Data
Currently Bitcoin processes about 2 million monetary transactions per month.
Apart from these, about 22 million non-monetary transactions.
Monero processes about 700k monetary transactions per month.
Interpret this as you see fit.
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Replies (49)
699K drug and other degenerate transactions.
If only that were all... Bitcoiners need to be more critical of ourselves; they're not eating the toast...
Where do you get this data about monetary vs non-monetary on Bitcoin?
"only criminals use Bitcoin"
If it's only that then 699k transactions that REQUIRE cryptocurrency. Why do they choose Monero over Bitcoin when Bitcoin started these drug markets?
So true. Monero is 1/20 the market cap of Bitcoin. Why such a large disparity if the usage rate is often similar?
Good question, not that Monero is immune to price manipulation but it sure has a lot less than Bitcoin, thanks to all delistings !
Everything is fine with Bitcoin, he told me.
By applying the corresponding filters in knots so that only monetary transactions are accepted in the mempool, I extract the data from there.
You can also do so at 
mempool - Bitcoin Explorer
Explore Bitcoin
mempool[dot]guide is Lukes block explorer with all the large op_returns removed?
Menpool.guide, I'm not sure what parameters it uses, but I think it's too aggressive. In my case, I have the standard op_return size.
However, it is useful to see that 90% of what goes into the chain is crap.
1/200
Oh man that's embarrassing for me you're right I was off by a 10. That makes the difference even more stark. Thanks for the correction.
700 k en transacciones desobedientes, ya sea para comprar algo o especular sin dejar marcas por el camino.
cuantas de esas operaciones en btc son parecidas en el nivel de desobediencia como las de monero? Yo creo que muy pocas, el utxo set es realmente pequeño.
Number go up cult
So...bitcoin is literally being used as timestanping, notorizing, and op_returns 11x more than as money. I mean...holy shit. It's worse than I would have ever imagined.
I once tried to run a monero node and that's when I saw it had no chance of “winning”. Craaazy resource requirements, and that despite being used way less than Bitcoin. If it ever reached the same levels or its full capacity, decentralization would be interesting to keep.
Oh, and it already has 51% attacks and hard forks on a monthly basis.
The criticism is directed at spam, and the fact that other chains do not allow it.
The spam numbers for Bitcoin are simply outrageous.
It is not using Bitcoin for what it was designed for, that is my criticism.
I've seen your last post about Bitcoin losing it's porpuse and wanna know which are the key points you think are going wrong, other than the spam problem.
Lately I've been organizing meetups and most of the people just wanna stack and hold, and i think that's a mistake, we need to trade in btc.
I see. IMO there's no perfect solution, just different tradeoffs.
I haven't personally thought much about the spam debate. My (ignorant) view is that fees are too cheap and that's the consequence of a bigger problem (lack of adoption and MoE through self custody). Maybe that's what we should focus on instead.
I would expect that with 10x or 100x fees, spam would just be priced out. Another point is that it kind of “helps” to have a baseline “security budget” sponsored by bored people. Cool, whatever.
I generally don't like the idea of saying what a system/protocol is “for”. With a hacker mindset, I admire when someone finds a new use to an existing thing. For example, hash algorithms are not meant to be used for anything like Proof of Work, but it's amazing how well they fit.
Not saying that embedding pepe images on Bitcoin transactions is that “hacker” breakthrough. But who knows what people will come up with in the future.
Please, educate me on whatever I'm missing. Really haven't put much thought into it. The topic looks so “hot” and politics-like that just pushes me away.
+1
Why did various Bitcoin maximalists suddenly start comparing BTC vs XMR? I thought this wasn't a BTC maximalist thing?
You forgot to add, to 700k - “private by default.” And NGU, but in terms of transactions.
"Craaazy"?
Dual-core CPU
4+ GB RAM
160GB+ SSD HD
Yes, super crazy. Almost like Solana.
>>> If it ever reached the same levels or its full capacity, decentralization would be interesting to keep.
Prune it an enjoy it.
>>> and it already has 51% attacks
This shows your mental abilities. And they are not high.
>>> and hard forks on a monthly basis.
Just like this.
It's great that someone like you, with such intellectual abilities, has analyzed the default private transactions on the Monero network.
BTW,
1) Monerica.com
2) XMRbazaar.com
:)
That's narco and pedo, and terrorists transacting XMR. Should be forbidden.
What are the “IRL” criteria?
1) Monerica.com
2) XMRbazaar.com
Are these IRL criteria or not? I think they are.
And considering that no one in the Monero community is involved in advertising, except for psychos like me who tell small businesses about Monero + add to that the lack of access to XMR for normies (CEX delistings), I think this is an excellent result.
And it's cool that XMR is the default choice on the darknet.
What I meant to say it's very rare to come across someone into Monero in the daily real life. Best case scenario they only know about Bitcoin or some random popular shitcoin and have no idea what's the difference.
