Over the past year, Bitcoin Ordinals have taken the digital collecting world by storm and now they have caught the attention of financial titan Franklin Templeton. The global investment firm’s digital assets division today presented the rise of Ordinal inscriptions in a new prospectus.
“Over the past year, Bitcoin innovation and development has seen a renaissance in activity,” wrote Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. “The positive momentum in innovations is primarily driven by Bitcoin NFTs known as Ordinals, new fungible token startups like BRC-20 and Runes, Bitcoin Layer 2s, and other Bitcoin DeFi primitives.”
The company summarized the acceleration of activity around Bitcoin NFTs after Casey Rodarmor released the Ordinal protocol last year. In 2022, Rodarmor developed the ‘ordinal theory’ concept that assigns a specific number to each Satoshi, the lowest value of a Bitcoin, on the network.
The rise of Bitcoin ordinal numbers pic.twitter.com/nKLwwlMM4d
— Franklin Templeton Digital Assets (@FTI_DA) April 3, 2024
“Our digital asset research team regularly examines the entire digital asset ecosystem,” a Franklin Templeton spokesperson said Declutter. “This piece in particular is inspired by Ordinals’ recent increase in trading volume and market capitalization versus NFTs on other networks.”
Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has detailed the wave of Ordinal collections in the NFT market by volume and market cap, highlighting NodeMonkes, Runestone, Bitcoin Puppets, Ordinal Maxi Biz and Bitmap – terms likely never before mentioned in any of their prospectuses have been published.
“Bitcoin Ordinals has seen an increase in trading volume in recent months,” according to Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. “This is reflected in an increase in dominance from December 2023, when it surpassed ETH in trading volume.”
Franklin Templeton’s digital assets team has been an outspoken proponent of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology on social media, and was described in January as going “full-on” after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first round of Bitcoin ETFs, including the Franklin. Bitcoin ETF (EZBC).
“Franklin Templeton has been very progressive when it comes to digital assets, and their venture arm has been investing behind the scenes in Ordinals infrastructure startups,” Runestone project officer and pseudonymous NFT historian Leonidas told me. Declutter on Twitter. “I’m not at all surprised that Runestone is on the radar of their digital asset team.
“Runestone dropped just three weeks ago and today became the third largest NFT collection by market cap across all blockchains,” he added.
pic.twitter.com/nfDroxSzJS
— Franklin Templeton Digital Assets (@FTI_DA) March 28, 2024
Franklin Templeton wasted no time after his Bitcoin ETF hit the market and turned his attention to Ethereum and Solana. In February, Franklin Templeton submitted a proposal to the SEC for a spot Ethereum ETF.
The response to Franklin Templeton Digital Assets’ bullish tweet was received with enthusiasm by the Ordinals community.
🫡🫡🫡🫡
— Magic Eden on Bitcoin 🟧 (@MEonBTC) April 3, 2024
“Ordinals, Ordinals, & Ordinals,” one account tweeted in response.
NFT archaeologist Adam McBride responded with the meme “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,” taken from the US capture of Saddam Hussein.
Last week, Magic Eden co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Z Yin said the upcoming Rune Protocol – a new fungible token standard launched by Casey Rodarmor during the Bitcoin halving later this month – “will boost the Bitcoin ecosystem .”
“We believe Runes will strengthen the Bitcoin ecosystem even further, opening up a new wave of builders and asset types that were previously only possible on other layer 1 chains,” Yin told us. Declutter. “It is a no-brainer for us to double down on this ecosystem by adding Runes to our existing Ordinals marketplace, which will reach $1 billion in volume by 2024 alone.”