Bitcoin NFTs … Again ✌️ – by William M. Peaster

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Dear Bankless Nation,

As you may recall, a week ago I wrote a primer on the rise of Bitcoin NFTs titled, you guessed it, Bitcoin NFTs.

I wrote that guide because I saw the interest and activity around Bitcoin NFTs starting to wane parabolic.

Since then, the level of activity has only continued to pick up, leading to an astonishing burst of mint events:

In today’s post, I wanted to follow up my previous 101 guide by showing you some more important things to keep an eye on as Bitcoin NFTs continue to flourish! Let’s dive in.

-WMP

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• The Bitcoin community is grappling with the rise of Bitcoin NFT coins following the launch of Ordinals, a protocol that converts individual satoshis into non-fungible digital artifacts.

• Ordinals have been met with criticism from some hardliner Bitcoiners, but are being hailed by others as potentially revolutionary for the future of Bitcoin’s NFT scene.

• New NFTs increase transaction fee income for Bitcoin miners, potentially indicating a future where cultural activity supports the network.

• Ordinals are centered around a new mechanism called Inscriptions, which are digital artifacts native to the Bitcoin blockchain that can be traded, bought, and sold.

• Inscriptions are stored exclusively on the Bitcoin blockchain, making them always traceable and x7 cheaper to create than on-chain Ethereum NFTs.

• Onchain Bitcoin NFTs are becoming more popular in the Bitcoin ecosystem, driven by the need for a teeming blockspace market to secure the network as BTC block support declines.

• Ordinals are seen as a step in the direction of a teeming blockspace market on Bitcoin, despite opposition from some hardliners.

Admittedly, the Ordinals Bitcoin NFT scene is super early, so the user experience for actually collecting Bitcoin NFTs is understandably primordial and not very friendly right now.

With the frenzied activity we’ve seen in this new, if primitive, Bitcoin NFT surge, I fully expect a handful of convenient “Bitcoin NFT Wallets” and “Bitcoin NFT Marketplaces” to emerge in no time.

Until then, but some of us who is those interested must deal with the early frontier realities of collecting the first Ordinals. I’m personally leaning back until UIs get smoother, but if you’re more of a vanguard type and keen to dive in asap, check this one out guide to start collecting Bitcoin NFTs in the here and now from my friend Gökhan (which is not far from the recent earthquake disaster zones in Turkey, so please consider donate some crypto to the ongoing relief efforts there).

In my previous Bitcoin NFT article, I noted how Bitcoin’s diminishing block support would eventually pose an existential crisis for Bitcoin if a thriving, organic blockspace market did not take hold of the chain.

Funnily enough, the emergence of Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs is the first such indication in recent memory that such an organic blockspace market can actually came into being and it is entirely through the latest Bitcoin native version of NFTs.

Additionally, since my last post on the subject, the amount of NFT-driven fees Bitcoin miners earn has only continued to increase, to the point that now Bitcoin NFTs are not just an interesting curiosity, but a non-trivial economic reality for the modern Bitcoin chain.

PersonalI think Bitcoin should move to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus like Ethereum for its environmental friendliness, and until then personal think Bitcoin and Bitcoin NFTs will remain “off course”, so to speak.

But if anything, I can certainly appreciate the irony of NFT technology revitalizing Bitcoin in 2023. And I support these experiments because they represent the boldest opportunities yet to break Bitcoin out and evolve it from the grips of “old guard” Bitcoin hardliners OGs, many of them think Bitcoin NFTs are spam and have been anti-progress in the crypto economy for years now.

Maybe, just maybe, if this new wave of more experimental Bitcoiners can break through, we might see a PoS Bitcoin chain one day, and so on and so forth. With culture comes evolution and progress, who would have thought?

As NFT archaeologist Adam McBride notes in the thread above, Emblem Vault is a decentralized solution for locking assets on one chain to trade them as NFTs on another.

In practice, this means we’ve seen Emblem Vault become the early solution for trading non-Ethereum NFTs on Ethereum, e.g. Weird Pepes. If you don’t want to switch over-the-counter through spreadsheets right now, Emblem is an onchain option.

All that said, we’re now starting to see the first Ordinals Bitcoin NFTs appear in the Emblem Vault, so before you YOLO in with your ETH, make sure you know exactly what you’re doing and what you’re dealing with.

For example, McBride warns that someone could use a completely fake “Bitcoin NFT” to back up a token vault, so you need to be alert and careful if you is trying to trade these tokens right now in these early days. If you don’t have a reliable intermediary or escrow system, just wait or you could get burned.

Headed by Bitcoin OG and renowned crypto troll Udi Wertheimer, Taproot Wizards is a new Bitcoin NFT gathering promoting and bringing together the first vibrant Bitcoin NFT community around.

Again, maybe the UX right now is still too primitive for some of us to jump into the Bitcoin NFT scene, but either way, Taproot Wizards is a community experiment worth tracking as it’s one of the first cultural hubs we’ve seen sprout up around Ordinals .

Dotta, CEO of the Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult NFT collection on Ethereum, has been diving deep into Bitcoin NFTs for the past few days. In the thread above he lists some of the “NFT grails” he believes are within the first 1000 Bitcoin NFT inscriptions.

Of course, these are just Dotta’s subjective views. At the same time, but sometimes to some collectors at the earliest is what matters most, so it’s definitely worth going through this thread to learn more about the most notable early Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs. These can actually become increasingly iconic over time.

Some have already released Bitcoin Punksa 10k ‘Punks inspired PFP collection made via Ordinal’s Bitcoin NFTs.

Again, I want to emphasize that trading these is best suited for advanced users right now, but nevertheless activity is currently booming. For example, the renowned NFT collector dingaling.eth has already acquired over 200 ETH worth of these ‘punks. If dingaling.eth and others like them are on board, chances are this collection could have significant staying power.

If we zoom out, Bitcoin NFTs are probably just a taste of things to come. Soon we may see Litecoin NFTs, Dogecoin NFTs, Bitcoin Cash NFTs, and so on created in similar ways.

As this expanded NFT scene unfolds, I expect “liquidity plugin” resources like Emblem Vault to become increasingly popular solutions for defragmenting the non-Ethereum NFT trading scene.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to track what happens with Bitcoin NFTs. At this point I think they have reached cultural escape velocity and there is nothing the hardliner Bitcoin OGs can do to stop this great NFT swing!

William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal– a bankless newsletter focused on the rise of NFTs in the crypto-economy. He has also recently contributed content to Bankless, JPG and more!

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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

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