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Bitcoin BRC-20 token standard becomes a new destination for meme tokens

Coin Telegraph
Bitcoin BRC-20 token standard becomes a new destination for meme tokens
bitcoin ordinals

The BRC-20 token market cap has seen a 600% rise in the past week, with its transaction volume overtaking standard BTC transactions on the network.

Bitcoin’s BRC-20 token standard has become the latest trend in the crypto ecosystem, especially after the Pepe (PEPE) memecoin rise in recent months. A total of 8,500 different tokens have been minted using the BRC-20 standard, with the majority of these BRC-20 tokens being memecoins, such as PEPE and Memetic (MEME).

BRC-20 is an experimental token standard on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain modeled on Ethereum’s ERC-20. It allows programmers to create and send fungible tokens via the Ordinals protocol.

Although modeled after ERC-20, the BRC-20 token standard fundamentally differs from its Ethereum-based counterpart. BRC-20 tokens don’t make use of smart contracts. The token standard also requires a Bitcoin wallet to mint and trade these tokens.

The BRC-20 token standard was created early in March by an anonymous on-chain analyst called Domo. The objective was to make it possible for fungible tokens to be issued and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain. The market cap of BRC-20 tokens has exploded over the past month and currently sits at $120 million, a 600% rise in the past week.

BRC-20 tokens marketcap. Source: Ordinals

The BRC-20 token frenzy has also dwarfed the blockchain’s original number of Bitcoin transactions. The number of BRC-20 transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain between April 29 and May 2 reached over 50%, outperforming regular BTC transactions.

Related: Bitcoin metrics to the moon: ATH for hash rate, daily transactions and Ordinals

The BRC-20 token volume peaked on May 1 at 366,000 transactions, with the total number of transactions on the network being 2.36 million.

BRC-20 tokens transaction volume. Source: Dune

Along with the rise in BRC-20 transactions, transaction fees have surged due to the new token activity. Since its inception in late April, the network has generated an additional 109.7 BTC in transaction fees for miners.

BRC-20 tokens total fees. Source: Dune

The meme coin frenzy has been a notable topic on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, but with the rise of the BRC-20 standard, a similar trend is also observed on the Bitcoin blockchain. The meme coin frenzy has also led to a significant rise in Ethereum network gas fees leading to network congestion as well.

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Bitcoin metrics to the moon: ATH for hash rate, daily transactions and Ordinals

Coin Telegraph
Bitcoin metrics to the moon: ATH for hash rate, daily transactions and Ordinals
Bitcoin Community

While the Bitcoin hash rate briefly touches new highs, Bitcoin Ordinals contribute to daily transactions exceeding 500,000.

A lot of Bitcoin (BTC) miners just came online. The Bitcoin hash rate, or the total computing power of the Bitcoin blockchain, just soared to 439 exahashes per second (EH/s). Moreover, the number of transactions processed on the Bitcoin blockchain in one day exceeded 682,000, with over 300,000 Ordinals inscribed. 

The hashrate, in orange, soars to 439 EH/s. Source: timechainstats.

These milestones demonstrate the network's strength and stability, as well as the increasing adoption of Bitcoin for various use cases, all while the banking sector in the United States fractures.

The Bitcoin hash rate, a measure of the computational power dedicated to securing the blockchain, has reached an all-time high, signifying increased confidence in the network's security. The hash rate is a crucial indicator of the network's health, as a higher hash rate means more miners are participating, thus making the network more resistant to attacks.

The surge in hash rate reflects growing investments in mining infrastructure despite fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin. More and more territories and regions around the world are mining Bitcoin, with increasing amounts of renewable energy, allaying fears of centralization or environmental impacts that have shrouded Bitcoin mining in the past.

However, as Denver Bitcoin, a well-known Bitcoin miner with Upstream Data Inc, points out, the hash rate surge may be short-lived. It’s important to “Watch 1500-block to 5k-block avg time to get an understanding of true hashrate,” he shared in a tweet:

The hash rate may be temporarily surging–partly driven by a resurgence in the popularity of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions. Bitcoin ordinals are unique, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on the Bitcoin network, each representing a distinct position in the Bitcoin blockchain. Each ordinal is “inscribed” on a Satoshi (the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin), and owners can prove digital ownership of their Sat.

