Bitcoin network activity has fallen to its lowest level in 12 months as the year draws to a close, with the 7-day moving average of active addresses dropping to around 660,000. While seasonal slowdowns toward year-end are not unusual, current data point to broader weakness across multiple core network metrics.

Active addresses are now at their lowest level since December 2024, when the network saw a surge in activity driven by speculation around Ordinals and Runes. Ordinals enable data such as images or text to be inscribed directly onto individual satoshis, while Runes is a newer protocol designed for issuing and trading fungible tokens on Bitcoin.

The decline in network activity is also exerting pressure on miner economics. Daily miner revenue has fallen from an average of approximately $50 million in the third quarter to around $40 million as the year ends. Notably, the vast majority of this revenue now comes from block subsidies rather than transaction fees, underscoring the limited demand for Bitcoin blockspace.

An unusual shift has emerged in Bitcoin’s transaction composition. Runes-related transactions now account for a larger share of total network transactions, yet they contribute only about 5–10% of total fee revenue. This is largely because many Runes transactions are submitted with very low fees. In an environment where blockspace is relatively cheap and competition is limited, these low-fee transactions are still included in blocks, inflating transaction counts without generating meaningful fee income.

The combination of high transaction volume and minimal fee contribution from Runes raises concerns about the true demand for Bitcoin blockspace. When a significant portion of network throughput produces negligible fee revenue, it highlights a growing mismatch between network usage and economic value creation. As block subsidies continue to decline with each halving cycle, the long-term sustainability of miner revenue will increasingly depend on transaction fees paid by users willing to compete for scarce blockspace.