Bitcoin has been running for more than fifteen years. Whatever your view of it, it is now a long‑lived, globally used system.
This page looks at global Bitcoin adoption through various data sources. Network metrics come from my own personal Bitcoin node, business adoption from OpenStreetMap data, and price from public market APIs such as CoinGecko. Most inputs are open data, and the entire pipeline is built with free and open‑source software and is fully reproducible. The code used to produce this data is available here.
Global Bitcoin Business Growth
The table below shows how the number of businesses that accept Bitcoin as payment has changed over time, worldwide and by country. The accompanying chart plots the cumulative number of Bitcoin‑accepting businesses for the countries selected in the table. The data is sourced from OpenStreetMap.
You can choose a period from the drop‑down, which updates the values in the table. The “Previous” column is the business count at the start of that period. The “Current” column is the latest count. The table also shows the absolute difference and the percentage difference between these two points.
Feerate percentiles
This chart shows daily feerate percentiles in satoshis per virtual byte. For each day, it takes all transactions that were confirmed, sorts them by feerate, and then plots several points in that distribution (for example the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles).
This is useful because it shows the spread of fees people actually paid, not just an average. On quiet days the percentiles sit close together at low values, which suggests block space was easy to get. On busy days the higher percentiles move much higher than the lower ones, which shows some users were bidding aggressively for faster confirmation while others were willing to wait.
Hashrate and difficulty
The next chart tracks the network’s estimated hashrate and the mining difficulty over time, plus a 28‑day moving average for both. Hashrate is a rough measure of how much computational power is pointed at the Bitcoin network. Difficulty is the protocol’s response: it adjusts every ~2 weeks to keep blocks arriving roughly every 10 minutes.
You’ll usually see hashrate and difficulty move together over longer periods. When more miners come online or more efficient hardware is deployed, hashrate rises and difficulty follows. When miners shut down or get priced out, the opposite happens.
The 28‑day moving averages are there to smooth out short‑term noise, so the longer‑term trend is easier to see.
Why this is useful
- It’s a practical proxy for network security. A higher, more stable hashrate and difficulty make attacks more expensive.
- It reflects miner behaviour in response to things like hardware improvements, energy prices, regulation, and Bitcoin price.
- Over time, it helps to plot real‑world investment in mining infrastructure.
Miner revenue (USD)
This chart shows what miners earn each day in dollar terms. It splits revenue into:
- Subsidy (USD) – value of the newly created bitcoin (block subsidy)
- Tx fees (USD) – total transaction fees paid that day
- Total revenue (USD) – subsidy plus fees
- Current block subsidy - current block subsidy in BTC
The subsidy and fees are stacked as areas, with a line showing the total. On‑chain data comes from my node; the USD values use average daily market prices from several sources including CoinGecko.
Why this is useful
- This chart shows whether fees + subsidy, together with the Bitcoin price, make Bitcoin mining economically viable, since most miners ultimately pay their energy costs in fiat.
- You can see how sensitive miners are to price moves and Bitcoin halvings (see April 2024 or the beginning of 2019). A drop in Bitcoin price or the subsidy cutting in half can hit revenue immediately. However, historical trends show that overall revenue in dollar terms tends to recover and grow over time.
- Spikes in the fee component often line up with periods of congestion or speculative activity on the chain. Those periods can be very profitable for miners and painful for users (see December 2023).
Bitcoin price (USD)
The final chart is simply the daily Bitcoin price in USD, using data from several sources including CoinGecko.
Price data goes back to July 2010 ($0.1 per Bitcoin - I weep looking at that figure!).
- Rising prices tend to attract more hashrate and investment in mining.
- Bull markets often bring more on‑chain activity and higher fees.
- Miner revenue in USD is directly tied to the price, even if the number of coins they earn per block is fixed.
Current Price:
Putting it all together
Each chart looks at Bitcoin from a different angle:
- Business growth tracks where Bitcoin is turning into real‑world merchant activity.
- Feerate percentiles show how tight or congested the block space market is.
- Hashrate and difficulty show how much work is securing the chain.
- Miner revenue shows how well miners are being paid, and how the ratio between subsidy and fees is shifting.
- Price provides the broader market context that influences all of the above.
Use the filters and time ranges to zoom in on specific events—like halvings, bull runs, regional adoption stories, or periods of heavy congestion—and see how the technical, economic, and business sides of Bitcoin move together.