Industry Divided as NFTs Arrive on Bitcoin Mainnet

On Feb 1, 2023

When we think of NFTs, we think of many popular blockchains like Ethereum, Solana, and so on. But interestingly, we hardly hear of Bitcoin, despite it being one of the top blockchains in the industry. All that might be about to change, however, as a new protocol called ‘Ordinals’ has been launched on the Bitcoin mainnet which promises the dawn of Bitcoin NFTs.

BREAKING: 🚨 NFTs ON #BITCOIN
Ordinals are taking up most of the BLOCKSPACE 😯 pic.twitter.com/Gxwq4vV8MI
— Bitcoin News ⚡ (@BitcoinNewsCom) January 29, 2023

NFTs Coming to Bitcoin

This protocol is the brainchild of software engineer Casey Rodarmor and it officially went live on January 21, 2023. The digital assets to be created through this protocol are called digital artifacts and these represent one of the first instances of the blockchain being used for NFTs.

With the potential for all sorts of content from images to video and audio, some see this as a step in the right direction for Bitcoin and believe that it expands on its use cases. After all, Bitcoin is known almost exclusively for its native token and this could show another side to its technology. This is a position that has been taken by such industry players as Dan Held. At the same time, some believe that the use of NFTs goes against the vision of Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.

As they put it, the idea of Bitcoin was to promote economic equality and access and the often speculative nature of NFTs defeats this purpose. Given that this protocol is still so new, we will likely see more of these debates moving forward.

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*All investment/financial opinions expressed by NFT Plazas are from the personal research and experience of our site moderators and are intended as educational material only. Individuals are required to fully research any product prior to making any kind of investment.

Tokoni Uti has written extensively on blockchain and cryptocurrency for years. Her work has appeared on sites like BTCmanager and Blockchain Reporter. She has a degree in Corporate Communications.