Ordinals launched less than three months ago, yet the equivalents of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on Bitcoin’s blockchain have already surpassed one million.

This weekend Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions crossed 1 million, generating over $4.8 million in tx fees for the network pic.twitter.com/aSxgngYBsO

— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) April 10, 2023

According to data posted on dune.com, as of 8 April, Ordinals inscriptions had surpassed 1,000,000, and are now approaching 1.1 million.

It is worth noting that until 21 March they had been growing at a steady pace but without a real boom, and thereafter until the first of April the growth even slowed slightly.

There was a boom in the first nine days of April, when they rose from 680,000 to 1,050,000.

This boom for now seems to have stopped, but the average rate of growth since they were officially launched is 15,000 new Inscription Ordinals created each day.

The fees of Non-Fungible Tokens on Bitcoin

One of the main concerns about this initiative is the impact on fees.

Indeed, inscriptions can neither be created nor exchanged using Bitcoin’s Layer 2 solution such as Lightning Network, but only on-chain.

Since the number of daily transactions supported by Bitcoin’s blockchain is actually limited, a large number of transactions related to Ordinals could significantly increase the fees for on-chain BTC transactions.

To be fair, despite the boom, fees on Ordinals transactions were only high in the first half of February, and from 22 to 25 March, and then almost always under 5 BTC per day in total.

In fact, the average cost per transaction on Bitcoin’s blockchain over the past two and a half months has increased a great deal only in the days around 23 March, and most likely not because of Ordinals.

Indeed, in those days the price of BTC experienced a temporary jolt, going from $28,500 to $26,700 in a very short time, thus causing a lot of movement. In other words, it was BTC’s legacy transactions that affected Ordinals’ fees, and not vice versa.

Indeed, for three days now, Ordinals’ transactions have been generating less than 1 BTC per day in fees overall. Meanwhile, the average cost per transaction on Bitcoin’s blockchain, while down from March, is still around November 2022 levels, and only slightly lower than it was in May 2022.

It is enough to consider that to date, the total fees paid for Ordinals transactions are just over $5 million, which is only a tiny fraction of those paid for BTC transactions.

The preferred types of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) created

One thing that is surprising is that the preferred type of Ordinals inscription being created is text tokens, followed only in second place by images.

Indeed at first, meaning for most of the month of February, images dominated unchallenged, but since then textual inscriptions have taken over.

It is worth remembering that while real Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs), for instance on Ethereum, are just codes that are associated with a file, inscriptions on Bitcoin are real content, in textual format, image, video, and so on, that are recorded on the blockchain.

On a strictly technical level they are not NFTs, but having in fact the same function as real NFTs associated with files, they function in an extremely similar way.

48% of all Ordinals created so far are text, followed at 34.5% by png images, and 9% by webp images.

The numbers of Ordinals

In light of these numbers it is possible to say that Ordinals have certainly been a good success, perhaps even more successful than expected, but it has not been a resounding boom.

It is also worth mentioning that this in itself is not a great time for the NFT market, but the trading volumes of NFTs on Ethereum are still immensely larger.

So while the launch turned out to be a success, perhaps even more successful than expected, this by no means means that the Ordinals market has exploded.

It will probably be necessary to wait for a general upswing in the NFT market in order to judge it, so as to assess above all its competitiveness with Ethereum and the other chains most widely used for this purpose.

Moreover, the chain that to date seems most able to compete with Ethereum in this respect is Polygon, which is an Ethereum layer 2 that greatly reduces fees.

On average nowadays a transaction on Bitcoin’s blockchain costs around $2, with the median around $1, a figure significantly lower than that of on-chain transactions on Ethereum, but significantly higher than those on Polygon.

Trouble for the Crypto Art market. According to the latest data, it appears that sales of non-fungible tokens fell 31% in March, with $882 million in NFT sales. Let’s see what and why this happened.

Drop in non-fungible token sales: data on the Crypto Art market

As anticipated above, according to statistics, the number of sales of non-fungible tokens (NFT) in March was 31.42% lower than the previous month, down from $1.03 billion in sales in February to $882.89 million.

In addition, the number of NFT buyers and transactions also decreased, from 22% to 29%, over the past 30 days. Of these sales, $537.89 million were settled on the Ethereum blockchain (ETH), which dominated March sales with over 60%.

