Bitcoin Ordinals in 2024

TL;DR
There’s a lot happening around Bitcoin Ordinals, with several established NFT artists releasing Ordinals collections, including Jack Butcher, who has an upcoming Checks release on Bitcoin. There was also a Sotheby’s auction event dedicated to Ordinals, artist Nullish is releasing new work, Quantum Cats is attracting both hype and criticism, and Donald Trump’s NFTs now include an Ordinals release. Additionally, in what may become a significant long-term development, Runecoin, from the Ordinals protocol creator Casey Rodarmor, is developing a new mechanism for enabling fungible tokens on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Ordinals have been around for a little over a year now, but what’s the state of the Ordinals space right now, and where are they headed in 2024? It’s been a busy time lately, with some interesting trends playing out, so let’s pick up on the key events and developments to be aware of.

Artists and Ordinals

For a long time, top art collections would tend to mint on Ethereum, while Tezos was also known as an alternative network for experimental art. However, we’ve recently been seeing artists migrating across to Bitcoin to drop Ordinals collections.

Jack Butcher

A major name from 2023, Jack Butcher will be taking his hugely successful Checks project–which, up to now, has been on Ethereum–and expanding it across to Bitcoin with a release of 500 Ordinals Checks pieces (which were actually created last year), to be launched on February 8th.

Other notable artists who have recently launched collections on Ordinals include Ripcache, whose Swarm inscriptions are now trading from 0.25 BTC, and conceptual artist Kevin Abosch, with a collection of “synthetic photography” called Revoloots.

Sotheby’s

On board with Web3 for the long run, Sotheby’s Metaverse (the digital/NFT branch of Sotheby’s) this month held an auction event called Natively Digital: An Ordinals Curated Sale, which was–as the name suggests–focused exclusively on Bitcoin Ordinals.

The sale featured nineteen pieces, including works from Nullish, Asprey Studio (in collaboration with Bugatti), the NodeMonkes project, and there were also three rare Sats up for grabs, with a Black Rare Sat selling for just over $165,000.

Perhaps the standout sale of the auction though was Genesis Cat, a 1/1 piece from Taproot Wizards’ new Quantum Cats collection, which was finally bought for an incredible $254,000, or 6.3 BTC.

Nullish

Among those names appearing in the Sotheby’s auction was Nullish, an artist who has been integral within the Ordinals space right from the start. The two Nullish items sold at auction went for $44,500 and $48,260, and after that, Nullish has some new items dropping soon.

The upcoming 1,111 piece collection is called Remnants of a Distant Supernova, and visually, it connects up with the deep space astronomy theme that’s occurred before in Nullish’s work. But it also loops back to the beginning of the Nullish journey: an Ethereum collection called Distortion Genesis. The plan is that holders of Distortion Genesis NFTs on Ethereum can burn these items to receive a Remnant of a Distant Supernova Ordinal, with the window to do so open from January 28th to April 28th.

Quantum Cats

As mentioned, a showcase sale at Sotheby’s was a 1/1 Quantum Cats item, and the full Quantum Cats drop is now scheduled–after a brief postponement–to go ahead on January 29th. It’s a huge launch, but there have been mixed reactions to its plans, with some criticism because the 3,333 inscriptions going up for sale have been priced at 0.1 BTC each, which seems expensive in dollar terms (currently around $4000.)

But then, on the other hand, 6.3 BTC was handed over via Sotheby’s for a 1/1, and so it remains to be seen how strong demand will be, and what will subsequently happen on secondary when the Quantum Cats finally hit the market.

Trump Ordinals

Speaking of artists crossing over to Bitcoin to release their thoughtfully-crafted compositions, a promising young blockchain creative by the name of Donald Trump will soon be dropping his first Ordinals collection.

Ok, so the former-president-turned-presidential-contender is never slow to spot an opportunity, and whatever your thoughts on his political prospects in 2024, it’s now a curious part of the Ordinals timeline that–having previously released NFTs on Polygon–Trump will now be incorporating a set of 200 items, part of the MugShot Edition, as Bitcoin Ordinals.

Runecoin

If you’re looking for a new development with an immense amount of potential, then you need to catch up with Runecoin and RSIC, from the creator of the Ordinals protocol, Casey Rodarmor.

Basically, this is Rodarmor’s incoming new method of enabling fungible tokens on Bitcoin, similar to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. Admittedly, there are already BRC-20 tokens, but they come with inefficiencies, and Runecoin is an attempt to do something similar, but better. Also, even Rodarmor himself is uncertain as to whether these kinds of tokens are a good thing, stating “the world of fungible tokens is a near totally irredeemable pit of deceit and avarice, so it might be a wash”, which isn’t exactly an orthodox way of generating interest, but either way, the plan is in motion.

What that means is that on January 22nd, 21,000 RSIC (Rune Specific Inscription Circuits) inscriptions were airdropped freely to 9,211 wallets holding certain prestigious Ordinals collections. Once activated, these RSICs start to ‘mine’ the upcoming fungible tokens, RUNE, which are intended to be the first using the novel protocol, and when the full launch takes place (scheduled to take place at the Bitcoin halving), RSIC holders will receive their RUNE allocations.

RSICs are currently trading on secondary at around 0.05 BTC, with a lot of speculation about where the project might lead, but with the caveat that there is limited information currently available.