Miners process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Bitcoin is a distributed ledger for transfer and store of value (a blockchain). Bitcoin was founded by a pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and launched in 2009.

BTC holders own and govern the protocol. They currently do not take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

github

block explorer

Blockchains (L1)

Bitcoin

# Bitcoin Average revenue per user (ARPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for Bitcoin measures the average revenue generated per daily active user. However, since Bitcoin operates as a decentralized protocol without direct revenue generation (transaction fees go to miners, not the protocol), Bitcoin's ARPU is effectively zero. The metric is calculated by dividing daily protocol revenue by daily active users, where protocol revenue is consistently zero while daily active users represent unique addresses that initiate Bitcoin transactions each day.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on the following raw data sources:

- **Bitcoin blockchain transaction records**: Complete Bitcoin transaction data including transaction inputs, outputs, and metadata
- **Bitcoin blockchain block data**: Block-level information including timestamps, block heights, fees, and subsidies  
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Chainlink BTC/USD price feeds for periods after December 2019, and CoinGecko daily price data for historical periods before December 2019
- **Token metadata**: Bitcoin network parameters and decimal precision information

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Revenue calculation
- **Purpose**: Determines daily protocol revenue for Bitcoin
- **Logic**: Bitcoin protocol revenue is explicitly set to zero for all time periods because Bitcoin operates as a decentralized network where transaction fees are paid to miners rather than to a central protocol. The revenue component uses the same timestamp structure as the fees metric but sets the `revenue` field to 0 for all records
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily), `revenue` (always 0), `chain_id` (bitcoin)

### Component B: Daily active user calculation  
- **Purpose**: Counts unique Bitcoin addresses that initiate transactions each day
- **Logic**: Process begins by extracting transaction inputs from Bitcoin blockchain records. Since Bitcoin transaction inputs reference outputs from previous transactions, a lookup table is created by processing all transaction outputs and their associated `scriptPubKey.address` fields. Each transaction input is then resolved to identify the sending address by matching the input's referenced transaction ID and output index with the lookup table. Distinct addresses are counted per day using HyperLogLog sketches to handle large volumes efficiently. Historical data (pre-2019) and recent data are processed separately for performance optimization
- **Key fields**: `user_address` (resolved sender addresses), `timestamp` (daily), `user_dau` (distinct user count)

### Component C: Address resolution process
- **Purpose**: Maps Bitcoin transaction inputs to their originating addresses
- **Logic**: Creates a comprehensive lookup table by processing all Bitcoin transaction outputs. For each transaction output, extracts the recipient address from the `scriptPubKey.address` field along with the `transaction_hash` and `output_index`. This lookup table enables resolution of transaction inputs (which only contain references to previous outputs) to actual sending addresses
- **Key fields**: `transaction_hash`, `output_index`, `user_address`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily revenue (always 0) is divided by daily active user counts to calculate ARPU
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable since revenue is zero, though supporting price infrastructure uses end-of-day USD conversion rates
- **Time aggregation**: Data is aggregated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to day level
- **Final calculation**: ARPU = Daily Revenue ÷ Daily Active Users = 0 ÷ DAU = 0 for all time periods. Missing data points are filled with zeros using the fill_zeros strategy

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

BitcoinBTC

Average revenue per user (ARPU)

Average revenue per user (ARPU)

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