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How the Ordinals movement will benefit the Bitcoin blockchain

The increasing popularity of Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, will impact posively the security of the Bitcoin network and attract developers to the ecosystem, according to Ordinals proponent Udi Wertheimer.

Bitcoin (BTC) NFTs will have a positive impact on Bitcoin ecosystem by improving its security and incentivizing developers to build on the network, according to independent developer Udi Wertheimer. 

The number of newly created Ordinals, also referred to as "inscriptions", have been spiking in recent weeks, causing a surge in transaction fees and average block size on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

According to Wertheimer, Bitcoin NFTs are going to be beneficial for Bitcoin's security budget: by driving up transaction fees, the creation of Ordinals will incentivize miners to secure the network while the revenue from mining reward will be decreasing with each Bitcoin halving.

“Because the block space is scarce and because there's demand for stuff like inscriptions, there's a lot of hope that we will get enough people who want to pay fees in order to keep the Bitcoin network secure,” Wertherimer explained in a recent interview with Cointelegraph.

Also, Wertheimer noted, Ordinals provide a new use case that will make building on Bitcoin commercially profitable.

“With all of that interest around Ordinals and inscriptions, I expect that there is going to be a very big ecosystem that is built around that,” he said.

Wertheimer dismisses the notion, held by some Bitcoin core developers, that creating NFTs is not an appropriate use case for Bitcoin. According to him, in recent years Bitcoin core developers "have ignored what actual Bitcoin users want."

To find out more about Ordinals and how they are impacting the Bitcoin network, watch the full interview on our YouTube channel and don’t forget to subscribe!

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Average Bitcoin transaction fee drops under $1 as network difficulty recovers

In addition to timely upgrades, the drop in transaction fees can be attributed to multiple factors, including falling market prices and lower mining difficulty.

The average transaction fees on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain fell below $1 for the first time in over two years, further strengthening its use case as a viable mainstream financial system.

High transaction fees over blockchain networks work against the users, especially when making low-value transactions. For example, transaction fees over Ethereum (ETH) blockchain skyrocketed several times during the nonfungible token (NFT) hype, inducing stress on general users.

While the Bitcoin ecosystem has also endured its fair share of high transaction fees in the past, timely upgrades — including the Lightning Network and Taproot — guarantee faster and cheaper transactions over time. As of Aug. 22, the average Bitcoin transaction fees fell down to $0.825, a number last seen on June 13, 2020.

Average Bitcoin transaction fees over the past 3 years. Source: Blockchain.com

In addition to timely upgrades, the drop in transaction fees can be attributed to multiple factors, including falling market prices and lower mining difficulty. However, the difficulty of mining a new BTC block sees a steady recovery as miners gain access to cheaper hardware while recovering from the prolonged chip shortage.

Bitcoin network difficulty chart. Source: Blockchain.com

As seen above, August also marked the end of the three-month-long downfall of network difficulty — recovering back to 28.351 trillion from its freefall. Thanks to consistent community efforts, the Bitcoin network continues to display telltale signs of a healthy financial system.

Related: Pushing Bitcoin to become more scalable with zero-knowledge proofs

Although users expect every network upgrade to reduce gas fees and transaction speeds, not all upgrades are built to serve the same purpose. For example, the most anticipated Ethereum upgrade, The Merge, will not reduce gas fees.

As explained by the Ethereum Foundation:

“The Merge deprecates the use of proof-of-work, transitioning to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change any parameters that directly influence network capacity or throughput.”

The Merge upgrade involves joining the existing execution layer of the Ethereum Mainnet with the Beacon Chain, effectively eliminating the need for energy-intensive mining.

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The more you know about Bitcoin, the more optimistic you are: Block survey

Over 9,500 people around the world were surveyed for Block’s 2022 Bitcoin report which showed that more optimistic individuals possessed a greater self-reported knowledge level of the crypto.

A survey from digital payment company Block Inc. has found that the higher respondents rated their own level of cryptocurrency knowledge, the more optimistic they are about the future of Bitcoin (BTC).

Block surveyed more than 9,500 people from the Americas (2,375), EMEA (4,360) and APAC (2,860) regions in January, ensuring to include 100 Bitcoin owners in each region for its 2022 Bitcoin Knowledge and Perceptions Report.

The report, released on May 31, shows a correlation between optimism and the likelihood of purchasing and compared the result with the respondent's self identified level of knowledge.

Of those who identified as having fair to expert knowledge of crypto 41% say they’re “very likely” to purchase Bitcoin in the next 12 months, compared to just 7.9% of those with “limited to no knowledge.”

