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Bitcoin’s Ordinal Inscriptions Surpass 7 Million Mark, Fueling the Trend’s Unstoppable Momentum

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Bitcoin’s Ordinal Inscriptions Surpass 7 Million Mark, Fueling the Trend’s Unstoppable Momentum
Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s Ordinal Inscriptions Surpass 7 Million Mark, Fueling the Trend’s Unstoppable MomentumOn May 15, 2023, the number of Ordinal inscriptions surpassed the 7 million mark and as of 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday morning, 7,204,882 Ordinal inscriptions have been added to the Bitcoin blockchain. Miners have collected 1,324 bitcoin in fees by confirming inscription transactions which equate to roughly $35.86 million in added onchain fees. […]
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Bitcoin Ordinals daily inscriptions surge due to ‘BRC-20 tokens’

Coin Telegraph
Bitcoin Ordinals daily inscriptions surge due to ‘BRC-20 tokens’
Bitcoin NFTs

The BRC-20 token standard utilizes Ordinal inscriptions to deploy token contracts, mint tokens and transfer tokens.

A new daily all-time high has been recorded for the number of Ordinals inscribed on the Bitcoin (BTC) network due to a recently launched “token standard” for the blockchain.

Bitcoin Ordinals reached 58,179 inscriptions on April 2, smashing the previous all-time high of 31,692 on March 9 by 83.5%, according to Dune Analytics data.

The surge is believed to be driven by the recent creation of “Bitcoin Request for Comment” (BRC-20) tokens on the Ordinals protocol by a pseudonymous on-chain analyst named Domo in early March.

Daily count of Ordinals inscriptions shown in green. Source: Dune Analytics

While Ordinals are nonfungible token (NFT)-like “digital artifacts” which carry data in the form of text, JPEG images, PDFs, video and audio formats on the Bitcoin network, the BRC-20 token standard utilizes Ordinal inscriptions to deploy token contracts, mint tokens, and transfer tokens — similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard.

The arrival of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin were enabled by the Taproot soft fork, which took effect on Nov. 14, 2021.

Over 55,000 of the inscriptions on April 2 came in the form of text-based Ordinals, many of which were represented by BRC-20 tokens, according to “Leonidis.og,” the host of an Ordinals-focused podcast.

BRC-20 tokens — which are categorized as text-based Ordinals — are the most commonly inscribed Ordinal on Bitcoin. Source: Dune Analytics.

Leonidis explained in a tweet that the spike on April 2 came on the back of new tools used to interact with BRC-20 tokens launched in the last few days.

“There was a lot of excitement around BRC-20 when it launched a month ago but eventually the hyped died down. During the lull, devs built tools to make interacting with BRC-20 much easier and now we're seeing ATH interest. I've said it before and I will say it again. UX matters!”

Among those new tools include Ord.io, UniSat Wallet and BRC-20.io. According to BRC-20.io, 1,600 tokens have been created since the BRC-20 standard was created.

Among the most popular BRC-20 tokens include “pepe,” “ordi,” and “punk,” currently boasting respective market caps of $2.5 million, $2.1 million and $900,000.

Related: Bitcoin Ordinals creator looks for fix after first instance of shock porn

Over 42,700 BRC–20 tokens have been minted in the last 24 hours, mostly coming from the tokens wzrd, domo, BAYC, meme and pups.

Bitcoin tokens, through the BRC-20 standard, can now be bought and sold on marketplaces, similar to Ethereum ERC-20 tokens. Source: BRC-20.io

While the market cap of BRC-20 tokens currently sits at less than $10 million, digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital believes the “Bitcoin NFT” market may reach $4.5 billion by 2025.

Members of the Bitcoin community are still split on whether Ordinals is a good fit for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Proponents such as Dan Held suggest it offers more financial use cases on Bitcoin, while others say it’s straying away from Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer cash system.

Magazine: 4 out of 10 NFT sales are fake: Learn to spot the signs of wash trading

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Galaxy tips Bitcoin NFT market to hit $4.5B by 2025

Coin Telegraph
Galaxy tips Bitcoin NFT market to hit .5B by 2025
Bitcoin

Galaxy’s estimation was based on the rapid uptick of interest in Bitcoin NFTs, currency market infrastructure, and the potential to take some market-share away from Ethereum.

In a “base case” scenario, Galaxy Digital's research unit has tipped the burgeoning Bitcoin nonfungible token (NFT) market to hit a $4.5 billion market cap by March 2025.

Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, have attracted a significant amount of attention since the Ordinals protocol launched in late January, enabling users to inscribe data such as images, PDFs video and audio onto individual satoshis, or sats that each represent 0.00000001 Bitcoin (BTC).

