The Pump of Bitcoin Ordinals’ BRC-20 Tokens

18 Nov 2023 by Rory Kejzerko 3 min read

Recent Bitcoin (BTC) headlines have often been dominated by advancements in the coin’s Spot ETF prospects, however per other on-chain developments, the network’s new token standard BRC-20 has been making notable impacts across the Web3 space (made possible by Bitcoin Ordinals).

Bitcoin Ordinals’ BRC-20 Tokens - Recent Activity

Over a 24-hour period over the past day or so, tokens of the BRC-20 standard have pumped a notable 21%.

Contributing to such pump were various projects, many of which being leading coins that have captured the majority of investors’ bullishness for the new Bitcoin-built products. Most notably, these include utility token trac ($TRAC), memetoken meme ($MEME), and nal ($NAL), which respectively pumped 93%, 69%, and 36%.

BRC-20 momentum began earlier this month when ordi ($ORDI) - the first BRC-20 to be inscribed onto the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol - was listed on Binance and pumped 50% within a matter of hours due to its mass exposure. Ordi’s mooning then caused a ripple effect across the BRC-20 ecosystem, as hopeful traders began aping-in on other projects such as SATS ($SATS), SHIBBRC ($SHIB), RATS BRC (RATS) and others, in order to get a piece of the nascent and ever-growing BRC-20 pie.

As of today, data from Bitcoin Ordinals analytics platform OrdSpace indicates that over 37,000 BRC-20 tokens exist. Collectively these accumulate to amass a market cap that’s approaching $1.5 billion.

What Are BRC-20 Tokens

As its 10-figure market cap infers, the BRC-20 standard is now the leader when it comes to minting new tokens on the world’s most popular blockchain.

Per our article that breaks-down the innovation in more detail, BRC-20 tokens essentially allow users to inscribe data such as code, images, video or text into ‘Ordinals’ (which live on the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol).

Made possible through the Taproot and Bitcoin Ordinals protocols, BRC-20 tokens were pioneered by Twitter user Domo in Spring 2023, with the intent of allowing users to directly issue transferable tokens on the Bitcoin network for the first time.

Each BRC-20 is a satoshi in practice, which essentially means that by virtue, their value will be at least 0.00000001 BTC (a value that will change in tandem with Bitcoin’s price fluctuations). And when it comes to the name, BRC stands for ‘Bitcoin Request for Comment’.

Bitcoin Ordinals’ BRC-20 Tokens - Moving Forwards

As BRC-20 tokens essentially allow anyone to launch their own crypto token or NFT on Bitcoin, the standard has intuitively garnered a wrath of backlash and criticism from OG Bitcoiners.

As you may already know - and as our Head of Content Timo Busch discovered at the recent Bitcoin Amsterdam event - many members of such community are Bitcoin maxis that wish to disassociate the cryptocurrency from the rest of the crypto (i.e. altcoin) space.

Further, given the inauguration of memecoins and NFTs onto the Bitcoin blockchain thanks to BRC-20 tokens and Bitcoin Ordinals, the sentiment surrounding the new innovations has been largely negative. As you expect, community concerns mainly relate to the impacts in which the ‘impure’ asset classes are having on the network’s block size and transaction costs/speed, as well as their bearing on the network’s stature as a leading global monetary system in years to come.

In turn, this has seen many Bitcoin gatekeepers claim that the emergence of BRC-20 tokens is unsustainable, as through referencing what we often see across memecoin projects on blockchains such as Ethereum (ETH), hype will likely fade once issuers have made their money (…and if we’re being honest, they’re probably not wrong on this one).

However come the imminent inception of the next crypto bull run, Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens will soon experience liquidity and demand-filled markets for the first ever time…therefore meaning that like any other area of DeFi, the space could hit unprecedented heights in months to come, which may then cement it within the mainstream crypto landscape for years to come.

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