Today, for the first time ever, NFT sales on Bitcoin since their launch last year with the Ordinals protocol, have surpassed the threshold of 4.27 billion dollars, exceeding the all-time sales recorded by the Ronin blockchain.
This is an incredible result if we consider that the non-fungible tokens developed on Bitcoin completely lack utility and integration with real products, while those on Ronin are involved in a much more dynamic gaming context.
Let’s see all the details below.
NFT on Bitcoin: sales of 4.27 billion dollars, higher than those of Ronin
According to the data reported by the CryptoSlam platform, the so-called “all time sales” (that is, the sales since day 0) of NFTs developed on Bitcoin have surpassed those recorded by the Ronin blockchain.
It is worth noting how the latter, known for hosting the game Axie Infinity so loved by the Filipino population, was born in March 2018 while Bitcoin started minting NFTs only from January 2023.
In just 18 months, the trend of non-fungible tokens on the main cryptographic network of the crypto world, emerged thanks to the introduction of the Ordinals protocol, has led to total sales of 4.278 billion dollars, of which 84,000 dollars derived from wash trading activities, with the threshold of 4 billion reached on June 4, 2024.
The Ronin chain up to today has recorded sales of 4.271 billion dollars, falling to 4th position in the ranking of the most profitable networks of all time in this regard.
Now on the podium above Bitcoin, only Solana with all-time volumes of 5.6 billion dollars, and Ethereum with 43.8 billion dollars remain.
Despite the milestone achieved, the broader NFT market has recorded very low sales volumes in recent months, with a sharp drop in numbers in May compared to April.
In the last 30 days, the data has shown a decrease of 51.3%, bringing total sales to 525 million dollars.
The Bitcoin blockchain is not missing from the list of networks that have experienced a decline in trading activity: NFT sales on the orange chain fell yesterday below the threshold of 2.5 million dollars daily, marking one of the lowest values since November 2023.
Below is the chart of the trend of non-fungible token trading on the Bitcoin network.
Despite this, even in the monthly ranking Bitcoin is positioned in 2nd place with 148 million dollars, even surpassing Solana which in the same period recorded just 77 million dollars.
in this juncture Ronin drops to 9th position with a total of 3.3 million dollars, an incredibly low value if compared to the record set in August 2021 when the chain processed NFT sales for over 869 million dollars.
The Non-Fungible Tokens developed on Bitcoin lack utility and are not related to the blockchain gaming sector
While NFTs on Bitcoin are performing better than other non-fungible tokens developed on different blockchains, some observe that these lack utility and represent a degrading practice for the world’s most famous and decentralized cryptographic network.
In this regard, Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Sky Mavis, the team behind the Ronin network, believes that NFTs created on Bitcoin thanks to the “digital artifacts” from Ordinals, do not have an adoption typical of resources related to gaming ecosystems. These are his words in a recent interview:
“We have not paid too much attention to Bitcoin NFTs because they are still primitive and not related to games. In general, greater adoption of NFTs is good and we are more competitive with ecosystems that specifically focus on games.”
In fact, NFTs on Bitcoin primarily enjoy the reputation of the underlying blockchain, but they do not introduce anything new to the on-chain finance sector and are not an integral part of gaming systems like Ronin with Axie Infinity.
Zirlin then emphasized how the recent declining sales volumes recorded behind their own infrastructure are justified by an increase in the costs of acquiring new users.
In the future, incentives with the public and the relationships that will be established with the community will allow for more enduring games and more solid financial income.
The Ordinals technology, as primitive as it may be, has been praised by the maximalist Michael Saylor as a true innovation, to the point of pushing him to create a decentralized identity service called “MicroStrategy Orange”.
The true Bitcoin experts, however, such as the developer of BullBitcoin.com, believe that Ordinals and their NFTs are one of the stupidest things ever invented so far.
Often these resources are then linked to crypto scams and scam of various types, or to structures for laundering money from illegal activities.
If we then return to the discussion of “utility” and integration in the gaming sector, it becomes evident how NFTs on Bitcoin have no value other than that related to market speculation, as they are not technologically more advanced compared to NFTs developed on EVM networks and have no use in the real world.
Furthermore, we remind that this kind of resources clog the mempool of Bitcoin and significantly increase the gas cost of the network, offering a limited user experience, in exchange for a slight increase in profitability for the miners.
Bitcoin was created as a layer for the trustless transfer of the BTC currency, and it should, according to the opinion of many experts, remain so aiming to increase privacy, scalability, and decentralization rather than being used in much more niche contexts.
