Bitcoin Volatility Levels Drops to Record Low
2024 marked a pivotal year for digital assets, with the annual volatility of Bitcoin hitting a record low and stablecoin transaction volumes surpassing those of Visa and Mastercard.
These insights come from ARK Invest’s “Big Ideas 2025” report, published on February 4.
The report highlights that Bitcoin’s annualized one-year volatility dropped below 50% in 2024, a sharp decline compared to nearly 80% in 2022 and over 100% in 2018.
Bitcoin’s strong performance in 2024 was largely driven by what ARK calls the “most successful ETF launch in history”, referencing the approval of 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US in January.
By year’s end, these ETFs had accumulated over $100 billion in net assets.
In addition, Bitcoin’s inflation rate decreased to 0.9% following the quadrennial halving in April, marking the first time Bitcoin’s issuance rate fell below gold’s long-term supply growth.
Stablecoins also solidified their role as a leading blockchain application in 2024.
Their annualized transaction value soared to $15.6 trillion, equating to approximately 119% of Visa’s and 200% of Mastercard’s transaction volumes.
“The number of transactions hit 110 million monthly, roughly 0.41% and 0.72% of those processed by Visa and Mastercard, respectively,” the report notes.
However, it emphasizes that “the stablecoin value per transaction is much higher than that for Visa and Mastercard.”
On the regulatory front, stablecoins emerged as a key focus for pro-crypto Republicans in Congress.
Ahead of the November presidential election, Senator Bill Hagerty introduced the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2024, building on earlier proposals from former House member Patrick McHenry.
Earlier in the year, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at creating a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Following the Republican sweep of both houses of Congress in the November elections, “passing comprehensive market structure and stablecoin legislation” has become a top priority to establish clear crypto regulations, according to Republican Representative Tom Emmer.
Miller Whitehouse-Levine, head of the DeFi Education Fund advocacy group, told Bloomberg that stablecoin regulation has reached a “broad consensus” in Congress.
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Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-volatility-low-stablecoin-transaction-tops-visa-ark
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