BIS Study Uncovers Major Discrepancies in Bitcoin On-Chain Transfer Estimates
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published a study on the accuracy of Bitcoin on-chain transfer estimates. The research found that the values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.
This discrepancy stems from Bitcoin's transaction structure, where unspent funds are often returned to the sender as change, which can be counted as another output even though it does not represent funds being transferred to another party.
The study analyzed 100 billion blockchain records across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron and found that similar measurement challenges extend across the broader crypto ecosystem. The researchers concluded that on-chain indicators should be treated as 'noisy approximations rather than direct measures of economic activity.'