🙌 Let’s delve into the fascinating world of Bitcoin Ordinals, often dubbed ‘Bitcoin NFTs’. These unique non-fungible tokens are not the typical NFTs we’ve come to know and love on other chains like Ethereum, Solana or WAX – Ordinals live right on the Bitcoin blockchain!
🤔 So, how does it work? Creators inscribe digital content – think images, videos, or text – into a Bitcoin transaction. This turns your creative piece into an ordinal – a Bitcoin NFT!
👀 Bitcoin Ordinals draw from ordinal theory, which gives each Satoshi (the tiniest Bitcoin unit) a unique number, called the ordinal number. This lets us track each Satoshi’s journey on the Bitcoin blockchain.
⏩ Ordinals are easily transferable.. You can send them around just like Bitcoin, and they can sit safely in your Bitcoin wallets.
🔒 But why Ordinals? Besides being created on the world’s most secure blockchain, once an Ordinal is born, it’s immutable. It can’t be changed or deleted.
🚀 Since the Ordinals protocol took off in January, it’s quickly become a top pick for new asset creation on the Bitcoin blockchain. Thanks to the BRC-20 token standard, the number of Ordinals on the network has exceeded 10 million!
👎 Not everyone’s a fan, though. Critics say inscribing assets this way can be wasteful and inefficient. Some developers are now exploring the use of smart contracts for asset and NFT creation on Bitcoin.
🤲 There is a flip side to that coin. Ordinals have won praise for helping onboard new users to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Even well-known Bitcoin critic, Peter Schiff, minted a few NFTs on Bitcoin using the Ordinals protocol!
💰 Despite the debate, the Ordinals craze has been a windfall for miners. With transaction fees spiking, they’ve seen over $44 million in Ordinals-related fees paid out.