Solana-based NFT sales accounted for 10.57% of March sales, with $93.36 million settled. In terms of NFT sales, Solana was followed by Polygon ($36.16 million), Immutable X ($28.82 million) and Cardano ($10.08 million).

At this point, the question arises as to why the NFT market is proceeding slowly despite the partial recovery of cryptocurrency prices. It should be emphasized that the March data may not fully reflect reality, as it lacks data on non-fungible tokens on Bitcoin, which have recently entered the market.

To date, there are still no platforms to measure the buying and selling volumes of these non-fungible tokens. According to Galaxy Research, a company that conducts data analysis on blockchain, the Bitcoin NFT market could be worth 4.5 billion in 2025.

Crypto Art: which non-fungible token collections sold the most in March?

Regarding the Crypto Art market, we see that the best-selling NFT collection in March was Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which generated sales of $35.81 million, although this figure represents a 48.19% decrease from the previous month.

Cryptopunks was the second largest NFT collection in terms of sales, with $30.11 million, an 87.95% increase over February. According to cryptoslam.io statistics, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Cryptopunks NFT collections were followed by Otherdeed ($29.20 million), MG Land ($25.71 million) and HV-MTL ($18.59 million).

Among the top ten NFT collections, Degods recorded a 70.53% increase in sales in March compared to February, just below the 87.95% increase recorded by Cryptopunks during the same period.

Other noteworthy collections that recorded increased sales this month include Y00ts, Claynosaurz, and Whiko NFT. Finally, the most expensive NFT sales this month were Azimuth Points #236, sold for $704,000, followed by Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) #5,116, sold for $689,000 and Fidenza #971, sold for $561,000.

BAYC #2,062 sold for $557,000 a few days ago, while Fidenza #395 sold for $547,000 just over a month ago. According to 30-day statistics, not a single NFT was sold for more than $1 million in March.

Not only that, according to Dappradar.com and Dune Analytics, Blur dominated sales with over 70%, while Opensea captured 19.9%.

What’s new coming in the NFT and Crypto Art market

Despite declining NFT sales, Yuga Labs had a rather exciting month of March. Indeed, we see two important new developments: the collaboration with Gucci and the launch of Twelvefold, the company’s first collection built on Bitcoin.

Specifically, Gucci announced its entry into the NFT market on Twitter, using an image showing the trademarks of the two brands on the bottle in the trailer for the Bored Ape metaverse, Otherside.

However, the unexpected and enigmatic announcement makes it impossible to predict how the collaboration will play out. Meanwhile, the Twelvefold auction, Yuga Labs’ first collection of non-fungible tokens on Bitcoin, consisting of 300 unique pieces, raised 735.7 BTC ($16.5 million).

These digital artworks can be bought on Magic Eden, a platform started on Solana that also released this month a section dedicated to inscriptions, NFTs on Bitcoin.

Furthermore, we see production studio Baobab Studios, winner of nine Emmy Awards, entering the NFT market with its new project, Momoguro. Created by director and multimedia animator Martin Allais and writer/director Nico Cassavecchia, Momoguro is a colorful fantasy world where creatures called “Momos” can merge together to form hybrid characters.

The collection generated more than 10,000 ETH in volume, though the floor price of the NFTs, after spurting upward in the days immediately following the minting, fell below the initial value (0.2 ETH) and is now around 0.1 ETH.

Finally, paintings by Lee Mullican, an artist who has exhibited his work in the halls of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), also landed on the Tezos blockchain in March.

Yesterday, after former President Donald Trump appeared in Manhattan court, his collection of Non-Fungible tokens saw a 251% surge in sales.

Non-Fungible Tokens Sales of Donald Trump rise 251%

According to data from CryptoSlam, sales of Donald Trump’s Non-Fungible Tokens skyrocketed +251% after news of the former US President’s arrest as he appeared at the Manhattan courthouse yesterday.

JUST IN: Former President Trump’s NFT sales have increased by 251% following his arrest. pic.twitter.com/KA0r0P9sSM

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) April 4, 2023

It is Trump’s NFT collection of 45,000 digital cards, which had sold out in a matter of hours when it debuted in December, with sales of $3.53 million.

Last week, following news of Trump’s indictment, sales jumped 251%, now exceeding $65,000 total.

At the time of writing, NFT card #3162 is the top selling card of the past 24 hours, and over the past 7 days, priced at over $2,500.

