ORIGINAL SOURCE
What's driving Bitcoin adoption in 2026?
Sam Baker · River · 24 Feb 2026
KEY POINTS
- Network: about 24,700 reachable nodes (+14% in 2025) and hash rate above one zettahash (+35%).
- Ownership: individuals sold about 696,000 BTC in 2025 while businesses, funds and governments bought nearly 1 million.
- Businesses added $54 billion of bitcoin in 2025, and 194 public companies held bitcoin.
- Lightning Network volume passed $1 billion a month, and 23 nation-states were said to own bitcoin.
River's report says adoption continued to grow in 2025 even though bitcoin's price fell. It covers the network (nodes, hash rate and mining distribution), who holds bitcoin, how banks, advisors and hedge funds are involved, business treasuries and payments, Lightning, and government ownership and regulation.
The page links to a longer PDF with the full report.
Summary written by @parachutesBTC. The original belongs to River; read it for the full text, data and sources.