In the last 2 months, a new frontier in Bitcoin has emerged with the minting of over 200,000 inscriptions, digital files etched into the world's oldest and most secure distributed ledger. Each inscription can be tied to a unique Satoshi (sat) and can range from images to text, audio, and applications. This has created a native on-chain ecosystem for NFTs on Bitcoin, which is rapidly growing in usage. Yuga Labs, the largest issuer of NFTs, has already announced a new collection called TwelveFold issued on Bitcoin.
Magic Eden - the leading cross-chain NFT platform, launched a Bitcoin marketplace for digital artifacts. As the only fully audited marketplace in the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem todate, it will offer an industry-leading user experience and interface, providing collectors with a familiar trading experience.
Bitcoin wallets do not currently have the option to select specific satoshis to send to other addresses, which is crucial for sending Ordinals. However, some popular wallets used by Ordinal collectors, such as Sparrow, Electrum, and Xverse, offer UTXO selection as an alternative.
OpenOrdex, Gamma, and Ordinals.com are tools used for researching Ordinal/inscription activity. Additionally, explorers provide information on transaction ID, address, output value, weight, sat number, and location.
As additional information, I am attaching additional links and guides (UPDATE*):
At present, some of the most popular collections in the world of inscriptions on Bitcoin include Taproot Wizards, ORD Rocks, TwelveFold (by Yuga Labs), and Bitcoin Punks. Also worth mentioning DeGods.
Let's update the information about punks and talk about the most interesting projects.
The collection has been bought up, despite its user-friendly system. Other projects have followed suit, as is often the case. Is it worth investing in? NO. The entry barrier is high, and the pool of enthusiastic buyers will soon be exhausted.
The collection is traded on the Ordinals Market
Place where you can buy cheap Punks Ordinal Punk's Data
This is the ART project made by Yuga Labs.
Yuga Labs - are the owners of several collections: BAYC, CryptoPunks, MAYC, BAKC, OtherSide, Meebits, SewerPass.
The studio has the biggest influence in the NFT space and this action is very bullish for the Bitcoin NFT sector as it definitely brings more attention and liquidity.
The 300-edition generative art project awarded NFTs to the top 288 successful bidders. According to Yuga Labs, there were 3,246 total bidders and the auction generated 735.7 $BTC (about $16.5M).
The top bid was as high as 7.1159 $BTC, or about $160,000, while the lowest accepted bid was 2.2501 BTC, or about $50,400.
Recently, DeGods, a popular NFT collection on Solana, conducted a mint on Bitcoin. I suppose everyone knows the top NFT collection DeGods on Solana (floor price starts from 600 Solana). Recently, they decided to follow the new trend and host the minting of their NFT on Bitcoin.
The company helped the team allocate 776,408 blocks for the NFT which cost $100k. The minting process took place on their website, but it was beautifully executed in the form of old loading windows.
The minting process started from Bitcoin block 781,216 and proceeded as you passed blocks, which on average took 50-60 blocks for about 8-9 hours. 500 out of 535 NFTs from the total supply were available for minting.
At a minting price of 0.33 BTC, the peak price was around 1 BTC ($27,832), and currently the NFT value is holding at around 0.8 BTC. Within the Discord community, people actively trade, some exchanging BTC DeGods for a certain amount of regular tokens and so on. Transactions are conducted in ETH, SOL, and BTC.
In just a few days, they traded 78.3 BTC (~1117.5 ETH/~$2.1 million).
The mint was done on a FCFS basis, and the creators recommended having wallets with at least 0.444+ BTC, indicating that the participants were not only wealthy but also savvy. While it is unclear what the roadmap and privileges are, DeGods already released exclusive merch for BTC holders. It remains to be seen whether this move is just another hype or a step towards the development of BTC NFTs.
Bitcoin's primary role has shifted over time, with the non-sovereign monetary network view gaining popularity since 2020. However, the project continues to evolve and unexpected developments, such as the emergence of inscriptions, have the potential to drive new use cases, interest, and adoption.