Despite higher income individuals having slightly more optimism for Bitcoin’s future than lower income individuals, the lower income countries of Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and Argentina reported the highest rates of optimism and the highest claimed levels of cryptocurrency knowledge.

Source: Block Inc. Bitcoin Knowledge and Perceptions Report 2022

Education and promotion seems like the key to adoption as the biggest reason (cited by 51% of respondents) for not buying Bitcoin was a lack of knowledge. The second most cited reason was the potential risk of theft (32%) and the perception that BTC had too much price volatility (30%) came in third.

Lower income nations see the utility

The report details that individuals on lower incomes actually use Bitcoin practically, with more than 40% responding they’re most likely to buy it as an easy way to send money or purchase goods.

In comparison higher income people more often consider Bitcoin a way to make money (50%) or to diversify an investment portfolio (30%), however around the same amount (39%) signaled purchasing goods was also a reason they would buy.

Respondents from countries reporting a higher level of income from remittances and lower per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) were more likely to cite a Bitcoin purchase as a good way to send money or purchase goods.

Source: Block Inc. Bitcoin Knowledge and Perceptions Report 2022

Block also reported a strong correlation between countries with high inflation rates to those who responded that Bitcoin was a “protection against inflation” with 45% of Argentinian respondents using Bitcoin this way, the highest percentage of any country.

Related: Accessibility is the main barrier to crypto adoption — Here are the solutions

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, crypto adoption in Argentina is double the rate of other countries in the region with many turning to Bitcoin attempting to hedge against an inflation rate of nearly 60%.

Source: Block Inc. Bitcoin Knowledge and Perceptions Report 2022

Overall and across regions, Bitcoin was the cryptocurrency which respondents were most aware of with 88% saying they’ve heard of it which is twice as many as the 43% who say they've heard of Ethereum (ETH).

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Cosmos (ATOM) rallies after launching a cross-chain bridge and wrapped Bitcoin

ATOM price booked triple-digit gains after the network built out its DeFi ecosystem and works on cross-chain bridges for ETH and BTC.

Momentum for the top layer-one protocols has been on the rise throughout August as the highly anticipated rollout of the London hard fork on the Ethereum (ETH) network has done little to address the network's high transaction fees and delayed confirmations. 

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the quest to find a more welcoming smart contract environment has been Cosmos (ATOM), a project focused on interoperability that has set out to become the “internet of blockchains” thanks to its Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of ATOM rallied 180% from a low of $8.87 on July 20 to a high of $24.77 on Aug. 22 as its 24-hour trading volume surged from an average of $250 million to $1.87 billion.

ATOM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Three reasons for the strong showing from ATOM over the past month include the release of decentralized finance protocols on the network, the launch of a sidechain that enables the exchange of assets between Cosmos and Ethereum and the announcement of plans to bring Bitcoin (BTC) to the Cosmos ecosystem.

Expanding DeFi capabilities

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been one of the biggest developments to emerge from the blockchain ecosystem over the past couple of years and is set to revolutionize the traditional financial sector.

The recent launch of the first functioning user interface for DeFi on Cosmos, known as Emeris, has been one of the biggest movers of ATOM price of late because the introduction of cross-chain exchange capabilities excited members of the Cosmos community and led to a spike in demand for the token.

Through the new interface, users can access a number of cross-chain DeFi protocols on the Cosmos network and trade assets on blockchains like IRISnet (IRIS), Persistence (XPRT) and the Akash Network (AKT).

Ethereum bridge opens up opportunitie

A second reason for the ATOM rally is the integration of Sifchain with the IBC, which made the project the first decentralized exchange to enable trades between the Cosmos ecosystem and the Ethereum network.

Ethereum currently hosts most of the top smart-contract protocols for DeFi and NFTs and this integration allows users of both ecosystems to easily trade assets between the two networks.

Wrapped Bitcoin comes to Cosmos

A third reason for the current bullish momentum comes from an Aug. 23 announcement that the Interchain Foundation (IFC), an organization that funds development grants in the Cosmos ecosystem, had granted funding to the Interlay development fund for bringing Bitcoin to the Cosmos network.

Bitcoin is the undeniable leader of the crypto market and it holds a vast majority of the accumulated wealth of the ecosystem, so the ability to operate on Cosmos has the potential to bring new users to the network.

Interlay utilizes a lock-up and vault technology that lets users secure their Bitcoin and mint fully collateralized interBTC that can be used in many DeFi projects and the feature is already available as a Polkadot parachain.

This integration will allow BTC to be used in the Cosmos DeFi ecosystem and it will bring deep liquidity and an increase in utility to the network.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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