NFT giants such as Yuga Labs have even jumped in on the hype. On Feb. 28, the $4 billion firm behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club announced a Bitcoin-based NFT project dubbed “TwelveFold,” marking a notable form of recognition of the Ordinals movement.

In a new report published on March. 3, Galaxy researchers analyzed the potential growth of Bitcoin NFTs and made estimations “conservatively based on the current size of Ethereum’s NFT market” and its growth rate over the past few years.

“While there are notable differences between inscriptions and NFTs, it’s fair to say that a native on-chain ecosystem for NFTs has emerged on Bitcoin in a way that was never before possible, and its usage has been exploding.”

The report provided three different market cap predictions based on the firm’s analysis, covering a bear case, base case and bull case scenarios.

Looking at Galaxy’s baseline analysis, the report outlined that if Bitcoin NFTs can “expand to mainstream NFT culture like PFPs [Profile Pictures], memes and utility projects,” the market capitalization should increase to $4.5 billion.

The researchers also noted that the projection of $4.5 billion is also based on the “rapid development in inscription awareness coupled with the marketplace/wallet infrastructure already [being] out today.”

In a bear case, in which Bitcoin NFTs don’t creep into the mainstream NFT market and pry market share away from Ethereum, Galaxy estimated that Bitcoin NFTs can still reach a market cap of $1.5 billion based on the current level of interest and supporting infrastructure.

Related: Total crypto market cap takes a hit amid Silvergate Bank crisis

On the bullish side of things, Galaxy researchers estimate that the Bitcoin NFT market could reach around $10 billion if it manages to provide strong competition to Ethereum NFTs, while also providing unique use cases.

Estimated Bitcoin NFT market cap: Galaxy Digital

At the time of the report, more than 250,000 Ordinals have hit the market, and highlighting the significance and utility of Bitcoin NFTs, the researchers noted that:

“The addition of sizeable data storage with strong availability assurances opens up a variety of use cases, many of which are only beginning to be explored, including things like new types of decentralized software or bitcoin scaling techniques. Even the NFT use-case alone, though, has the potential to dramatically widen the scope of Bitcoin’s cultural impact.”
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Nifty News: Yuga Labs jumps on Ordinals hype, Dookey Dash key sells for 1,000 ETH and more…

Coin Telegraph
Nifty News: Yuga Labs jumps on Ordinals hype, Dookey Dash key sells for 1,000 ETH and more…
Bitcoin NFTs

Google Trends data shows interest in NFTs has waned, even as trading volumes are surging, while Korean multinational giant Lotte has partnered with Polygon.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creators Yuga Labs has announced a new NFT collection on Bitcoin dubbed “TwelveFold.”

The move was announced via Twitter on Feb. 28, with Yuga Labs unveiling 300 tokenized computer generated artworks as part of the TwelveFold collection that will go up for auction later this week.

In an accompanying blog post, Yuga Labs explained the concept behind the collection is based on mathematics, time and the Bitcoin blockchain.

“TwelveFold is a base 12 art system localized around a 12x12 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain,” the post reads, adding that:

“Satoshis are the smallest individually identifiable units of a Bitcoin. An inscribed satoshi can be located by tracking when that satoshi was minted in time via the Ordinal Theory protocol.”

“Inspired by this, our collection explores the relationship between time, mathematics, and variability,” it explained.

TwelveFold NFT: Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs cited the recent buzz around Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, as the reason why it chose to drop a collection on the network.

“Stepping into the Ordinals Discord a month ago felt like getting a glimpse of the 2017-era Ethereum NFT ecosystem. It’s the type of energy and excitement we love at Yuga,” the firm stated.

Search down, trading up

According to Google Trend data, search interest for NFTs has fallen to levels not seen since early 2021 — before the NFT boom — suggesting interest could be waning for nonfungible tokens.

NFT trading volume data from February however, suggests otherwise.

Google Trends uses a metric of 0-100 to display interest in various keywords that people look up in its search engine. Between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25, the keyword “NFTs” scored a mere seven out of 100.

Such levels haven’t been seen since early-to-mid January 2021, while it has been a steep decline since the all-time high of 100 between Jan. 23 and Jan. 29, 2022.

"NFTs" search interest: Google Trends

NFT trading volume in February paints a different picture however.

According to data from CryptoSlam, there has been $997.14 million worth of global NFT sales for the month, following on from the $1 billion posted in January.

These levels bring the NFT market back to that of June 2022 and its $982 million worth of sales, before dipping to a low of $460 million in October 2022. 