Ordinals have gained traction among collectors, investors, and enthusiasts, offering a new way to engage with the Bitcoin ecosystem. Bitcoin ordinals fan Dan Held, for example, shares that altcoin advocates engage with Bitcoin for the first time due to their creation.

Ordinals reach 3 million.Source: Dune

The number of inscriptions in a 24-hour period exceeded 350,000 on May 1, as the total number of ordinals exceeded 3 million. Given that each ordinal inscription also counts as a transaction, the number of Bitcoin transactions has also soared.

Daily transactions reach 682,000. Source: timechainstats

As more people buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin ordinals, the number of daily transactions on the network has significantly increased to 682,000. The mempool, or the "waiting area" for incoming transactions before they are confirmed, is currently very busy. The cheapest transaction fee sits at 8 sat/vB, or about $0.30–way above its lows of 1 sat/vB. If users are looking to send money to wallets on the Bitcoin base chain, the costs are significantly higher than usual due to the surging number of ordinal inscriptions.

Related: ​​Bitcoin Ordinals community debates fix after inscription validation bug

For some, Bitcoin ordinals offer another role for the network that goes above its activities as a store of value and medium of exchange. For others, such as Dr. Adam Back, number 76 on Cointelegraph’s Top 100, ordinals are useless.

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2 reasons why Bitcoin Ordinals are ‘positive’ for the BTC: Grayscale

Coin Telegraph
2 reasons why Bitcoin Ordinals are ‘positive’ for the BTC: Grayscale
Bitcoin Community

Ordinals have been a controversial topic within the Bitcoin community but crypto investment firm Grayscale says there’s two main reasons to be optimistic.

Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals — also known by some as Bitcoin NFTs — could renew developer enthusiasm for Bitcoin and boost mining fees, according to cryptocurrency investment firm Grayscale.

In an April 27 “Market Byte” blog post, the firm suggested that Ordinals provide two key benefits to the growth and development of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The first is a substantial increase in fees paid to miners, which has been seen since the launch of the protocol in January, according to Grayscale.

“The advent of ordinals has led to an increase in total fees paid to miners [...] which could potentially establish a sustainable baseline level of transaction fees to incentivize miners.”

Grayscale argued that this would ensure "continued network security throughout the lifetime of the Bitcoin network.”

As reported by Cointelegraph, in less than two months after its launch, more than $600,000 was paid to Bitcoin miners, solely as the result of fees generated by Ordinal inscriptions. As of the time of publication, that figure now exceeds the $6.5 million mark.

Fees spent on inscribing Ordinal NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. Source: Dune Analytics

The investment firm also believes that Ordinals and the “velocity of NFT adoption” could also attract new Bitcoin users and spark more development on the Bitcoin network. 

"We believe the emergence of ordinals is likely to promote a development-oriented community and culture in support of the Bitcoin network." 

On April 30, Ordinals reached a new record, with the number of daily inscriptions topping 300,000.

Around the same time, the number of Bitcoin transactions neared peaks not seen in a number of years, according to blockchain data firm IntoTheBlock.

Related: Magic Eden launches marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals

The meteoric rise of Ordinals has been a controversial topic in the wider Bitcoin community, having been extensively criticized by Bitcoin maximalists for straying from the original purpose of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic currency and clogging up valuable block space.

One such critic is Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who has made a number of comments in which he declared Ordinals to be “useless,” and claimed that he is “more into Bitcoin as a currency.”

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Ordinals Finance has conducted a $1M rug pull: CertiK

Coin Telegraph
Ordinals Finance has conducted a M rug pull: CertiK
bitcoin ordinals

The DeFi protocol appears to have erased its social media presence after news of the alleged exit scam broke.

Ordinals Finance, an Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that allows users to lend and borrow inscriptions, has been accused of performing an exit scam, also known as a "rug pull." 

