What is Active addresses?
The count of unique addresses appearing in transactions over a period, usually one day.
It is a reasonable coarse activity trend and a poor proxy for anything else. Wallets generate fresh addresses routinely, so one person can produce many; custodians serve millions of customers from a handful.
Read it as a directional signal about on-chain usage over months, not as a headcount and not as a demand indicator.
Addresses are not users. This is the single most common on-chain error, and it is made in both directions.
Related terms
On-chain
A transaction recorded in a Bitcoin block, as opposed to one settled off-chain in a channel or inside a…
Keys & custodyAddress
A string encoding the conditions under which an output can be spent. Bitcoin's equivalent of an account…
On-chain dataTransactions per day
Confirmed on-chain transactions in a 24-hour period.
This definition is part of the Bitcoin Logical glossary. For the fuller explanation, start with Learn, or see the live numbers on The Bitcoin Signal.