coindesk.com
Cardano has continued to advance its credentials as a venue for Bitcoin Defi (BTCFi), facilitating a transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.
The on-chain transaction between Bitcoin and Cardano was facilitated by BitVMX, an interoperability protocol built using the BitVM programming language.
The transaction was unveiled by Input | Output (IO), the creator of the layer 1 Cardano, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The bridge represents a "preview of what is to come," IO said in an emailed announcement. Its ultimate aim is a full integration between Bitcoin and Cardano, providing DeFi services for $BTC users and unlocking huge amounts of liquidity from the value stored in bitcoin.
To this end, IO has developed the "Cardinal" protocol, a portmanteau of Cardano and Ordinals, which harnesses BitVMX to assign Bitcoin-native assets to addresses on Cardano.
The Ordinals protocol was introduced at the start of 2023, enabling the inscription of data onto individual satoshis (the smallest $BTC denomination, equivalent to one 100 millionth of a bitcoin), this making them unique and traceable. In effect, this created a Bitcoin equivalent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
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