Cryptocurrency activity has reached an all-time high, — a16z crypto

According to the «Cryptocurrency State of the Art Report» by a16z cryptoAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) — a US venture capital firm operating since 2013., the activity and use of cryptocurrencies reached record levels. In September, 220 million addresses interacted with the blockchain at least once, and this figure has more than tripled since the end of 2023.

The increase in activity is primarily due to Solana, which accounts for about 100 million active addresses. This is followed by NEAR (31 million active addresses), the popular L2 network Coinbase Base (22 million), Tron (14 million), and Bitcoin (11 million).

Among Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) chains, the second most active after Base was Binance’s BNB network (10 million), followed by Ethereum (6 million).

The blockchain that developers were most interested in was Solana. In particular, the total share of developers interested in creating a blockchain based on Solana increased to 11.2% this year, compared to 5.1% in 2023.

In absolute terms Ethereum still attracts the largest share of overall interest among developers: 20.8%, followed by Solana and Base (whose total share increased to 10.7% from 7.8% last year). Next are Polygon (7.9%), Optimism (6.7%), Arbitrum (6.2%), Avalanche (4.2%), and Bitcoin (4.2%).

The number of monthly users of mobile crypto wallets reached a record high of 29 million in June 2024. Most people use them in the United States: 12%.

After the US, the countries with the largest share of mobile wallet users are Nigeria, India, and Argentina.

The report also notes that there are from 30 to 60 million monthly active users of cryptocurrencies in the world, which is only 5-10% of the total (617 million cryptocurrency holders), according to Crypto.com estimates as of June 2024.

Cryptocurrencies have become a key political issue ahead of the US electionswith the swing states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin seeing the fourth and fifth largest increases in cryptocurrency interest since the last election in 2020 based on Google Trends queries. Meanwhile, Arizona and Nevada have seen a moderate drop in interest in cryptocurrencies since 2020.

One of the factors that may have increased people’s interest in cryptocurrencies this year was the emergence of Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds. Soon to be added to this list XRP may also join.

The EU and the UK have been the most active in engaging the public in cryptocurrency policy and regulation.

In addition, the report highlights the following trends: stablecoins have become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies (which is not surprising given the low cost of fees compared to traditional banks). In the second quarter of 2024, there were 1.1 billion transactions using stablecoins. The total amount of money that passed through these transactions was $8.5 trillion. This volume is more than double the $3.9 trillion Visa transaction volume for the same period.

Several countries are exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)A digital currency issued and controlled by a country's central bank., of which the United States is closest to the goal.

Source: a16z crypto