The Bank for International Settlements has released a study highlighting fundamental measurement challenges in widely used crypto metrics across Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins. Estimates of Bitcoin on-chain transfer values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on methodology.
The discrepancy arises from Bitcoin's transaction structure. When users spend Bitcoin, unspent funds return to the sender as change—recorded as an output even though no transfer to a distinct party occurs.
Metrics such as transaction volumes, market capitalization and total value locked (TVL) often imply an accuracy unsupported by underlying data, according to BIS researchers. The measurement problem extends to Bitcoin's market cap, which the study found has been as much as four times higher than realized capitalization—a measure that values each coin at the price it held when last moved on-chain.
Ethereum presents separate challenges due to smart contract proliferation. Of approximately 67.5 million active smart contracts examined, roughly 54 million could not be categorized using the study's classifications.
Stablecoin activity varies significantly across blockchains. USDT on Ethereum is more closely tied to decentralized finance activity, with smart contracts holding over 20 percent of the supply in 2022. USDT on Tron, by contrast, was primarily associated with payment and store-of-value use cases, with smart contracts holding roughly 1 percent of the supply. Aggregating USDT across blockchains conflates different types of economic activity and obscures actual utilization patterns.
The BIS researchers concluded that on-chain indicators should be regarded as "noisy approximations" rather than precise measurements of economic activity. The study analyzed 100 billion blockchain records spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron.
Some analytics providers have already adopted methodologies to differentiate between raw blockchain activity and adjusted measures. Visa's Onchain Analytics dashboard, powered by Allium Labs, provides both total and adjusted stablecoin transaction volumes, specifically removing redundant or non-economic transfers.
