What are Bitcoin ordinals?
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Loading... - Clara Andersen
- 28 Mar 2023
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What are Bitcoin NFTs?
Bitcoin NFTs — aka Bitcoin ordinals, aka digital artifacts — are a way to inscribe digital content on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Bitcoin ordinals protocol was launched in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmor. The protocol allows inscribing of digital content like art onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and other blockchains, Rodarmor wanted to create an immutable on-chain presence of a piece of art, text or video. The genesis ordinal was a pixel art of a skull that Rodarmor inscribed on Dec. 14, 2022.
As the NFT space based on Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard skyrocketed in 2021, Rodarmor, who was a programmer and an artist, saw the opportunity to create a similar yet unique experience on the Bitcoin blockchain. His solution was Bitcoin ordinals, based on ordinal theory, which he went on to implement through 2022.
Ordinal theory concerns itself with satoshis, giving them individual identities and allowing them to be tracked, transferred and imbued with meaning. The ordinals hype really kicked off in February 2023, six weeks after the genesis ordinal was created.
The number of inscriptions doubled every week for a few weeks. However, the number could have been much higher if the infrastructure to inscribe and trade ordinals had been better planned and executed. Read More…
