4 days have passed on the world we live in, but, for those living in the NFT space, it looks like that 4 months have now gone after the launch of the Bitcoin Punks collection.
Ok, in case you're asking yourself "BITCOIN WHAAAAT?" , I definitely see your point but yeah, we're talking about:
👉 those famous Cryptopunks
👉 as NFTs
👉 on the Bitcoin Blockchain
With a very high probability, you're one of those screaming that NFTs on Bitcoin can't be done but let me clear your mind with a bit of history: NFTs were born within the Bitcoin Blockchain. The first NFT inscripted (or minted) on the bitcoin chain was Quantum, originally inscripted via the Namecoin and then sold in 2021 during an auction on Sotheby's for almost 1.5 milion dollars.
Aha, now you're no more "SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!" me, uh?
I won't dive deep into the historical part, but rather I'd love to talk a bit about this new phenomena that is booming and it's called Ordinals. (never call them NFTs on Bitcoin!)
What are Ordinals?
In the context of Bitcoin, "ordinal" refers to the order in which transactions are processed and confirmed by the network. When a user sends a transaction, it is broadcast to the network and included in the next block that is mined. The order of transactions within a block is referred to as the "ordinal position" of the transactions. The ordinal position of a transaction can affect its likelihood of being confirmed by the network and the fees required to get it confirmed in a timely manner. Transactions that are included in earlier blocks are more likely to be confirmed faster, so users who want their transactions to be processed quickly may choose to pay higher fees to incentivize miners to include their transactions in an earlier block.
So, when it comes to Ordinals on Bitcoin, you have to keep in mind that:
👉 Ordinals are based on the time in which they were inscribed in the blockchain;
👉 They're mostly transactions between wallets, inscribed within the bitcoin blockchain;
👉 They can contain a file, wether it is a jpeg, an audio file, a video or a gif.
Now you can see why we're talking about "NFTs" on Bitcoin...
Recently, people started inscribing jpegs and audio on-chain, creating this new NFT on Bitcoin wave, and the most famous one has been the one of Bitcoin Punks, preceded just few days earlier from another collection called Ordinal Punks.
What's the difference though? Well, I could say timing and inscription! While Bitcoin Punks is recognized to be the first PFP 10k collection on Bitcoin, Ordinal Punks have been correctly inscribed within the first 650 inscription EVER on Bitcoin.
Are you kinda understanding where I am going now?
It's not that easy, but you can see that there's a huge difference between NFTs on Ethereum and NFTs on Bitcoin, and actually reasons are different:
on Ethereum, people use to focus on IDs of different collections, specific traits or meme numbers within each different collection. In Bitcoin, these are not important but rather it's important the Ordinals that stands behind the transaction. Is it the first Ordinal inscribed in a block? It's rare! Is it the last Ordinal inscribed? Hell yeah, another rare one!
Even though some collection can be somehow ugly, they can be FOREVER considered (if processed in these days) the first ones ever on Bitcoin! We're moving currently full speed ahead toward 100k Inscriptions and you may say "Oh, that's a lot!". What if these will become 1 million transactions in, say, a bunch of weeks? You'll still be within the first 10% of the transactions.
Rather than talking about collectibles, we are talking about numismatic in here. The importance of an NFT is either provided from the Collection, either provided from the intrinsic value that we can assign to the specific ordinal of the collection itself
About this last point, there's an amazing document talking about Ordinals, explaining clearly how to make an interpretation about that. If we look within this documentation, you will see that value can be provided (exactly as in numismatic) not only to imaged but, rather, even to single bits of Bitcoin like Satoshis.
A Satoshis is 1/100000000 Bitcoin, the smaller amount of that, and it can have a huge value based on the ordinals in which it's been inscribed.
Here following, few examples about that:
Said so, should you start looking into Ordinal?
In my humble opinion, you have to. These are changing completely the NFT game, as there's no Smart Contract based on that, only the bitcoin blockchain. Everything is directly inscribed in that, no strings attached.
Furthermore, all the protocols and projects built on bitcoin are moving faster than expected lately, as everyone wants to make sure that Ordinals will have a marketplace with a proper UX and UI, making sure people will be able to buy/sell/trade Ordinals on this blockchain.
What should you do to make sure to be ready with this?
Start being part of this revolution is not easy but you can do few steps to begin. First of all, make sure to download a Sparrow Wallet or any other Bitcoin Wallet. If you need an help on how to receiver Ordinals on Sparrow, here's a good guide about it.
If you're feeling a bit more geek, you can download Bitcoin Core and install a prune node on Bitcoin on your laptop. Is kinda easy, you can do it by following this video.
Right after that, you need some BTC that you can purchase on every CEX or DEX around.
That's it, nothing more! To inscribe a transaction, you need to send a transaction from a wallet to another one by inscribing an image within that. Unfortunately, there's no easy procedure but, if you're curios to know how I did it for Cryptopunks, just ping me on Linkedin and I'll be glad to walk you through!
Long live and prosper my friend, I hope you've liked this one and now, onto the next one 🚀
