Bitcoin Blockchain Size Explodes to 480GB Amid Ordinals Craze

The size of the Bitcoin blockchain has increased considerably following the increase in ordinary inscriptions.

The Bitcoin blockchain is now quite a bit larger than it was at the beginning of the year. The increase in size has been accelerated by the rise in popularity of ordinary inscriptions.

According to data analytics firm Glassnode, a further 24 GB (gigabytes) of data have been added to the chain since February. This represents an increase of 5.3% in just a few months and 18% since the same time last year.

Furthermore, the current Bitcoin blockchain size is just under 480 GB. In addition, it first passed 1 GB in February 2012. The accelerated size increase has resulted in an adjustment of predictions, Glassnode noted.

“This places the current Blockchain size within the estimates of consistent 2.5 MB and 1.35 MB blocks.”

Bitcoin Blockchain Size Predictions

With consistent 2.5MB blocks, the chain size is predicted to peak at 500GB sometime in June. Larger full 4MB blocks will see it reach 600GB by September, according to Glassnode.

According to Mempool Space, the block size has dropped back to 1.64MB for the last processed block (789336).

Each node must carry the full amount of data, which means they need at least half a terabyte of storage space to do this. However, it is possible to prune the transaction data for the Ordinals inscription.

According to Bitnodes, there are currently 17,179 nodes reachable across the globe. Nodes contain the full or partially pruned database of all BTC transactions, so it is difficult to estimate their total storage capacity.

Fortunately for users, the memecoin minting frenzy seems to have subsided, with transactions and fees dropping slightly. However, there are still around 300,000 pending transactions in the mempool.

BitInfoCharts reports that there are currently around 514,685 transactions per day. However, this is still significantly higher than the 300,000 it was before the ordinals craze took off.

Average transaction fees have fallen from over $30 earlier this week to $9.70. But this is still far too high when they should be between $1 and $2.

BTC Price Outlook

Bitcoin prices are in retreat again, falling to their lowest levels since mid-March during the Asian trading session on Friday morning.

As a result, BTC fell 2.9% on the day to trade at $26,663 at the time of writing.

The asset has now corrected 13.7% since its 2023 high of just under $31,000 in mid-April. Further losses could result in a quick drop to support at the $25,000 level.