NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Temporarily Halts Bitcoin BRC-20 Trade

Community-centric $NFT marketplace Magic Eden recently announced its decision to temporarily halt Bitcoin BRC-20 trading best to “protect users until full ord consensus across all BRC-20”. However, as per an official post by Magic Eden on X, the short-term suspension of the Bitcoin BRC-20 trade will not affect other trading activities on the platform.

Magic Eden is one of the most popular $NFT marketplaces built on the Solana blockchain. Launched on September 17, 2021, Magic Eden introduced a “fully audited” marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals in March 2023. The press release stated,

“Magic Eden (“The Company”), the leading cross-chain $NFT platform, today announced the launch of a Bitcoin marketplace for digital artifacts. As the only fully audited marketplace in the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem to date, it will feature an industry-leading user experience and interface that provides collectors with a familiar trading experience.”

With the Bitcoin marketplace’s launch, Magic Eden partnered with 13 prominent $NFT collections, including Taproot Wizards, Inscribed Pepes, and Bitcoin Bandits. Bestowing a “Phantom-like experience” to users, the platform integrated two non-custodial wallets, Hiro and Xverse, at the time of launch.

However, while BRC-20 activity has dropped significantly, Magic Eden has decided to cease BRC-20 trading activities on the marketplace. Chinese reporter Colin Wu, on his official page on X, titled Wu Blockchain, shared a post on the latest updates on Magic Eden’s surprising move. He shared insights on the declining state of BRC-20, especially following the sats mint as well as the introduction of Rune, a potential alternative to BRC-20. He cited, “Since the finishing of sats mint, BRC-20 activity has dropped significantly, and the number of daily transactions accounts for less than 3% of the number of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.”