Just a few months ago, the words “Bitcoin” and “NFTs” didn’t often appear in the same sentence. But since the advent of the Ordinals protocol, which allows the creation of non-fungible token equivalents specific to Bitcoin, things have changed. So much so that Bitcoin is now the second largest network on which this type of registration is created. A look back at a phenomenal but controversial success
Bitcoin, second largest network of “NFTs” with its Ordinals
The community has been saying it over and over again: no, these are not NFTs, but something new. These Ordinals, whose process was created by developer Casey Rodarmor, enable data to be written to the Bitcoin blockchain in an immutable way. The revolution has been considerable: Bitcoin’s equivalent of NFTs is being snapped up, as are the no less controversial BRC-20s, considered to be the equivalent of ERC-20s.
It is clear that despite the small number of users of these Ordinals, they have found an audience, to the extent that fees on the Bitcoin blockchain have soared. And if we compare this with blockchains offering NFTs, we can see that the network has taken on considerable importance in this particular sector of the ecosystem.
Over the last 30 days, more than $168 million worth of Ordinals have been sold on Bitcoin, putting the network second only to Ethereum, which has sold more than $395 million worth of NFTs :
This corresponds to an increase in sales volume of almost +400%, which can be compared with the drop in volume at Ethereum (-26%).
A controversial success
But that’s not the only thing we can compare. As we can see, even if the amounts are high, the number of buyers and sellers is not at the same stage. At Ethereum, 188,300 people sold NFTs over the past month… compared with 5,800 sellers of Ordinals at Bitcoin.
Hence a criticism that often comes up in the community: is it wise to increase transaction fees to such an extent, and congest the Bitcoin blockchain, for something that basically only concerns a few users? Just yesterday, MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor warned of the potentially “unethical and stupid” use of Bitcoin blockchain registrations.
In the crypto ecosystem, however, it’s always the market that wins. If potential investors and users continue to see the appeal of Ordinals listings, they could become a sector of the future. And so continue the revolution started on the Bitcoin blockchain.
