- Bitcoin recorded the second-highest NFT sales volume for any blockchain over the past seven days.
- Ordinals was the second largest NFT collection, just behind the BAYC blue-chip collection.
A year ago, no one could have imagined Bitcoin [BTC] could become a favorite network for facilitating Non-fungible Token [NFT] transactions. However, since the beginning of 2023, a sharp turn has been taken.
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A user who invests in Bitcoin-related businesses recently tweeted that 80% of the top 10 NFT sales in the past week were on Bitcoin, a space typically dominated by networks powered by smart contracts like Ethereum [ETH] and Solana [SOL].
8 of the top 10 NFT sales in the last 7 days
Are on Bitcoin🤯
Ordinal Numbers Inscriptions BRC-20 for the win!
Credit: @cryptoslamio pic.twitter.com/FtJZM9OpHF
— trevor.btc @ NYC (@TO) May 15, 2023
The New Bitcoin
Bitcoin recorded the second-highest NFT sales volume for any blockchain over the past seven days, according to data from CryptoSlam. Transactions worth more than $37 million were settled on the proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, eclipsing biggies like Solana and Polygon [MATIC] and trailed only by Ethereum.
As of May 10, the volume, as indicated, exceeded $10 million, the highest ever recorded in a single day. The volume over the past seven days represented an increase of 8.15% from the previous week.
Source: CryptoSlam
The primary driver of Bitcoin’s burgeoning NFT ecosystem was the Ordinals collection. Since its launch in January 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals has taken the crypto world by storm. With sales totaling more than $13 million in the past seven days, Ordinals was the second largest NFT collection, just behind the blue-chip Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.
Bitcoin Ordinals scripts growth story
According to Delphi Digital, the total number of Ordinals inscriptions exceeded 7 million at the time of writing, with a whopping 4.3 million, or about 60% of that, being minted in May. The figure reached its all-time high on May 7, when more than 400,000 inscriptions were struck in a single day.
Nearly 7 million #BTC Ordinals are inscribed. pic.twitter.com/Zkhuub2zfH
— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) May 15, 2023
Ordinals accounted for the bulk of trading on the Bitcoin network. According to data from Duneof the total fees collected by miners, trade in Ordinals accounted for 30%.
Network activity spikes
The Ordinals madness has driven network activity on the Bitcoin network to unprecedented levels. According to Glassnode data, an average of nearly 600,500 daily transactions have been reported since the beginning of May.
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The world’s largest centralized crypto exchange, Binance, had to suspend BTC withdrawals twice in 48 hours due to high gas costs due to network congestion.
Source: Glassnode
Minting Ordinal NFTs has become possible with the Taproot Upgrade. As of May 15, 59.86% of all transactions on Bitcoin used Taproot.
Source: Sentiment