Analyze the Bitcoin blockchain

Blockchain data is time-series data. You can use TimescaleDB to ingest, store, and analyze data on blockchain transactions. This tutorial focuses on Bitcoin analysis, but you can apply the same principles and TimescaleDB features on any blockchain data. This includes Etheruem, Solana, and others.

note

This tutorial shows you one approach to Doing Your Own Research in the blockchain space. Any conclusions made from the data are illustrative examples only. They’re meant to help you learn about TimescaleDB features, and to inspire your own data analysis and conclusions. To read about the conclusions we made from analyzing 5 years’ worth of Bitcoin transactions, see our blog post.

What you’ll learn

This tutorial teaches you to ingest and analyze blockchain data in TimescaleDB. Follow these two sections to learn how:

• Ingest and query Bitcoin transactions
• Analyze the blockchain with hyperfunctions

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A TimescaleDB instance running locally or on the cloud. For more information, see installation options
• psql, DBeaver, or any other PostgreSQL client

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The easiest way to get a new TimescaleDB instance up and running and complete this tutorial is to sign up for a free Timescale Cloud account (no credit card required).