Crypto Metrics Study Finds Up to Sixfold Inflation in Bitcoin Transfer Volume
A recent study by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) analyzed 100 billion blockchain records and found that popular crypto metrics can significantly misrepresent real economic activity.
The researchers, from the BIS and De Nederlandsche Bank, used data from Project Mercurius, which ingests full node data from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron. The dataset covers 82% of the stablecoin market and near-complete coverage of USDT.
The study found that Bitcoin's transfer volume can vary by up to six times depending on the methodology used. This is because Bitcoin stores value in discrete unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), which can be mistaken for real payments.
The researchers also found that market capitalization, or total supply multiplied by spot price, can be inflated by around 1.8 million lost BTC coins that have not moved in over 15 years.