The major exchange and cryptocurrency heavyweight on the planet, Binance, is the latest contender to enter the Ordinals ring.
Ordinals are the hottest development on the Bitcoin blockchain currently. On Monday, February 13, signups using Ordinals surpassed 100,000 as users flooded the network with images, video games, and other content.
Leading cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance announced today that it will admit Ordinals enrollments on its NFT marketplace later this month, dipping its toes into the Bitcoin-based marketplace.
Ordinals Enrollments, similar to NFTs, are digital assets enrolled in a satoshi, the lowest denomination of a Bitcoin (BTC). Enrollment in satoshis, named after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is made possible by the Taproot update launched on the Bitcoin network on November 14, 2021.
Binance’s NFT marketplace upgrade is expected to roll out “in the coming weeks,” the company said, which will allow users to buy and trade Ordinals registrations through their Binance accounts.
The NFT marketplace expanded its list of supported networks in March when it added certain Polygon NFT collections to the platform. Offered alongside NFTs on Ethereum and BNB Chain, Binance product manager Mayur Kamat called compatibility with Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency token by market cap, a notable addition.
“Bitcoin is the OG of cryptocurrencies,” he said. “We believe this is just the beginning and are eager to see what the future holds in this space.”
Several enrollment marketplace platforms emerged amid Ordinals’ initial surge in popularity, including Ordswap, Ordinals Market, and Ordinals Wallet. And Magic Eden, Solana’s largest NFT marketplace, was the first among established venues to join the Ordinals ring, launching an enrollment marketplace in March.
Binance’s NFT Marketplace
Binance’s NFT marketplace announcement comes just days after the exchange temporarily paused Bitcoin withdrawals, blaming network congestion while its competitors continued to operate normally. The pause came at a time when Bitcoin transaction fees were very high and the network’s mempool, where transactions await verification, was severely congested.
The consensus on Crypto Twitter was that transactions involving BRC-20 tokens were hurting the network. Built and traded using Ordinals, the same protocol that produces Bitcoin’s so-called NFTs, BRC-20 “token standard” is an experimental fungible token built with Ordinals and Inscriptions and stored on the bitcoin base chain and are coins built on top of Bitcoin using text-based tokens instead of image-based tokens.
Kamat told that the current version of Binance’s Bitcoin NFT marketplace does not support BRC-20 tokens. In recent weeks, image-based enrollments have been largely eclipsed by these new Bitcoin-based tokens and text-based enrollments.
On Sunday, 99.7% of enrollments made through Ordinals were text-based, according to a Dune dashboard. At the same time, 65% of all Bitcoin transactions were related to BRC-20 tokens, according to another Dune dashboard.
The fervor around BRC-20 tokens intensified Monday when Ordi, the first BRC-20 token launched as an experiment in March, was listed on cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com and Gate.io.
On the other hand, by adding Bitcoin Ordinals to the Binance NFT marketplace, the users at the crypto exchange Binance will be able to purchase and trade Bitcoin NFTs directly through their Binance accounts.
By Marina Meza