In an April 24 press release seen by Cointelegraph, blockchain security firm CertiK reported that the protocol's developer pulled 256 million Ordinals Finance (OFI) tokens out of its smart contracts using a "safuToken" function. Another 13 million OFI was removed through an "ownerRewithdraw" function, bringing the total number of tokens withdrawn to 269 million, CertiK stated.

According to the blockchain security firm, the total loss to investors is $1 million. Coingecko data shows that the market cap for OFI was $2.3 million before the alleged exit, but it fell to slightly over $143,000 afterward. This implies that losses were more than $2 million. However, some OFI token owners may have sold as the news broke, which may account for the lower amount being reported by CertiK. 

Blockchain data shows that the Ordinals deployer account withdrew over 256 million OFI tokens using the safuToken function. These funds were allegedly sent to a separate Ethereum account through multiple transactions. Blockchain data shows that this address received OFI from multiple addresses before depositing the tokens into Tornado Cash.

The project's Twitter account appears to have been deleted.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

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NFTs, gaming and storage: The key to Filecoin and Arweave accruing value?

Coin Telegraph
NFTs, gaming and storage: The key to Filecoin and Arweave accruing value?
bitcoin ordinals

Future growth in blockchain gaming, NFTs and the need for more decentralized storage could eventually benefit FIL and AR price.

With the rise of Ordinals on Bitcoin (BTC) sparking debate over how users should store their NFTs and blockchain gaming projects searching for cheaper, secure ways to store data, it’s time to revisit the discussion surrounding decentralized storage coins.

Decentralized storage protocols Filecoin (FIL) and Arweave (AR) show similar price action, leaving investors with a decision between the underdog showing signs of increased adoption by NFT users and blockchain gaming projects and the clear leader in market cap and adoption.

The total market capitalization of the entire digital storage cryptocurrency landscape today is $4.87 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap, and each protocol provides something different. The two largest projects in the space by market cap that specifically addresses storage needs for NFTs and blockchain gaming are Filecoin and Arweave. Filecoin is currently the top-ranked project in the sector. It ranks 27th on CoinMarketCap by total market cap, but Arweave has significant on-chain activity and fundamental news that deserves attention.

The primary difference between the projects is their focus. Arweave is focused on long-term data storage with a one-time payment model, while Filecoin is more focused on incentivizing large-scale storage, especially for private data, and uses a tiered payment model based on storage time and space requests.

Filecoin has recently announced it would launch smart contracts, solidifying its new position as a layer-1 platform. This development has led to speculation on Filecoin’s future success in deploying Web3 offerings with real-world services like computing and storage, supported by Filecoin’s open marketplace for decentralized storage.

Given the current volatile crypto and macro climate, Filecoin revenue is notable at $2.53 million per month (up 238 over 30 days). Over the same period, fees are up 33% ($2.99 million), indicating strong demand for the platform. The market cap of FIL is at $2.76B, up 14% in the same period.

Filecoin has a maximum supply of 2 billion tokens and a circulating supply of around 403 million. Of the total supply, 70% is dedicated to mining rewards, which increase with network adoption. The rate at which new tokens are created decreases over time as the network matures.

By comparison, Arweave has a much smaller market cap of about $441 million, reflecting a 30% drop over the last 30 days. However, its maximum supply (66 million) compared to total circulating tokens (~50 million) could be more attractive to investors worried about inflation. In addition, AR’s price has been significantly depressed since its all-time high in late 2022.

Arweave (AR) compared to Filecoin (FIL) by Total Market Cap. Source: CoinMarketCap.

Arweave is an underdog in price and adoption, but it would be prudent to note the protocol’s rise in popularity due to its unique differentiator as a permanent storage solution for public data. That could be a clear advantage over competitors when providing infrastructure for the Metaverse. Meta already utilizes Arweave to permanently store digital collectibles from Instagram. Despite a significant drawdown in Metaverse and blockchain gaming projects, transactions on Arweave reached a monthly ATH in February (+20% MoM).

The increase in transactions may be associated with the upcoming release of Arweave 2.6, which aims to lower storage costs and increase energy efficiency for miners while improving the protocol’s ESG standing.