Of course there are amazing useful project like these two and I fully support them. We need more of those.
The fact that Monero is the number one choice on DN is indeed very telling for now and the future. And I wouldn't be here talking about it if I had no strong conviction!
>>> What I meant to say it's very rare to come across someone into Monero in the daily real life. Best case scenario they only know about Bitcoin or some random popular shitcoin and have no idea what's the difference.
View quoted note →
This works for me *every single time*, when I have time and the mood to onboard a new merchant to Monero.
lol
you're either technically ignorant or a liar.
Good job, this is the way for sure
My selfish reasons push Monero adoptions in real life.
And someone might say that this is nonsense, and that it's “just a small business,” but I always have one answer: I don't give a shit about big businesses that work in tandem with the state.
care to elaborate?
2 cores and 4 GB of RAM is all thats required to run a monero node.
and setup can be done in an hour.
less if you just use the official GUI wallet.
also, there hasn't been a 51% attack and there aren't monthly hard forks.
so you're just talking out the wrong end.
What was this about? Asking honestly, just read a few articles when it happened. 
The Cryptonomist
Monero, record reorganization: 18 blocks rewritten
On September 14, 2025, the Monero network underwent a reorganization: an alternative longer chain supplanted 18 consecutive blocks.
Well that's with a remote node. I tried to sync from scratch as I would have for a Bitcoin node. What was very demanding is the IO.
I'm testing it again, and will compare the CPU time of transaction verification after the initial sync.
it takes 2 core and 4 GB of RAM to run your own local node
you could be excused for thinking it's a 51%
they had a pool and issued a shitcoin in order to pay miners higher rewards then just the Monero block reward.
so their pool attracted a significant percentage of hash, but never reached 51%. this enabled them to sometimes get lucky and do reorgs.
but basically nobody cared and they faded into irrelevance.
Interestingly it would be demanding on the IO if you're doing it from scratch. Because it needs to download the entire historyy
My analysis is correct 50% of the time all of the time.
I find it funny that in the longrun all they did was further distribute the hashrate making it more decentralized than it was before by just adding another mining pool to Monero
After all night running, on nvme, a powerful CPU and with plenty of RAM, it took several hours to reach 65% and is stuck there. Now all peers are blocked for some reason and is not syncing anymore.
Command used:
```
monerod --data-dir /flash/monero/ --prune-blockchain --sync-pruned-blocks --db-sync-mode=fast:async:250000000 --fast-block-sync 1 --prep-blocks-threads 8 --block-sync-size 100 --max-concurrency 8 --no-igd --no-zmq --enable-dns-blocklist --out-peers 16 --in-peers 8
```
logs:
```
...
2026-02-17 07:54:36.217 I Host 95.217.7.137 blocked.
2026-02-17 07:54:36.217 I Host 95.217.7.248 blocked.
2026-02-17 07:54:40.113 E Too many object fields
2026-02-17 07:54:40.116 E Exception at [portable_storage::load_from_binary], what=Too many object fields
2026-02-17 07:54:41.609 E Too many object fields
2026-02-17 07:54:41.611 E Exception at [portable_storage::load_from_binary], what=Too many object fields
status
Height: 2365820/3611892 (65.5%) on mainnet, not mining, net hash 2.70 GH/s, v14, 16(out)+0(in) connections, uptime 0d 0h 0m 16s
```
All I want is to finish sync and measure the CPU time of validating transactions after the initial sync, to compare with bitcoind and see how it would scale.
I take it back, you don't seem to be technically ignorant or a liar 🙏
but I've never had a the Monero daemon hang like that.
You're running this locally, not a VPS right? what kind of internet do you have?
is /flash removable storage?
@shortwavesurfer2009
@Saberhagen The Nameless
Yeah, I would have the same problem. The log seems to indicate that it might be portable storage and that that might be the problem.
The pruned blockchain is something like 100 gigabytes.
yeah that's my guess too
maybe the OS put the drive to sleep
You might want to sync without giving it too many parameters at first. Pruning will still need to download the whole chain.
I usually need something like one night to sync a new node, but I don't want to benchmark the process on my mediocre systems anyways.
You might want to push this to github to see if you discovered ba bug.
<3
I managed to fix it by running a newer version than what was avaialble at the Debian repos.
It's now at 83% sync. It's running on my home server on an nvme with gigabit internet, so the conditions are pretty good.
Here is the command in case it helps anyone:
```
docker run -d --restart always --name monerod -v /flash/monero/:/home/monero/.bitmonero --user 1000:1000 --network "container:gluetun" ghcr.io/sethforprivacy/simple-monerod:v0.18.4.5 --rpc-restricted-bind-ip=0.0.0.0 --rpc-restricted-bind-port=18089 --no-igd --no-zmq --enable-dns-blocklist --ban-list=/home/monero/ban_list.txt
```
It's more or less the recommended parameters from the Docker image repo, with the addition of running it as unprivileged and behind a VPN (gluetun).