Bitcoin NFTs grow rapidly as community sees long-term potential • TechCrunch
Ordinals, an NFT-like project on the Bitcoin blockchain, has gained momentum in the past month, signaling a chance that a new frontier could be on the horizon for the largest cryptocurrency. But to be the biggest, experts say accessibility and security must improve.
Over 90,000 Ordinals have been entered — which is jargon for bought (or minted) — on the Bitcoin blockchain to date, according to Dune Analytics data. Ordinals reached an all-time high on February 9 for mintages exceeding 20,000 that day.
“It seems silly to say that this won’t be a very impactful revelation,” Nick Hansen, CEO and co-founder of Luxor, told TechCrunch. “I can’t predict the future, but given current trends and hockey stick growth, we’re definitely headed for more Bitcoin NFT subscriptions now rather than fewer.”
The Ordinals project is not the first to try to bring NFTs into the Bitcoin blockchain. Counterparty was the first platform to write NFTs onto Bitcoin’s network with the Rare Pepe collection in 2014. Although Rare Pepe didn’t do much to increase mass demand, one of the NFTs from 2016 sold for $3.6 million on a Sotheby’s auction about a year ago.
Ordinals stands out as a project for direct enrollment in satoshis, the smallest denomination of bitcoin (equivalent to 100 millionths of a bitcoin), without needing another chain or token. “The unique thing about Ordinals is that it places the image literally in the blockchain,” said Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Stacks and CEO of Trust Machines. “Other NFTs usually link to the images on the chain.”
Although Ordinals and Bitcoin NFTs in general are exploding, it is still in very early stages, especially compared to giants like Ethereum and Solana.
“It’s really goofy because it’s day one,” said Alex Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin rewards platform Lolli. “It’s like the wild west, but that’s how NFTs felt back in the day, even with Ethereum.”
Ethereum and Solana now have a big step up when it comes to infrastructure, community and trading platforms and collections. Over the past 30 days, Ethereum, the #1 blockchain by NFT sales volume, has increased volumes by 35.5% to $860 million with over 178,000 buyers, according to CryptoSlam data. Solana, the second largest blockchain by NFT sales volume, fell 15.6% to $114.6 million with over 80,000 buyers in the same time period.
“Ethereum has proven that there is already a market for this and is essentially stealing market share based on demand,” Adelman said.
So, inherently, Bitcoin NFTs will compete with other large NFT ecosystems, Hansen said. “I think we will most likely see a lot of Ethereum NFT projects building bridges to move to Bitcoin.”
When people build on Bitcoin, it gets a lot more attention, Ali said. “Some people think it’s more valuable than other chains because it’s unclear if the other chains will exist, but bitcoin will probably be around 10, 20 or 50 years from now.”
But this expansion will not happen overnight and the current infrastructure for Bitcoin NFTs is extremely clumsy and still done manually on many fronts. For example, many people legally complete inscriptions manually rather than through a service such as an NFT marketplace.