However, Arweave founder Sam Williams postulates that the bulk of transactions is thanks to Bundlr, which claims to increase transactions on Arweave by 4,000% without sacrificing security and at “~3000x faster” upload speed. Bundlr accounts for over 90% of data uploaded to Arweave.

Arweave’s price is down ~90% from its ATH, despite record-high transactions and its partnerships with Meta and the Solana (SOL) blockchain. That is less of a difference than Filecoin, a name down nearly 100% from its ATH.

Meanwhile, Arweave’s “Weave” (a blockchain-like structure) size has grown 135% YoY (134 TB). A recent report by Messari estimates 25% of the Weave is related to NFTs, while 72% is Web3 related. The report also mentions that Decentralized Social (DeSoc) projects like Lens Protocol use Arweave as the preferred decentralized storage platform.

On the flip side, Meta also recently announced it would be “winding down digital collectibles (NFTs),” which may cast a shadow on Arweave’s growth potential. In addition, Arweave’s storage growth is shadowed by Filecoin’s 1,390% (687,900 TB) increase over the same period.

It is also worth considering how recent news of Amazon’s upcoming NFT marketplace could impact the storage coin market. Arweave may get the most immediate impact thanks to its partnership with Avalanche (AVAX), considering the L-1 blockchain partnered with Amazon last year. While there’s no clear news from the company on whether they will use Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) used by Filecoin, Arweave, and several other decentralized storage solutions, the increased awareness of NFTs via Amazon may ultimately channel users and capital into the system. Amazon’s NFT campaign will likely lead to more traffic on the leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which utilizes IPFS and Arweave for metadata storage.

The NFT market also shows signs of resilience, with $2 billion in trading volume in February, up 117% from the previous month, and the industry’s total value locked (TVL) climbing by over 7% ($81 billion). Blockchain gaming remained the dominant sector and a space hungry for decentralized storage (45% of DApp industry activity), despite a 12.33% decrease in on-chain gaming activity.

With the number of funding deals jumping 90% in February, it’s clear that there remains a strong interest in blockchain gaming in the long term, and that will bode well for storage coins that position themselves to aid that sector.

While the rise of blockchain gaming may boost storage coins like Filecoin and Arweave, it's important to carefully analyze each project's fundamental news, security, and adoption trends before making investment decisions. Filecoin appears to be the stronger choice with its greater adoption, but Arweave’s steady rise in usage in growing Web3 narratives remains an interesting trend to keep an eye on.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

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Improving Bitcoin NFT marketplace infrastructure sets the stage for ecosystem growth

Coin Telegraph
Improving Bitcoin NFT marketplace infrastructure sets the stage for ecosystem growth
bitcoin ordinals

Bitcoin NFT inscription activity continues to rise and the launch of new BTC specific marketplaces could lay the groundwork for the next hype cycle.

Bitcoin NFT inscription activity has remained strong with consistency in the daily number of NFTs inscribed on Bitcoin. At the same time, the infrastructure to foster Bitcoin trading is finally coming together with the development of wallets and marketplaces supporting Ordinals.

NFT marketplaces, Gamma and Magic Eden, added support for Bitcoin NFTs this week. While the initial response of traders has been subdued, the activity is expected to pick up soon.

Improving the infrastructure around Bitcoin NFTs

Bitcoin NFTs, also-known-as Ordinals, began with much fanfare in late January as they enhanced the utility and revenue of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Dune dashboard from data analyst dgtl_assets shows that the Ordinals inscription activity remains robust, with nearly 580,000 NFTs inscribed in less than three months.

Cumulative sum and number of daily BTC NFTs inscribed. Source: Dune

While the daily inscription activity is vigorous, the trading volume of Bitcoin NFTs is still muted, which can be primarily attributed to the absence of Bitcoin wallets and supporting marketplaces.

Ordinals require a specially designed Bitcoin wallet that recognizes content files on discernable satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and facilitates its transfer. Hiro and Xverse are the leading wallet providers in the space.

Mark Hendrickson, the product lead at Hiro, told Cointelegraph that the “active users for the wallet are up significantly in general this year, around 350%.” The activity picked up significantly since February, thanks to the Ordinals hype.

