answer is fairly simple – microtransactions encompassing Ordinal inscriptions, Runes and other BRC-20 tokens. These technologies essentially facilitate smart contract capabilities on the Bitcoin network, with many being used to build BTC-based NFTs.
Looking at the data, approximately 80% of all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain are below 0.01 BTC (under $1k AUD), while the number of payments worth less than 0.001 BTC are nearing record highs.
There are a couple of ways you could digest this. On the one hand, it presents a divergence from Bitcoin’s price action to its on-chain adoption – suggesting a possible structural shift for how people use its blockchain.
On the flipside, overall trade volume (by USD) is trending down, even as individual transactions are trending up. So economic demand for the blockchain isn’t growing alongside this spike in usage, leading to the argument it’s largely noise stemming from dust transactions.
Regardless, Bitcoin building a case for on-chain utility and adoption may help the blockchain evolve beyond a ‘store of value’ technology, as we move into the latter half of the decade.
Franklin Templeton building dividend-based BTC fund
The way traditional finance integrates digital assets into its products may be entering a new phase, with Franklin Templeton eyeing off a relatively novel fund structure.
The proposal is built on the adage spouted by some major players in finance (like BlackRock), that Bitcoin should comprise approximately 1-5% of your investment portfolio, depending on desired risk allocation and capital.
Franklin Templeton is looking to make that recommendation a reality, according to a recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The proposed fund, named the Franklin US Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF, will allocate 95% of its assets to US equities and 5% to Bitcoin.
In theory, this creates the 95/5 portfolio on behalf of the investor, reducing their need to manually rebalance holdings according to price movements and volatility.
From there, dividends generated by the significant equity portion of the fund will be reinvested back into BTC.
It’s a new-look way of automating BTC exposure on Wall Street, and if approved, its adoption may provide some insight into how institutional investors are managing digital asset exposure and risk in their portfolios.
Pudgy Penguin Targets trading card explosion
The Pudgy Penguins Vibes Series 3 Trading Card Game (TCG) will circulate approximately 15 million cards, with many featuring in the US department store Target, in what the team is calling the biggest retail expansion in the game’s history.
If you’ve been into collecting Pokémon cards over the past five years, you’ve probably seen your fair share of blue-chips soar in value. Annual sales are up 30% in the past 12 months, with some cards currently valued at close to half a million AUD.
The point? Trading cards are in vogue – and one of the most notable merchandising success stories from the NFT era, Pudgy Penguins, is looking to capitalise.
The Pudgy Penguins project has evolved from a cute, but largely…’useless’ NFT collection into a brand name with products across Walmart, Amazon and collaborations with clubs like Manchester City.
Now, the team has unveiled its newest retail surprise – its new Vibe Series 3 trading card game will expand into Target stores across the US. Target is one of the biggest shops in the country, welcoming approximately 2 billion people every year, and the retail partnership will bring the number of circulating Pudgy-based cards to 15 million.
It marks the first time that an NFT-inspired project – complete with blockchain-related gaming elements – has launched a trading card series in a retail setting as popular as Target.
The continued brand growth of Pudgy and related products appears not to have had a material positive impact on the PENGU token’s price, which is currently trading down approximately 20% over the past four weeks.
Ben Knight
