a diamond in the rough

Ordinal numbers and BRC-20s, if you weren’t around earlier this year, you probably won’t be around soon. Let’s face it, the tech is still a bit rough, both in the UX and the products themselves. Bitcoin blockchain collectibles aren’t yet shiny enough in this bear market to attract the trading volume we’re seeing elsewhere and have one suffered a big blow. Still, it’s a diamond in the rough, and I can’t shake the feeling that overall we’re not optimistic enough about the future of Bitcoin.

Sales of Ordinal and BRC-20 are down, with the total number of non-fungible tokens declining and exceeding those of other blockchains this year alone. Out of Bitcoins From its peak sales of $196 million in May to $11.9 million in August, sales fell 93%. Ethereum The 2023 peak of $969 million in February to $226 million in August represents a 73% decline Solana is down 77% and Polygon has fallen by 49%.

Others have pointed out similar numbers, but I don’t like the comparison, especially in this highly speculative market with bubbles surrounding new technologies. Bitcoin’s atomic numbers and the BRC-20 were just born this year, leading to a sales bubble that all other chains experienced during their first NFT surge last year. If you compare each blockchain’s all-time high monthly sales to August 2023, you’ll be hard-pressed to see any difference between Bitcoin’s 93 percent decline and the rest. Ethereum is down 95% from its peak of $4.9 billion in January 2022, and Polygon and Solana are both down 90% from their highs last year.

Hopefully there is no disagreement about the meaning of this comparison, just as none of us would question Bitcoin’s dominance in global adoption and security. The two disadvantages of Bitcoin that I mentioned earlier (the lack of smart contracts and the general weakness of the wallets, marketplaces, etc.) are similar to how Ethereum started out, without smart contracts and marketplaces like OpenSea that sometimes didn’t work. It won’t charge for days. Bitcoin is exactly where it should be, just over half a year into its roadmap.

Once the issue of quality is resolved, adoption will come from the biggest names in the NFT space, possibly even Beeple.

Last week, three major events in the Bitcoin ecosystem showed signs that some of the biggest names in the NFT space are already taking Bitcoin more seriously than ever before.

Ethereum’s On Chain Monkeys announced that they will be migrating their entire 10,000 edition collection to Bitcoin. Why? It is right in their name; The blockchain you live on matters. OCM has no doubt about Bitcoin’s longevity and sees the opportunity to become the biggest name in PFPs on Bitcoin and is pushing its crypto all-in.

Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape NFT family and the Otherside metaverse, is already present with Bitcoin Twelvefold NFT collection. Last week, they launched a series of 12 weekly ciphers centered around the TwelveFold art, giving 0.12 BTC (approximately $3,000) to the first person to solve each puzzle. Their big bet on the largest blockchain should tell you something about their belief in that chain’s importance.

Bitcoin’s technology is improving as a new feature called “Parent-Child Inscriptions” is merged into Inscriptions. This creates a standard for linking collectibles on the chain and lays the foundation for collections, lineages and abstract ideas that probably haven’t even been thought of yet.

Technology improves and the community grows as developers work on the edges around the core of the Inscription Movement. Bitcoin is forever and this also applies to its collectibles. So take your time to get started. The Bitcoin ecosystem is not going anywhere.

Look at the charts

Global NFT sales have fallen to levels last seen in May 2021, and buyers, sellers and transactions also look eerily similar to that time. I’m watching to see if we fall into the $30 million to $55 million range, which puts us back into the February 2021 range – a time before the bubble is fully inflated. We’re all waiting to see where our floor is and ultimately how much trading has actually been put into valuing these assets by collectors over the last two or three years.

• DMarket is overwhelming, this week it is once again at the top of the collection rankings. With $7.6 million in gaming skins, they surpassed fantasy sports collectibles, gaming assets, PFPs and art.
• DraftKings, So rareAnd NFL all day All scored big last week with $4.5 million, $2.9 million and $1.1 million respectively, benefiting from the start of the NFL season. Sports collectibles remain on the blockchain and thrive even during bear markets.
• nouns Sales are booming, but that’s not good news. Their DAO has split, offering holders the opportunity to sell their Noun NFT back to the DAO for much more than the current going price of NFTs on secondary markets.

• ether fell 12.58% this week but still dominated NFT sales with over $41 million in sales.
• Mythos necklace The DMarket collection (CS:GO, Rust, DOTA 2 gaming skins) accounts for 98% of the sales volume of the entire blockchain.
• Polygons NFT sales are again largely driven by DraftKings sales this week, with over 62% of total NFT sales coming from the Fantasy Sports collection.
• ImmutableX Trade flowed to the Illuvitars Collections after offering $IMX token incentives for trading NFTs on any market.