Bitcoin Ordinal’s Daily Inscriptions Increase Due to “BRC-20 Tokens”

by James · April 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over 55,000 of the April 2 inscriptions came in the form of text-based ordinals, many of which were represented by BRC-20 symbols, according to “Leonidis.og”, who hosts The Ordinal Show.

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

Leonidas explained in a tweet that the April 2 peak came on the back of new tools used to interact with BRC-20 tokens launched in recent days.

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

Among the 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,” which currently boast respective market caps of $2.5 million, $2.1 million, and $900,000.

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

Over 42,700 BRC–20 tokens have been minted in the last 24 hours, most coming from 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 is currently under $10 million, investment firm Galaxy Digital believes the “Bitcoin NFT” market could reach $4.5 billion by 2025.

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

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