Bitcoin’s NFT Market Booms with $200M in Sales Witnessed in May!
Recent reports indicate that the Bitcoin network has witnessed an impressive $200 million in NFT sales during May. According to the CryptoSlam platform, NFTs based on Bitcoin have risen to the second spot for NFT sales per blockchain. It is worth noting that Bitcoin NFTs did not exist prior to the activation of inscriptions on the Bitcoin mainnet in January 2023.
Bitcoin Moves into Ordinals
Bitcoin’s swift ascent in the NFT space owes much to the Ordinals Protocol, which allows data to be recorded onto satoshis, the smallest units of bitcoin, in a JPEG format. Despite resistance from some Bitcoin advocates, Yuga Labs, a prominent NFT player, debuted an Ordinals-powered collection in February, sparking greater enthusiasm and investment in the technology. As per CryptoSlam’s data, Bitcoin’s network has emerged as the second-largest NFT chain in terms of sales volume over the last 30 days.
About the Bitcoin Ordinals
The significance of the Ordinals Protocol for Bitcoin NFTs lies in its ability to enable Bitcoin node operators to encode data onto each satoshi, leading to the formation of Ordinals. These Ordinals are essentially NFTs that can be generated directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. The protocol acts as a numbering mechanism for satoshis, allocating a one-of-a-kind serial number to each one and monitoring them throughout transactions. By adding supplementary data to specific satoshis, users can differentiate them, thus simplifying the process of creating NFTs.
Ordinals set themselves apart from traditional NFTs by being exclusively native to Bitcoin and functioning without any alterations to the Bitcoin protocol. Additionally, they do not require supplementary layers and are compatible with earlier versions of the Bitcoin network.
In contrast, NFTs based on Ethereum often rely on off-chain data stored on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), which can be modified using dynamic metadata. The introduction of Ordinals on Bitcoin not only represents a cultural shift for the network but also has the potential to bring new features to it.
The NFT Market
As per the latest report by Nonfungible.com, the NFT market has witnessed remarkable expansion in the past few years. The sales of non-fungible tokens have exceeded $17 billion in 2021, and the report highlights that the total profit generated from NFT sales in 2021 was $5.4 billion. However, the market has encountered a drop in sales during Q3 of 2022, with sales declining from $8.4 billion in the previous quarter to $3.4 billion.