“Trump Digital Trading Card” NFTs depict portraits of the former President posing with a “Trumpworld” sign in the “Hollywood” style, or as a superhero with lasers shooting from his eyes or as an astronaut.

The Non-Fungible Tokens of Trump and the call before the court

This surge in sales of Trump’s Non-Fungible Tokens coincides with him being called before a Manhattan courtroom yesterday.

The former president, who is running to reclaim his old office, was indicted by a grand jury last week on charges of making alleged secret money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

What happened yesterday was only a formalization of those charges, but it is the first time in American history that a former commander in chief has been criminally indicted.

For his part, Trump claimed that “there was no crime on Trump’s part” in posts on his social media platform Truth Social. Not only that, the former president derided the indictment as a “witch hunt.” 

From being against the crypto world to selling NFTs on Polygon network

Initially, Trump had sided with those opposed to the crypto world, even calling “Bitcoin as a scam.”

It was only in December 2022 that Trump had apparently changed his mind, and launched his NFT collection on the Polygon network.

A move that would leave both NFT enthusiasts and Trump supporters incredulous and amazed. In fact, the “Collect Trump Cards” campaign was then promoted through his official account on Truth Social, with an initial sale price of each NFT of $99.

The 45,000 NFT cards on Polygon represent the former president’s first official collection, and he himself volunteered to advertise their sale when they were launched.

According to DappRadar, the day after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the number of active Non-Fungible Token (NFT) traders fell to its lowest point since November 2021, affecting collections such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. Let’s see what happened.

CryptoPunks Non-Fungible Tokens attempt a recovery

Last Saturday, the day after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp took control of Silicon Valley Bank, there were only 12,000 active NFT traders, according to DappRadar, a number not seen since November 2021.

There were 33,112 individual NFT traders that day, the lowest daily count so far in the year. Since the beginning of March, the volume of non-fungible token trades has declined 51%, with sales down about 16%, DappRadar says.

However, not all collections of non-fungible tokens have been affected in the same way. In fact, projects from NFT issuer Yuga Labs, including Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, saw their minimum prices drop slightly Saturday, but prices quickly recovered.

One Twitter user compared CryptoPunks to USDC, arguing that it was more stable than the stablecoin, which lost its peg to the US dollar after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Specifically, the bank failed after selling most of its holdings at a loss to deal with a flood of withdrawal requests from customers. Sara Gherghelas, research analyst at DappRadar, said Yuga Labs’ success was amplified by its investment in CryptoPunks and its ability to build a community.

While the company said it has limited exposure to Silicon Valley Bank, its token holders have not made big moves on the news. Gherghelas stated on the matter:

“They have a very clear road map, the team is visible and they have decided to make a good project after the Ape ecosystem. They keep building. They are proving that if you are a part of their community, they have so many advantages and benefits.”

SVB drags with it some NFT collections: let’s see which ones

Not all collections made it through the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank unscathed. Shortly after the news broke on 10 March, Proof, the NFT collective behind the popular Moonbirds collection, took to Twitter to share that the company had some funds invested in Silicon Valley Bank, sparking uncertainty among holders. As stated:

“A statement from the PROOF team regarding SVB: Many of you saw the headlines this morning about the closing of Silicon Valley Bank. The most important thing for us, in good times and bad, is to communicate with our community proactively and transparently.” 

Proof continues on Twitter:

2/5: In the spirit of transparency, here’s everything we know about the situation with SVB:

Proof holds cash at SVB, however…
We’ve thankfully diversified our assets across ETH, stablecoins, as well as fiat—so financially and operationally, we’re going to be OK.

— PROOF (,) (@proof_xyz) March 10, 2023

Over the weekend, Moonbirds lost about 18% of its value, according to DappRadar. One large holder sold 500 Moonbirds on Saturday, suffering losses of between 9% and 33% for a total of more than 700 ETH, or about $1.1 million.

Gherghelas said that, while news of Proof’s exposure to Silicon Valley Bank contributed to the uncertainty in the project, holders were pressured to sell because of the company’s shortcomings in recent months.

After canceling its Proof of Conference scheduled for May, the community remained uncertain about the company’s ability to deliver on its promises. In fact, Gherghelas concluded:

“People, users and consumers are getting more selective and they don’t want hype, they want the perks, benefits and utility behind that NFT collection.”

What is the exposure of CryptoPunks Non-Fungible Tokens to SVB?

