Nfts
Bitcoin-based NFTs: Ordinals and Runes Rising in Market Cap and Popularity, CoinGecko Reports
The total market capitalization of the top 10 Bitcoin-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including ordinals and runes, jumped to $1.03 billion, with an average daily trading volume of $2.25 million in May 2024, according to CoinGecko. This increase highlights their growing influence within the Web3 ecosystem.
Market leaders: NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets and Runestone
Leading the way are collections like NodeMonkes, with a market cap of $198.25 million (2,880 BTC), Bitcoin Puppets at $144.12 million (1,815 BTC), and Runestone with $87.85 million ( 1,124 BTC). These collections have demonstrated significant sales volumes, with NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets posting 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 saw 15.3% monthly growth in unique holders from January to May 2024, from 3.8K to 6.7K holders. Similarly, NodeMonkes grew 10.1% during the same period, from 3.8k to 5.6k unique holders. Runestone has also seen a significant number of unique holders, totaling 77,000 as of May 2024, the largest among the top collections.
Global interests and financial gains
Interest in ordinals has skyrocketed globally, with Google searches for “ordinals” peaking in April 2024, up 58% since January 2024. Searches for “Bitcoin NFT” have also reached a high record in March 2024. Despite lagging behind Ethereum, Solana, and Ronin in sales volume, growing buyer interest suggests potential for increased user adoption on the Bitcoin network.
Early adopters made significant financial gains. For example, participants in the Dutch auction for NodeMonkes could achieve returns of 426% when comparing the starting price of 0.21 BTC with the project’s all-time high of 0.895 BTC, or 38% when comparing it to the price average sales 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 that all data is written directly to the chain, making them closer to digital artifacts. As the Ordinals gained ground, an anonymous developer created the BRC-20 token standard, which was later refined by Rodarmor into Runes. Runes solves the problem of excessive unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) by optimizing and reusing these dormant UTXOs, thereby improving efficiency and reducing network congestion.
Runes present new opportunities for scalability and user experience on the Bitcoin network, potentially leading to innovative decentralized applications (DApps) and tokenized assets.
Getting started with ordinals and runes
For those interested in exploring ordinals and runes, CoinGecko offers detailed 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, as well as 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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