More recently, sales volume has been on a significant incline, with the launch of the trader-friendly marketplace Blur being a key contributor behind this.

Twitch streamer sells Dookey Dash key for 1,000 ETH

The man who won the Golden Key NFT for posting the highest score on the BAYC-affiliated Dookey Dash game has sold the token for 1,000 Ether (ETH), or roughly $1.63 million.

Twitch streamer Kyle Jackson, also known by his pseudonym Mongraal online, initially received the key on Feb. 16 after notching a hefty 928,522 points during the Dookey Dash competition hosted by Yuga Labs.

Wasting no time, Mongraal announced on Feb. 27, that he had agreed to sell the key to Adam Weitsman, BAYC NFT hodler and CEO of scrap metal shredding company Upstate Shredding.

The Golden Key is bound to unlock something special from Yuga Labs, however, the specific details have not yet been revealed.

Polygon pens another major partnership

Polygon Foundation, the non-profit organization behind Ethereum-layer 2 scaling network Polygon, has partnered with South Korean multinational conglomerate Lotte Group to host the firm’s NFT projects.

According to a Feb. 27 announcement from Lotte’s marketing and NFT hub, Daehong Communications, the partnership will see Lotte’s avatar-based NFT project BellyGom ported over to Polygon from the Klatyn network.

The project will be rebranded as BellyGom season 2, and the NFTs offer hodlers benefits relating to Lotte’s product and service lines such as shopping discount coupons and hotel vouchers. New additionally benefits have been teased moving forward, but details were sparse in the announcement.

Lotte has nearly 100 different business units across areas such as fast food, candy manufacturing, electronics and hotels. As of September 2022, the firm is estimated to have around $15 billion worth of assets on its balance sheet.

Looking more broadly, the firm has outlined intentions to develop its Web3 initiatives in partnership with Polygon, as Lotte looks to expand its NFTs to a global audience and develop “a new NFT business model rather than simply issuing NFTs.”

Related: Blur runs after OpenSea market share, but its success depends on upcoming governance proposals

The move adds to Polygon’s growing list of partnerships with major brands such as Startbucks, Adidas, Adobe and Prada.

Other Nifty News

According to a survey from metaverse platform, Metajuice, almost three out of four of the NFT collectors on its platform purchase NFTs for status, uniqueness and aesthetics.On the other hand, 13% percent of the survey participants said that they are buying NFTs to resell them in the future.

A group of well-known Japanese tech companies agreed on Feb. 27 to forward the creation of the “Japan Metaverse Economic Zone. Along with creating the Japan Metaverse Economic Zone, the agreement focuses on building an open metaverse infrastructure called “Ryugukoku,” which will spark the next wave of metaverse development.

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Nifty News: Find love in Paris Hilton’s metaverse, BTC CryptoPunks soar and more

Coin Telegraph
Nifty News: Find love in Paris Hilton’s metaverse, BTC CryptoPunks soar and more
Bitcoin NFTs

The “Parisland” metaverse experience will launch in time for Valentine's Day to give budding lovebugs a space to meet, at least virtually.

Swiping right in the metaverse

Famous New York socialite, Paris Hilton thinks the Metaverse may be the perfect place to find one’s true love.

In a Feb. 9 tweet, the celebrity and reality TV star said she will be working with The Sandbox (SAND) to bring “Parisland” to life.

The idea is essentially a Virtual Reality (VR) dating experience crossed with a reality dating show and is slated for a Feb. 13 release in time for Valentine’s Day.

According to a Feb. 9 statement, players will participate in an “in-game dating reality show” hosted by Hilton, where they will virtually meet with five potential lovers.

The experience will run until Mar. 13 and players will also complete quests to win nonfungible tokens (NFTs) or SAND prizes and memorabilia.

Such quests include choosing a wedding outfit and ring along with “rescuing a castaway, and flirting with other contestants.”

Nothing shows true love to someone you just met online like NFT “interlaced love rings.” Image: Parisland

Once players complete all the quests and find the love of their life they’ll have a virtual wedding and Hilton herself will spin the decks for their first dance together.

The event is hosted in conjunction with the Hilton-founded entertainment firm 11:11 Media. The company’s Web3 and metaverse strategy lead, Cynthia Miller, said it was on “a mission to help people find love” with the experience.

Ordinals CryptoPunk knockoffs make bank

Bitcoin (BTC) NFTs enabled by the Ordinals protocol have caused quite a stir in the community, but that hasn't been enough to stop some from paying thousands of dollars for select collections.

A knockoff of the Ethereum-based CryptoPunks NFT collection has made its way onto BTC called Ordinal Punks which currently has a total supply of 100 according to the project's website.