On the other hand, Xverse added Bitcoin NFT support on February 15.

So far, the Xverse Chrome browser extension has been downloaded on over 10,000 browsers, with Hiro’s download numbers surpassing 90,000. The Hiro wallet enjoys an advantage here as it was initially designed for the Stacks blockchain, a Bitcoin sidechain that supports smart contract ability.

Marketplaces come together

Since March 19, there has been considerable improvement in the space, with two leading marketplaces, Gamma and Magic Eden, beginning to support Ordinals trading on March 20 and March 22. So far, the marketplaces have met with a soft opening with less than $1 million in trading volume on both venues.

In comparison, OpenSea has facilitated more than $10 million in daily trading volume on Ethereum NFT trades alone on most days in the first quarter of 2023.

Gamma users have completed around 182 Bitcoin NFT purchases since launch. Whereas Magic Eden has done close to 18.94 BTC (worth around $530,000) volume since launch, with the Bitcoin DeGods collection dominating volumes by 67%.

Related: Stacks (STX) surges as Bitcoin NFT hype grows, but its blockchain activity raises concern

Additionally, Hendrickson noted that Magic Eden enjoys an advantage in "the cross-protocol department given that they've previously rolled out support for Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. This could help serve cross-chain trading needs faster, especially as demand increases for moving liquidity across chains to access their various NFT markets.”

Bitcoin Ordinals top collections on Magic Eden. Source: Magic Eden

At the same time, he noted that “Gamma has an advantage among Ordinals marketplaces given their deep focus on Bitcoin-based technologies.” Data provided by Hendrickson shows that the number of Hiro users interacting with Gamma surged significantly to around 2,144 weekly users as the hype around Bitcoin NFTs kicked off.

Number of Hiro clients that connected their wallets to Gamma. Source: Hiro

The Bitcoin NFT trading activity is expected to pick up. Ordinals provide superior security guarantees than NFT ecosystems elsewhere. The digital media file of Ordinals is stored directly on the Bitcoin blockchain and enjoys the same security guarantees as regular BTC transfers. Whereas other ecosystems like Ethereum store the content file of the NFT on third-party storage solutions like AWS and IFPS. Hendrickson noted, “Their long-term durability is a huge advantage.”

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

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Magic Eden launches marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals

Coin Telegraph
Magic Eden launches marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals
Bitcoin NFT

It’s one of the first major NFT marketplaces to join the Bitcoin Ordinals fray.

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden has launched its own “fully audited” marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals, leveraging the surging interest in “Bitcoin NFTs.” 

The newly launched marketplace allows Bitcoin (BTC) NFT traders to buy and sell Bitcoin Ordinal collections, giving users a similar experience it offers for Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana-based NFTs.

“Just as we have expanded into other chains, we now aim to bring our expertise in building marketplaces to the nascent, yet flourishing Ordinals ecosystem,” the firm said in a March 21 statement. 

The new Ordinals protocol was introduced in January 2023 by former Bitcoin core contributor Casey Rodarmor. Since then, the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals has surged.

According to data from Dune analytics, between Feb. 1 and March 1, the total number of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions surged from 679 to 240,000. As of March 21, a total of 567,087 have been inscribed.

Graph showing the daily and total Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions. Source: Dune Analytics

“We paid close attention to the release of Ordinal Theory and the lightning pace of adoption that soon followed,” said Magic Eden, adding it built the new marketplace in less than a month:

“Our marketplace was built within a month, culminating in a hackathon in California with over a dozen devs.”

Currently, the marketplace only supports secondary sales of Bitcoin Ordinals. The marketplace said it is also looking into future tools that would allow creators to more easily mint or inscribe Bitcoin NFTs, such as its Launchpad which it offers for other chains.

In order to enable permissionless swaps, it uses partially signed Bitcoin transactions (PSBT) — a Bitcoin standard that allows multiple parties to sign the same transaction — rather than smart contracts.

The marketplace launched with over 70 collections. Source: Magic Eden

Meanwhile, Magic Eden says there will be no royalty support for the marketplace, but said it is “actively looking” into this, adding there is “very little tooling and no secure and trustless enforcement solutions.” 

