Ethereum has transferred an estimated 15,070,151 eth, worth $1,959,119,630, on the 19th of May, according to Infura, a ConsenSys spoke that provides ethereum and IPFS nodes infrastructure.
On that day, the network experienced the highest volume of transactions to date, reaching an all-time high of 161,568, which amounts to around 50% of bitcoin’s usual transaction volumes.
Interestingly, the highest value bitcoin has ever transferred in one day stands at just under $1 billion according to blockchain.info, although it is not clear at what price they are measuring the bitcoin movements considering its volatility.
If the data is correct, then the statistic is interesting because there have been instances when $1 billion worth of bitcoins have been stuck in a backlog, suggesting that the network had effectively broken down for that day since that’s the highest value it has ever transferred.
It is also interesting because it is half of the value ethereum’s network has transferred which may suggest ethereum is actually being used more than bitcoin for economical activity.
Percentage wise, almost 20% of eth’s network moved on that day, while for bitcoin it would be around 3%. Moreover, according to data from Infura, the event isn’t that rare. Around 14 million eth was transferred on the 17th of May, for example, with 10 million eth transferred yesterday.
That suggests ethereum is handling a considerable level of activity which is unlikely to be that of merely transferring to exchanges because trading volumes stand at around half a billion dollars.
You can’t really know much on the blockchain, so we don’t quite know what that activity is, but ethereum’s public blockchain is now being used in the real world in ordinary settings by individuals who most probably don’t even know they are doing so.
The two most prominent examples are Innogy’s eth based charging stations for electric cars and Chronicle’s use of eth’s public blockchain to ensure authenticity of high end goods.
An interesting third area may be energy, especially as it pertains to solar power, with pilots and test runs using eth’s public blockchain to allow neighbors to sell their energy in a peer to peer fashion thus creating a micro-grid that can serve as a backup or can be called on by the national grid.
On top, eth is beginning to find uses even in the more just payment area due to bitcoin’s high fees and long delays. Eth, instead, can transfer value in seconds with fees as good as non-existent at just pennies, so that area might continue to grow.
Especially now that eth’s value has grown considerably and its market cap has reached $13 billion, giving merchants a wider pool of potential customers who may want to simply pay for things directly with eth rather than having to convert it into fiat which may incur fees.
