Ordinals Fees Spike as Bored Ape Yacht Club Clones Thrive on Bitcoin

Daily transaction fees for minting Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions hit a new all-time high Thursday of 9.28 BTC, around $257,460, according to a Dune Analytics report.

The increase is largely attributed to Bitcoin Apes, a variant of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection that is being replicated on the Bitcoin Network.

Since the launch of the Ordinals project in January 2023, over $3.3 million in fees have been paid to add images, text and even video games to the original blockchain.

“[Bitcoin Apes] follow the same logic as Bitcoin Punks where the first byte-perfect image of a Bored Ape entered is the real one, said pseudonymous NFT historian Leonidas Decrypt on Twitter. “8,397 Bitcoin Apes have already been entered, and once minted, over $1 million will have been spent to enter the 10,000 exact copies of the Bored Ape Yacht Club images on Bitcoin.”

Of the 466GB of data that makes up the Bitcoin blockchain, Leonidas says over 1GB is now images of monkeys.

“In a strange way, this is actually very good for Bitcoin,” Leonidas said. “Every additional transaction fee paid to enter these monkeys helps secure the Bitcoin network by providing miners with an additional source of income to supplement the block rewards.”

Leonidas believes projects like Bitcoin Apes could be the solution to the perennial question of what to do after the pre-programmed Bitcoin block rewards finally go to zero in 2140.

But while JPEGs are becoming more popular on the Bitcoin Network, most Ordinal Inscriptions are text-based, according to Dune.

“Bitcoin Apes does not compete with the original Bored Ape Yacht Club collection,” Leonidas said. “In fact, several of the people I’ve talked to who write in are big fans of the original collection and would love to hold one of the original Bored Apes someday.”

Leonidas says it was inevitable that the culture behind one of the most iconic NFT collections would spread to other blockchains, and that Bitcoin Apes confirms that trend.

Some Bored Ape Yacht Club owners are concerned that copies of their NFTs are being created and traded on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, Leonidas believes such concerns are unwarranted.

“Blockchains solve the problem of provenance for digital art, so there is no debate as to whether the official Bored Ape Yacht Club owners are the owners of the original and Bored Apes – anyone can verify this ownership on the chain,” explained Leonidas. “This is just another spin-off project of an iconic PFP collection that, in my opinion, only spreads the culture of the original PFP collection to even more people who end up driving value back to the official holders.”

“People are actually doing the original Bored Ape Yacht Club holders a favor by storing all 10,000 images entirely on-chain for the first time, so they will live forever on Bitcoin at no cost to the official holders or Yuga,” Leonidas said.

While holders of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs may not pay to list their digital collectibles on Bitcoin, the floor price of Bitcoin Apes is steadily rising.

The floor price for Bitcoin Apes is 0.0101 BTC, around $285.00; on Ordinals Wallet the floor price is 0.21 ETH, around $380.00 on Ordinals Market. Bored Ape Yacht Club Ethereum NFT, by comparison, has a floor price of 57.5 ETH, around $104,036 on OpenSea.