Bitcoin Ordinals scripts growth story for NFT ecosystem as sales volume soars

• Bitcoin recorded the second-highest NFT sales volume for any blockchain during the last seven days.
• Ordinals was the second-largest NFT collection, just behind the blue-chip collection BAYC.

A year ago, nobody would have imagined Bitcoin [BTC] could become a favored network for facilitating Non-fungible Token [NFT] transactions. However, things have taken a sharp turn since the beginning of 2023.

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A user who invests in Bitcoin-related firms recently tweeted that 80% of the top 10 NFT sales in the previous week took place on Bitcoin, a space that is typically dominated by networks powered by smart contracts like Ethereum [ETH] and Solana [SOL].

The new-age Bitcoin

Bitcoin recorded the second-highest NFT sales volume for any blockchain during the last seven days, according to data from CryptoSlam. Trades worth more than $37 million were settled on the proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, eclipsing biggies like Solana and Polygon [MATIC] and trailing only by Ethereum.

On 10 May, as indicated, the volume exceeded $10 million, which was the highest ever recorded in a single day. The volume over the last seven days represented an increase of 8.15% from the week before.

Source: CryptoSlam

The primary driver of Bitcoin’s burgeoning NFT ecosystem was the Ordinals collection. Since the launch in January 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals has taken the crypto world by storm. With sales totaling more than $13 million over the past seven days, Ordinals was the second-largest NFT collection, just behind the blue-chip collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).

Bitcoin Ordinals scripts growth story

As per Delphi Digital, the total number of Ordinals inscriptions went beyond 7 million at the time of writing, with a staggering 4.3 million, or about 60% of them, getting minted in May. The figure reached its all-time high on 7 May, when over 400,000 inscriptions were minted on a single day.

Ordinals accounted for bulk of the trading on the Bitcoin network. As per data from Dune, out of the total fees collected by miners, Ordinals trading accounted for 30%.

Network activity spikes

The Ordinals frenzy has propelled network activity on the Bitcoin network to unprecedented levels. As per 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 pause BTC withdrawals twice in 48 hours due to high gas fees emanating from network congestion.

Source: Glassnode

The minting of Ordinal NFTs has become possible with the Taproot Upgrade. On 15 May, 59.86% of all transactions on Bitcoin used Taproot.

Source: Santiment