Bitcoin Ordinals volume hits $210M in Q2 – DappRadar

The advent of Bitcoin Ordinals NFT inscriptions led to more $210 million in trading volume through the first half of 2023.

The creation of nonfungible token inscriptions on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain has led to over $210 million of trading volume for Bitcoin Ordinals, according to the latest quarterly report from DappRadar.

The data, which has been independently verified by Cointelegraph, shows that Bitcoin Ordinals’ booming popularity led to a sharp increase in trading volume through the second quarter of 2023.

Bitcoin Ordinal trading volume increased from $7.18 million in the first quarter of the year, before a significant increase in trading value left the total trading volume for the Bitcoin-based NFTs at $210.7 million. DappRadar pins the quarterly increase at 2834%.

The report also notes that all-time Bitcoin Ordinals trades amounted to over 550,000 in Q2, with some 150,000 unique traders contributing to the inflated trading volume midway through 2023.

Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace data. Source: Dune analytics

A Dune blockchain analytics dashboard reflecting a number of Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace metrics from user @domo also shows that unique users increased sharply from May 2023. UniSat, an open source Chrome browser extension for Bitcoin Ordinals & brc-20 tokens, Magic Eden and Ordinals Wallet account for the majority of unique users by marketplace.

Bitcoin Ordinals unique users by marketplace. Source: Dune analytics

The rise in popularity in Bitcoin Ordinals has had an interesting effect on the NFT landscape. Near the end of May 2023, Bitcoin surpassed Solana to become the second-most popular NFT blockchain, leaving the preeminent cryptocurrency blockchain behind Ethereum alone in terms of facilitating NFT trading volumes.

Ordinals have also been a boon to the Bitcoin mining industry. BTC miners have netted around $184 million through the first half of 2023, with Coin Metrics highlighting Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens for their role in the boost to fees which has already surpassed the 2022 total for BTC miners.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also credited Bitcoin Ordinals for reigniting a “builder culture” in the Bitcoin ecosystem in a Twitter Space broadcast on July 6.

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