“With no royalty standard today, we have decided to launch on Bitcoin without royalty support for now,” said Magic Eden.

“We believe that this is most in-line with the ethos of the ecosystem, and despite this, we are actively looking into the development of an on-chain, permissionless royalty standard and are committed to working with creators and the greater community,” it added.

Related: Bitcoin thought leaders weigh the pros and cons of Ordinals

Other Bitcoin Ordinals marketplaces have already launched, including ORDX and Generative XYZ which launched in February. Earlier this week, NFT platform Gamma.io unveiled its own Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace, allowing users to create and trade ordinal inscriptions in a manner similar to Ethereum NFT marketplaces.

Cointelegraph contacted Magic Eden for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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What are Bitcoin ordinals?

Coin Telegraph
What are Bitcoin ordinals?
Art

Bitcoin ordinals have been the most hyped-up Web3 trend of 2023 so far. How do ordinals compare to traditional NFTs, and what are the opportunities?

Ordinals vs. traditional NFTs

Ordinals are different from traditional NFTs from a technical design perspective. There are several features that make the pricing for ordinals a different exercise. 

Bitcoin ordinals, as mentioned before, help identify sats uniquely and have content or art stored on-chain. Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, which is used to create NFTs, typically holds the metadata or a pointer to the art, which is generally held off-chain. Some Ethereum NFTs are experimenting with on-chain storage, but they are more of an exception.

The other key difference with Bitcoin ordinals is the way rarity is derived and how pricing around the NFTs would work. With traditional Ethereum-based NFTs, the attributes of the art typically define the rarity of the NFT and, subsequently, its price. With NFTs like Ethereum Name Service (ENS) for instance, limited supply drives the value.

However, with Bitcoin ordinals, pricing would be defined by key moments that a Bitcoin block would represent. The first 1,000 or 10,000 ordinals inscribed might still be treasured by collectors. Don’t be surprised if the genesis Bitcoin ordinal is sold for a few million dollars in a couple of years. Yet some sats would be considered more precious than others.

A simple framework suggested by the founders of Bitcoin ordinals is that key events would decide the rarity of a sat and the ordinal inscribed into that. The first sat of every new block would be rarer than the other sats in the block. The first sat of an adjustment period that occurs approximately every two weeks would be even rarer. As the next halving is slated for 2024, the first sat of each halving epoch would add another level of rarity. 

Finally, the first sat of the adjustment period, which happens once every six halvings (approximately once in 24 years), would be another level of rarity. Per the founders of this amazing innovation, this could differentiate Bitcoin ordinals from NFTs and make their rarity truly random and not controlled by the founding teams of nonfungible token collections or by their artists.

This could also help understand why the activity around Bitcoin ordinals has already peaked in the short term. It would be interesting to see how activity ramps up closer to the Bitcoin halving in 2024. 

How have ordinals been perceived by the broader Bitcoin ecosystem?

Bitcoin ordinals are a great innovation that can highlight various applications unique to the chain, thereby driving developers to participate and create the tools needed by users.

Bitcoin ordinals have certainly seen a hype that potentially peaked sometime in February 2023, based on transaction data. However, the hype around the application tier on the Bitcoin blockchain is just getting started. 

For instance, Stacks (STX) has seen a rise in price since the ordinals episode warmed up. It is clearly the early days for the Bitcoin ecosystem, but if developers are attracted to the chain, then the network effects between developers and users could come in time for the next crypto cycle.

Related: Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem explained

However, there are downsides to the way ordinals have been designed. As the inscribed content is all on-chain with ordinals unlike with most Ethereum-based NFTs, the size of the blockchain would increase. As new applications emerge and network utilization and transactions increase, so will the cost of transactions. 

The other potential impact of Bitcoin ordinals is whether it will affect the fungibility of sats. So far, satoshis have been exchanged with one sat being valued the same as another. With various applications of ordinals, this may not be true in the future. A sat with a Bitcoin Punk inscribed in it could be priced differently. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see how this narrative evolves over the next few months and years.

