According to DappRadar’s most recent quarterly report, the creation of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain generated more than $210 million in trade volume, but the NFT market continued to decline. The data shows how fast expanding demand for Bitcoin Ordinals has resulted in a substantial increase in transaction volume through the second quarter of 2023.
Bitcoin Ordinals makes waves in Q2
By the end of June, Bitcoin’s annual average trading volume had increased from $7.18 million in the first quarter to $210.7 million. DappRadar reports that the quarterly increase was 2,834%.
According to the research, there were approximately 550,000 all-time Bitcoin Ordinals trades in the second quarter of 2023, with nearly 150,000 traders contributing to the inflated trading volume.
A Dune blockchain analytics dashboard displaying several Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace metrics from the user domo also demonstrates that the number of unique users has risen dramatically since May 2023. UniSat, an open-source Chrome browser extension for Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, Magic Eden, and Ordinals Wallet account for the plurality of unique marketplace users.
The prevalence of Bitcoin Ordinals has had an intriguing impact on the nonfungible token (NFT) landscape. Near the end of May 2023, Bitcoin surpassed Solana to become the second-most popular NFT blockchain, leaving the leading crypto blockchain second only to Ethereum in terms of NFT trading volumes.
Additionally, Bitcoin ordinals have benefited the BTC mining industry. Through the first half of 2023, BTC miners have earned approximately $184 million, with Coin Metrics emphasizing Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens for their role in the increase in fees, which has already surpassed the total for BTC miners in 2022.
In a July 6 Twitter Space, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin credited Bitcoin Ordinals with reigniting a “builder culture” in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
During the past week, BTC has exhibited a downward trend, falling 2.5%. However, the asset appears to be gaining momentum, with a nearly 1% increase over the past 24 hours. BTC is trading at $30,320 at the time of writing after trading above $31,000 a few days prior.
The modernization of Bitcoin Ordinals
Similar to other new crypto ventures, Ordinals experienced a substantial increase in interest and chatter. However, interest began to diminish, albeit marginally. Later on, however, BRC-20 and BRC-721 tokens emerged and sustained the level of interest.
As people became aware of the potential of these recent Bitcoin network advancements, new ideas began to emerge. BRC-721 came after BRC-20.
BRC-20 tokens are distinguished from other token standards by the fact that they are not completely developed standards or specifications. In reality, BRC-20 tokens are nothing more than a modest amount of JSON code embedded within an Ordinal. Their objective is to produce semi-fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. In this respect, they are comparable to ERC-20 tokens.
As with many new innovations, some of the greatest ideas in the realm of cryptocurrencies begin as memes. BRC-20 tokens initiated the memecoin season on Bitcoin, and some of the NFTs being bridged from Ethereum are as absurd as one could envision. But these new ideas are introducing the world to all of Bitcoin’s new developments beyond the exhilaration, amusement, and imitation.
Bitcoin has been perceived as a digital currency with limited applications for many years. The novel use cases generated by the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol are encouraging developments. Moreover, they are increasing demand for Bitcoin layer 2 solutions.2.