According to a price feed in the projects Discord, on Feb. 8 Punk 94 sold for 9.5 BTC or around $215,000 at the time.

So far, its the most someone has paid for a BTC-clone Punk from the collection and it’s around double the price of the last sold CryptoPunk from the original Ethereum collection — which sold for 70 Ether (ETH), or $110,000 according to OpenSea data.

Screenshot from the Ordinal Punks Discord showing sales from between 9.5 to 4 BTC in the past 48 hours.

Other sales from the past 48 hours show one Ordinal Punk selling for 6 BTC, around $130,000 and others selling for around 4.5 BTC, or around $100,000.

It’s a significant price jump from the end of last week, where some Ordinal Punks sold for as low as 0.07 BTC ($2,200) on Feb. 2 according to sale data.

RhiRhi’s royalties sell out through NFTs

Royalty rights from Rhianna’s hit 2015 song Bitch Better Have My Money has just been put up for offer as part of a collection of 300 NFTs.

Jamil “Deputy” Pierre was one of the song's producers who has now sold roughly 1% of his stake in streaming royalties through 300 NFTs that give the holder a 0.0033% lifetime share in royalties for the record when it’s streamed digitally on platforms like Spotify.

The collection, sold by Deputy in partnership with music royalty NFT platform anotherblock, was put up on Feb. 9 for 0.128 ETH each, or roughly $210.

The same day, anotherblock tweeted the collection had sold out “in a few minutes.”

anotherblock predicts one NFT to give a “probable” first-year return of 6.5%, which would yield $13.65 a year. At that rate, it would take a holder about 15 years to break even on their investment.

It’s unclear how much royalty share in the song Deputy has retained after the NFT sale.

Def Jam launches virtual band with Solana NFT collection

Def Jam Recordings, a subsidiary record label of Universal Music Group is trying its hand at building a Web3-native band through a partnership with the Solana (SOL) NFT collection, The Catalina Whale Mixer.

Announced through a Feb. 8 Billboard report, the band, called “The Whales” will be comprised of the cartoon whale characters that make up the collection similar to the virtual band the Gorillaz.

Catalina Whales later revealed in a tweet that the band would be a “gamified music group” and holders of an NFT in the collection could “land a role for [their] whale.”

The musicians behind the project are yet to be confirmed by Def Jam but it reportedly said it will involve a “who’s who” of talent and The Whales will release a full-length album but did not disclose a timeline.

Def Jam boasts signed artists such as Justin Beiber, LL Cool J, Rihanna and Nas.

In 2021 another universal subsidiary label, 10:22PM, signed a similar NFT-backed virtual band called KINGSHIP made up of four apes from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection.

Other Nifty News:

Luxury fashion brand Hermès won a trademark infringement case against NFT artist Mason Rothschild over his use of the Birkin trademark for his MetaBirkins NFT collection. The firm was awarded $133,000 in damages.

YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, baited mixed martial artist, Dillon Danis, into promoting a fake NFT collection which according to Findeisen “literally spells out S.C.A.M.”

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Debate Intensifies Over Significance and Implications of Ordinal Inscriptions on Bitcoin Blockchain

Bitcoin.com
Debate Intensifies Over Significance and Implications of Ordinal Inscriptions on Bitcoin Blockchain
Adam Back
Debate Intensifies Over Significance and Implications of Ordinal Inscriptions on Bitcoin BlockchainDuring the past two weeks, members of the cryptocurrency community have discussed the non-fungible token (NFT) concept known as Ordinals. Since the 3.96 MB block (#774,628) was mined, there has been a significant increase in Ordinal inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinal Inscriptions on Bitcoin Blockchain Spark Debate Among Crypto Community The controversial NFT concept […]
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Nifty News: Bitcoin NFTs cause spicy fees, Mastercard exec tokenizes resignation letter and more

Coin Telegraph
Nifty News: Bitcoin NFTs cause spicy fees, Mastercard exec tokenizes resignation letter and more
Bitcoin NFTs

Users are posting massive files to the Bitcoin network via the Ordinals protocol, taking up block space and paying high fees to do so.

Bitcoin Ordinals causes fees to spike

The Bitcoin (BTC)-native Ordinals protocol is taking up record-breaking space on the blockchain and in the process is hiking the transaction fees on the network.

The divisive newly launched protocol allows for nonfungible token (NFT)-esque assets on the Bitcoin mainnet by inscribing satoshis with content.

So far, inscriptions have included content such as images, documents including a PDF file of the Bitcoin whitepaper and even a fully playable clone of the video game DOOM.