How to buy, sell and trade ordinals

Much like the process of minting Bitcoin ordinals, the trading process hasn’t had the matured tooling. Yet there are a few tools to trade these digital artifacts.

As Bitcoin ordinals grow in popularity, most of the trades have been largely over-the-counter. Collections, such as “Planetary Ordinals” and “Bitcoin Punks,” among the first 1,000 inscriptions were transacted mostly without an NFT marketplace such as OpenSea or Blur.

However, tools like the Ordinals Wallet, Hiro and Xverse allow users to buy and sell Bitcoin ordinals. Users can buy some sats within the wallet, using on-ramp payment plugins, and perform the transactions to buy and sell ordinals.

The typical user journey involved in buying Bitcoin ordinals using Ordinals Wallet is as follows.

  1. Go to ordinalswallet.com
  2. Click on “Create Wallet”
  3. Take a backup of the recovery phrase for your wallet
  4. Set up a password for wallet access
  5. Use the address of the Ordinals Wallet to send some sats to the wallet 
  6. Go to “Collections” at the top of the page
  7. Choose the ordinals collection and the inscription that you would like to buy
  8. Buy the ordinal (using the sats in your wallet).

How to mine Bitcoin ordinals?

Mining, minting or inscribing Bitcoin ordinals are the terms that have been used to refer to this process. Unlike minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, which is a relatively matured process, mining Bitcoin ordinals is a technically complex process and lacks intuitive tools.

Bitcoin ordinals, in the initial days, could only be mined by those who ran a Bitcoin node. For tech-savvy users, a Bitcoin node with the ord app, a command line wallet, would be the gateway to mining ordinals. Node operators would load their wallets with some sats to pay for the gas fees and perform an inscribing process on their ordinals.

However, no-code ordinal mining applications like the Gamma or the Ordinals Bot aim to allow users to upload the content that they want to inscribe to create their Bitcoin ordinal. The user journey takes them through a payment process using a QR code and is intuitive enough for the less technically gifted.

The tools around Bitcoin ordinals are still at a very early stage. It has only been a few months since the genesis ordinals were inscribed. As demand from ordinary users and followers increases, the ecosystem and the tooling should start maturing with more user-friendly journeys.

How do Bitcoin ordinals work?

Bitcoin ordinals are based on ordinals theory that essentially has brought life to satoshis (sats) and allows them to be treated as atomic units on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals, in their simplest state, are a numbering scheme for sats.

Ordinals theory drives the mechanics behind how Bitcoin ordinals work. Ordinals theory defines satoshis (sats) as the atomic unit that can be identified and traded individually on the Bitcoin network. There are 100 million sats that make up 1 Bitcoin (BTC). Sats are numbered based on the order of mining, and this number, which uniquely identifies a sat, is an ordinal number.

Related: Bitcoin vs. Satoshi: Key differences explained

By being a unit of transaction, sats can also be inscribed with digital content that make up Bitcoin ordinals. They become immutable digital collectibles that can be transacted on the Bitcoin network using Bitcoin wallets. As per ordinal theory, sats can be attached to security tokens, accounts or stablecoins using ordinal numbers as stable identifiers.

Due to the broad set of use cases that ordinals can support, Rodarmor prefers not to equate Bitcoin ordinals with NFTs. The use case of ordinals to number a sat that’s been attached to or inscribed with a JPEG can be called a nonfungible token on the Bitcoin blockchain. Although the ordinal’s use that found market fit is that of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, ordinals are much more than just nonfungible tokens.

What are Bitcoin NFTs?

Bitcoin NFTs — aka Bitcoin ordinals, aka digital artifacts — are a way to inscribe digital content on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

The Bitcoin ordinals protocol was launched in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmor. The protocol allows inscribing of digital content like art onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and other blockchains, Rodarmor wanted to create an immutable on-chain presence of a piece of art, text or video. The genesis ordinal was a pixel art of a skull that Rodarmor inscribed on Dec. 14, 2022. 

