Bitcoin Ordinals Make Growth History for the NFT Ecosystem as Sales Volume Increases

by James · May 16, 2023

Bitcoin recorded the second highest NFT sales volume of any blockchain in the past seven days.
Ordinals was the second largest NFT pool, just behind blue-chip pool BAYC.

A year ago, nobody would have imagined Bitcoin [BTC] may become a preferred network to facilitate non-fungible tokens [NFT] transactions. However, things have taken a sharp turn since the beginning of 2023.

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A user who invests in Bitcoin-related firms recently tweeted that 80% of the top 10 NFT sales last week occurred in Bitcoin, a space typically dominated by networks powered by smart contracts like Ethereum [ETH] and Solana [SOL].

8 of the top 10 NFT sales in the last 7 days

Am on Bitcoin🤯

Ordinals Inscriptions BRC-20 for the win!

Credit: @cryptoslamio pic.twitter.com/FtJZM9OpHF

— trevor.btc @ NYC (@TO) 15 May 2023

Table of Contents

The new age of Bitcoin

Bitcoin recorded the second-highest NFT sales volume of any blockchain over the past seven days, according to data from CryptoSlam. More than $37 million worth of trades were settled on the proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, surpassing giants like Solana and Polygon [MATIC] and only after Ethereum.

On May 10, as indicated, the volume exceeded $10 million, which was the highest ever recorded in a single day. Volume over the past seven days represented an increase of 8.15% from the previous week.

Source: CryptoSlam

The primary driver of Bitcoin’s burgeoning NFT ecosystem was the Ordinals collection. Since its launch in January 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals have taken the crypto world by storm. With sales totaling more than $13 million over the past seven days, Ordinals was the second largest NFT gathering, just behind blue-chip gathering Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

Bitcoin Ordinals Script Growth History

According to Delphi Digital, the total number of Ordinals inscriptions passed 7 million at the time of writing, with a staggering 4.3 million, or about 60% of them, struck in May. The figure reached its record high on 7 May, when over 400,000 inscriptions were struck in a single day.

Almost 7 million #BTC Ordinals are entered. pic.twitter.com/Zkhuub2zfH

— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) 15 May 2023

Ordinals accounted for the bulk of trading on the Bitcoin network. According to data from Dune, of the total fees collected by miners, Ordinals trading accounted for 30%.

Network activity increases

The Ordinals frenzy has driven network activity on the Bitcoin network to unprecedented levels. According to Glassnode data, an average of almost 600,500 daily transactions have been reported since the beginning of May.

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The world’s largest centralized crypto exchange, Binance, had to pause BTC withdrawals twice in 48 hours due to high gas fees stemming from network congestion.