Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has announced plans to introduce Ordinals inscriptions support on its NFT marketplace within the next few weeks. This move marks the company’s entry into the rapidly growing Bitcoin-based NFT market.
Notable addition to Binance NFT marketplace
The upcoming update will enable users to buy and trade Ordinals inscriptions through their Binance accounts. Also, the platform expanded its supported networks in March by adding selected NFT collections from Polygon. Mayur Kamat, Binance’s Head of Product, emphasized the significance of Bitcoin support, stating, “Bitcoin is the OG of crypto. We believe things are just getting started here and can’t wait to see what the future holds in this space.”
Several marketplaces dedicated to Ordinals inscriptions, such as Ordswap, Ordinals Market, and Ordinals Wallet, have emerged following the protocol’s initial surge in popularity. Magic Eden, the leading Solana NFT marketplace, was the first established platform to support Ordinals by launching an inscriptions marketplace in March.
Binance’s announcement follows a recent temporary suspension of Bitcoin withdrawals on the exchange, attributed to network congestion. Competing platforms continued to operate without interruption during this time. High transaction fees and a heavily backlogged mempool characterized the Bitcoin network at the time.
Role of BRC-20 tokens
Many in the crypto community believed that BRC-20 tokens, built and traded using the same Ordinals protocol that underpins Bitcoin NFTs, were responsible for the network congestion. BRC-20 tokens are created on top of Bitcoin using text-based inscriptions rather than image-based ones. Text-based inscriptions have recently gained prominence over image-based inscriptions, with 99.7% of Ordinals inscriptions being text-based on Sunday, according to a Dune dashboard. Simultaneously, 65% of all Bitcoin transactions were linked to BRC-20 tokens.
The interest in BRC-20 tokens intensified when Ordi, the first BRC-20 token launched experimentally in March, was listed on cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com and Gate.io on Monday.
