Bitcoin (BTC) has been wide-ranging over the past week after a strong pullback. The market cap now stands at US$235 billion on US$6.46 billion in volume over the past 24 hours. Volume has slowed broadly amongst the cryptocurrency markets, which is most likely due the holiday season.
BTC transactions per day have declined since the peak around 490,000. This trend has been matched through Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC). ETH continues to process the highest number of transactions per day, almost double that of BTC. However, the average value of a BTC transaction is over 10x greater than ETH.
There are currently 175,00 unconfirmed transactions in the bitcoin mempool, down from over 250,000 just a few days ago. Transactions usually see an uptick in downwards price movements, as was the case from the 20th to the 30th of December. This only compounded the problem of the existing backlog. “Spam” transactions also continue to plague the network.