Bitcoin Ordinal Inscriptions Mark Surpasses the 10M Mark

Over 10 million Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions have been marked with numbers, the vast bulk of them in the previous month. Dune Analytics data shows that the current total Bitcoin numeral marks are 10,141,434. There is still a lot of excitement regarding numerical marks, since fines of about 1,593 BTC (about $44.3 million) have been collected. Notably, the BRC-20 token standard accounts for almost 80% of all numerical markers.

Ordinals Fees Paid Chart: Source | Dune Analytics

Tracking back on Bitcoin Ordinals data

The second week of May saw a dramatic increase in numerical marking activity, with May 7 and 8 seeing an all-time high of 400 thousand marks each day. As a consequence of this unexpected influx of traffic, the Bitcoin network became congested, leading to higher transaction fees and a meme pool overflow.

Signs of renewed numerical marking activity have emerged during the last several days. On May 29th, Dune announced a sum total of 262,889 digits.

Bitcoin transactions are still being processed by the network despite the surge in use. The typical ten-minute interval between blocks and the sub-2-megabyte size of each block is also maintained. According to the information gathered by Dune, more than 91% of the numerical marks are in text form, which aids in maintaining more manageable block sizes in comparison to image- or video-based markings.

For certain members of the Bitcoin core development team, numerical markers are nothing short of network spam. Earlier last month, Luke Dashjr requested a “bugfix” that would exclude monetary transactions including digit symbols.

Initiated in January 2023, the Numeric Markings protocol is now the most widely used way for adding new assets to or inscribing data into the Bitcoin blockchain. The combined value of all tokens on the BRC-20 platform is approximately $433 million, as reported by BRC-20.io. Furthermore, a total of $207 million has changed hands in trades during the previous 24 hours.

At now, the ORDI token controls 55 percent of the market value for this kind of digital asset. There were initially very few tokens, but after the BRC-20 token standard was introduced in early March, the total supply increased to about 24,677. Popular currencies like the PEPE frog-inspired meme coin have seen wild price swings, with sharp increases followed by precipitous losses.