Bitcoin Ordinals dominate majority of BTC transactions

Despite the recent price drop and fading hype over NFTs, Ordinals inscriptions remain prominent on the Bitcoin (BTC) network.

On Aug. 21, the developer behind Ordinals, known as “Leonidas,” revealed that Bitcoin had processed 530,788 transactions in the past 24 hours. Impressively, 450,785 of these transactions were related to Ordinals, accounting for 84.9% of the activity on Bitcoin.

Over the past 24 hours Bitcoin had 530,788 transactions.

450,785 of those transactions were Ordinals related.

In the midst of everyone claiming "Ordinals are dead" they have literally accounted for 84.9% of the activity on Bitcoin.

You can't make this stuff up.

— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) August 20, 2023

This comes when many voices in the industry claim that “Ordinals are dead,” he added.

Data from Dune Analytics supports this trend, reporting more than 400,000 Ordinal inscriptions on Aug. 20. Additionally, Bitinfocharts has reported a daily Bitcoin transaction count of around 556,000. This data indicates that more than three-quarters of the network activity on that day was related to Ordinals.

85% of on-chain bitcoin transactions in the past 24 hours are ordinals related

EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT

the main usecase of the bitcoin chain is ORDINALS pic.twitter.com/PCZt4if5jf

— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) August 20, 2023

Industry researcher Eric Wall further observed that over the past week, 54% of the transactions on the Bitcoin network were Ordinals

According to data from Dune, there have been 25.5 million Ordinal inscriptions, generating $53.4 million in fees on the Bitcoin network.

Currently, inscriptions are primarily driven by BRC-20 token minting, with 1.9 million minted last week.

Among the more than 25 million inscriptions, recursive inscriptions (an upgrade on Ordinals) account for about 140,000. This upgrade allows developers to use data from previous inscriptions in new ones, potentially enabling Bitcoin to support complex applications, video games, and other advanced usages.

This paints a contrasting picture to a report from DappRadar on Aug. 17, which claimed that Ordinals NFT usage and sales volume had decreased since peaking in May. Some crypto observers even declared the hype as having “died down.” However, the actual inscription activity on the Bitcoin network still appears robust.

However, this hype has died down in recent months, which has likely contributed to the decline in #trading volume.
What does the future hold for #Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs?

It is unclear what the future holds for Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs.

— Cheeky Crypto (@CheekyCrypto) August 20, 2023

Bitcoin Ordinals are nonfungible asset artifacts that enable the inscribing of data onto a Satoshi, the smallest division of a Bitcoin.

Since its launch in January, the protocol has seen the inscription trend take off, leading to thousands being minted on the Bitcoin network. This has caused congestion and spikes in transaction fees, reaching a peak in April and May.