As the NFT space based on Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard skyrocketed in 2021, Rodarmor, who was a programmer and an artist, saw the opportunity to create a similar yet unique experience on the Bitcoin blockchain. His solution was Bitcoin ordinals, based on ordinal theory, which he went on to implement through 2022.

Ordinal theory concerns itself with satoshis, giving them individual identities and allowing them to be tracked, transferred and imbued with meaning. The ordinals hype really kicked off in February 2023, six weeks after the genesis ordinal was created.

The number of inscriptions doubled every week for a few weeks. However, the number could have been much higher if the infrastructure to inscribe and trade ordinals had been better planned and executed.

Daily inscriptions by type

The rise of Bitcoin ordinals has seen the Bitcoin network explode in terms of usage, fees and storage space as shown in the chart above. This may also be the first big breakthrough for the Bitcoin application tier and can help move the narrative from a pure “store of value” to something more utilitarian.

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‘Scammers dream’ — Yuga’s auction model for Bitcoin NFTs sees criticism

Coin Telegraph
‘Scammers dream’ — Yuga’s auction model for Bitcoin NFTs sees criticism
Auction

Yuga Labs' first Bitcoin NFT collection saw some backlash from the crypto community over the weekend, pointing to flaws in the way it's conducting the auction.

Nonfungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs is facing some criticism from the cryptocurrency community, including the creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, over how it plans to auction its new Bitcoin NFT collection. 

On Mar. 5, Yuga opened bids for its “TwelveFold” collection which will see 300 NFT-like images inscribed on Satoshis using the Bitcoin-native Ordinals protocol, with 288 from the collection sent to the highest 288 bidders.

According to a Mar. 5 press release, those participating in the bidding process will be required to send their entire bid amount in BTC to a unique BTC address controlled by Yuga. Winners would simply pay up the BTC they bid, while Yuga said it would return the BTC to those unsuccessful in placing a top bid.

Such a plan however has earned the ire of some within the crypto community, with some pointing out that having to manually conduct refunds for unsuccessful bids is like the “stone age.”

The user behind an Ordinals-focused Twitter account “ordinally” called the auction model a “scammers dream” and added while they doubt Yuga would keep the BTC from failed bids, the way it carried out the auction sets a “REALLY bad precedence.”

The post even saw a response from Bitcoin Ordinals creator himself Casey Rodarmor, who hotly weighed in on the discussion telling Yuga to “get fucked” and called the conduct of the auction “degenerate bullshit.”

He added if Yuga were to conduct a similar auction he would encourage others to boycott the project.

Other users pointed out the shortcomings of the auction system, saying it's possible some could overpay for a TwelveFold due to a possible significant price discrepancy between the highest and lowest bids in the top 288.

Despite the criticism from some, many were happy to see a large project such as Yuga — who rose to prominence due to multiple Ethereum-based NFT collections — bridge across to Bitcoin.

Related: Luxor Mining acquires OrdinalHub amid Bitcoin-based NFTs hype

Ordinally, who earlier criticized the collection, later tweeted appreciation of “the fact Yuga took the effort to attempt [to] go a Bitcoin route when setting up this auction.”

An Ordinals-based collection, Ordinal Pizza OG, expressed excitement at Yuga’s BTC collection and called it a “massive net positive for Ordinals.”

The criticisms weren’t enough to stop cashed-up bidders from wanting to try to cement a top spot to nab Yuga’s first BTC collection.

At the time of writing the top bid was 1.11 BTC (around $25,000) according to the TwelveFold website with the lowest bid registered showing as 0.011 BTC, or around $250.

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Galaxy Digital Report Predicts Bitcoin NFT Market Could Reach $4.5 Billion by 2025

Bitcoin.com
Galaxy Digital Report Predicts Bitcoin NFT Market Could Reach .5 Billion by 2025
Adoption
Galaxy Digital Report Predicts Bitcoin NFT Market Could Reach .5 Billion by 2025As the number of Bitcoin-based Ordinal inscriptions nears the 300,000 mark, Galaxy Digital’s research team published a report on the subject that says the market size of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on Bitcoin could reach $4.5 billion over the next two years. The researchers at Galaxy think that new use cases stemming from the inscription […]
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