NFTs
Bitcoin-Based NFTs: Ordinals and Runes Rise in Market Value and Popularity, CoinGecko Reports
The total market capitalization of the top 10 Bitcoin-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs), comprising Ordinals and Runes, has risen to $1.03 billion, with an average daily trading volume of $2.25 million in May 2024 , according to CoinGecko. This increase highlights its growing influence in the Web3 ecosystem.
Market leaders: NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets and Runestone
Leading the charge are collections such as NodeMonkes with a market cap of $198.25 million (2,880 BTC), Bitcoin Puppets with $144.12 million (1,815 BTC) and Runestone with $87.85 million (1,124 BTC). . These collections demonstrated significant sales volumes, with NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets showing average daily volumes of $0.52 million and $0.51 million, respectively, in May 2024.
User Adoption Trends
In terms of user adoption, Bitcoin Puppets experienced 15.3% monthly growth in unique holders from January to May 2024, growing from 3.8K to 6.7K holders. Likewise, NodeMonkes grew 10.1% in the same period, from 3.8 thousand to 5.6 thousand unique holders. Runestone also had a substantial number of unique holders, totaling 77,000 as of May 2024, the most among the major sets.
Global interest and financial gains
Interest in Ordinals has soared globally, with searches for “Ordinals” on Google peaking in April 2024, a 58% increase since January 2024. Searches for “Bitcoin NFTs” also reached an all-time high in March 2024 Despite lagging behind Ethereum, Solana, and Ronin in sales volume, growing buyer interest suggests potential for greater user adoption on the Bitcoin network.
Early adopters have made significant financial gains. For example, NodeMonkes Dutch auction participants could earn returns of 426% if they compare the starting price of 0.21 BTC to the project’s all-time high of 0.895 BTC, or 38% if compared to the average selling price of 0. 29. BTC.
A brief history of ordinals and runes
Ordinals, launched by engineer Casey Rodarmor in January 2023, differ from traditional NFTs in having all data inscribed directly on-chain, making them similar to digital artifacts. As Ordinals gained traction, an anonymous developer created the BRC-20 token standard, which was later refined by Rodarmor into Runes. Runes address the problem of excess unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) by optimizing and reusing these inactive UTXOs, increasing efficiency and reducing network congestion.
Runes present new scalability and user experience opportunities on the Bitcoin network, potentially leading to innovative decentralized applications (DApps) and tokenized assets.
Introduction to ordinals and runes
For those interested in exploring ordinals and runes, CoinGecko offers in-depth guides and lists of popular NFT projects built on the Bitcoin network.
Methodology
The study analyzed data from the top 10 Bitcoin-based NFT collections as of May 26, 2024, on CoinGecko, along with data from Google Trends as of May 31, 2024. Top collections include NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets, Rune Pups, Ordinal Maxi Biz, RSIC Metaprotocol, Bitcoin Frogs, Runestone, Prometheans, Natcats and Pizza Ninjas.
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