The 31.2 kilobyte DOOM clone (pictured) will now forever be playable on Bitcoin. Image: Ordinals

On Feb. 2, independent developer, Udi Wertheimer, tweeted he had conducted the “largest transaction in Bitcoin’s history” after using the Ordinals protocol to inscribe a 3.94-megabyte image of a sunglass-wearing, bald, bearded wizard lauding “magic internet JPEGs.”

The data size of these inscribed transactions are much more than those typically conducted on the blockchain and as a result have driven up the fees associated with processing them.

Typical Bitcoin transactions can cost a few cents to a few dollars, but Ordinals can cost tens of dollars in comparison.

Figures from crypto-mining data provider Hashrate Index show over the past seven days fees as a percentage of the block reward are on the rise starting off the week at around 1% before jumping to a Feb. 1 weekly high of 6.74%.

Mastercard’s NFT lead quits on bad terms, sells resignation letter as NFT

The now-former NFT product lead at payments giant Mastercard left the company in a spectacular fashion, publicly slamming the firm for purportedly mistreating him and offering up his resignation letter as an NFT.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, Satvik Sethi claimed Mastercard cut his salary by 40% when he moved from New York City to London claiming he “had to work side jobs this past year to make ends meet.”

He claimed that at times he would not receive his salary “until I begged across the hierarchy for it.”

Sethi also alleged he was the victim of harassment “caused by a series of mismanaged processes, miscommunication [and] internal inefficiency.”

He asked his over 22,000 Twitter followers for their support by minting his resignation letter for 0.023 Ether (ETH), worth around $37.

“100% of this goes to survival,” Sethi added as he will lose his British work visa and would “be based in India for the foreseeable future.” A future airdrop of art for holders of the NFT was also promised by Sethi.

At the time of writing 53 NFTs of the letter, which Sethi titled “New Beginnings” had been minted.

Cointelegraph contacted Mastercard for comment regarding Sethi’s allegations but did not immediately receive a response.

eBay eyes talent for its acquired NFT marketplace

E-commerce player eBay is looking to hire several Web3-related roles for its United Kingdom-based NFT marketplace KnownOrigin which it acquired in June 2022.

Job postings by eBay on LinkedIn revealed its hiring for positions in the U.K. and at its headquarters in California.

Among the roles are a Manchester-based Head of Community for KnownOrigin along with a Content Designer and Marketing Campaign Executive for the marketplace amongst other positions.

The firm is also hiring two California-based positions for a Crypto Counsel. The job description says the role will see a “creative crypto attorney” joining eBay’s legal team to support its “business, product, compliance and technology teams in the Web3 space.”

OpenSea rolls out suite of tools for NFT creators

NFT marketplace OpenSea released the next series of tools for its “Drops” feature which is used to help creators launch NFT collections with OpenSea to benefit from its reach.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, OpenSea said it had worked closely with 20 teams to “build a best-in-class drops experience.”

The next phase of the rollout includes giving creators tools allowing them to conduct multi-stage minting, smart contract deployment across multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains and personalize web landing pages among other features.

The tool will be “gradually opening up” to select creators “over the coming weeks” according to OpenSea.

It will also add more features in the coming weeks before it’s released to the public at large.

OpenSea has experimented with its Drops feature by creating personalized pages for select collections, most notably, one was created for the debut collection by actor Sir Anthony Hopkins which ended up selling out in under 10 minutes.

Other Nifty News:

Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said there are “various possibilities for using Web3” in the country, and the government may use NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to promote its “Cool Japan” strategy aiming to show off the nation's tech and culture.

Cointelegraph spoke with industry professionals on how to prevent NFT thefts who advised users to take due diligence, revoke unnecessary permissions and segregate NFTs into different wallets among other measures.

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The ‘Growth Collection’ — Ross Ulbricht to Auction Bitcoin-Backed NFTs on Satoshi’s Birthday

Bitcoin.com
The ‘Growth Collection’ — Ross Ulbricht to Auction Bitcoin-Backed NFTs on Satoshi’s Birthday
Bitcoin NFTs
The ‘Growth Collection’ — Ross Ulbricht to Auction Bitcoin-Backed NFTs on Satoshi’s BirthdayFollowing Ross Ulbricht’s non-fungible token (NFT) sale that raised 1,446 ether or $6.27 million at auction, Ulbricht is dropping another NFT compilation called the “Growth Collection.” According to the announcement, the NFTs will be minted using the Bitcoin blockchain and will be auctioned at the Bitcoin22 conference in Miami on April 6-8. Ross Ulbricht Is […]
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