As we now know, the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) fallout on Friday sent shockwaves throughout the crypto and technology industries, leaving many companies uncertain about their financial positions.

However, Yuga Labs co-founder Garga reassured the community that their event would have no impact on their business. In a recent statement, Garga provided much-needed relief to Yuga Labs investors.

According to Garga, Yuga Labs has “super limited exposure” to the now-bankrupt bank. This means that the company’s finances will not be significantly affected by the fallout. Garga also acknowledged that other cryptographic and technology companies may not be so lucky.

On the other hand, Yuga Labs has already proven to be proactive in protecting its finances. During the FTX fallout in November 2022, co-founder Gordon Goner reassured the community that the company’s money was safe.

According to him, the funds were held in Coinbase Custody, bank accounts, and T-Bills. Goner also revealed that the company had transferred its money from FTX.us before the fall. This demonstrated Yuga Labs’ commitment to financial security and risk mitigation.

In February, the Non-Fungible Token (or NFT) market recorded $2 billion in crypto trading volume. This is a 117% increase over the previous month.

Non-Fungible Token volume surges to $2 billion in crypto

In DappRadar‘s report for February, it appears that the NFT market experienced a surge in trading volume, touching $2 billion for the first time since May 2022.

This result represents a 117% increase over the previous month, despite the fact that the number of sales decreased by 31.46%. And indeed, the number of total NFT sales for February was 6.3 million.

Dominating the scene in terms of blockchain is Ethereum, with $1.6 billion in NFT trading volume, and that is 83.36% of the entire NFT market.

Yet, Polygon also seems to have had a significant increase this February. And in fact, it stands at +147%, reaching a $39 million NFT trading volume this month.

Among other blockchains that have been active participants in the overall growth of the industry there is Immutable X which focuses heavily on gaming and saw its trading volume increase by 71% to $24.4 million.

BNB Chain also experienced similar growth and recorded NFT trading volume of $7 million.

The Non-Fungible Token market and the best-performing platform Blur

Apparently, among the NFT platforms that contributed to the growth of the Non-Fungible Token market in February was Blur.

And indeed, Blur emerged as the top-performing and dominant marketplace with $1.3 billion in trading volume, accounting for 64.8% of the entire NFT market trading volume.

In contrast, Opensea, the main competitor, lagged behind with $587 million, equivalent to 28.7% of the market.

Certainly despite Blur’s impressive trading volume, it is worth noting that OpenSea still has a much larger user base, with over 316,199 traders compared to Blur’s 96,856.

We just released our February industry report!

It reveals that @opensea still holds the top spot for most traders among NFT marketplaces, with 317K unique traders in February, despite @blur_io‘s dominance in trading volume and market share.

Dig deeper https://t.co/KDlRVn8yTV pic.twitter.com/3TdslUiAQ5

— DappRadar (@DappRadar) March 2, 2023

This means that users are appreciating the unique trading patterns offered by Blur compared to other marketplaces. According to the report, Blur’s trading activity is largely driven by NFT whales farming on the platform.

Not only that, Blur has focused on royalty payment options, now offering a minimum royalty rate of 0.5%. In addition, it has implemented measures to limit NFT sales in secondary markets that do not honor royalties.

In this way, Blur hopes to become more attractive to NFT creators and increase its market share.

In general, other NFT marketplaces such as X2Y2 and LooksRare do not appear to have experienced large increases during February. Rather, the report states that they “lagged far behind,” with trading volumes of $39 million and $29 million, respectively.

Yuga Labs’ collections dominate the NFT scene

BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeeds, and Sewer Pass are the 5 collections of Yuga Labs that are dominating the NFT scene, accounting for 30% of the entire NFT trading volume on Ethereum, which is $1.6 billion. Not only that, the 5 collections rank in the top 10 in terms of total trading volume.

Regarding February, the report states that six of the top 10 NFT sales for the month were CryptoPunks, which together made $5.3 million. Yuga Labs purchased the rights to this collection as well.

Whereas the biggest NFT sale of the month was the Golden Key Sewer Pass, sold by professional player Mongraal for a whopping 1,000 ETH.

But the news does not end there. During the month of February, Yuga Labs launched its first NFT project on Bitcoin: TwelveFold. It is a collection of 300 Non-Fungible Token Generative Art Ordinals. 

The TwelveFold project was launched in February, but the auction went live between yesterday and today, so it will be part of the March NFT report.

The auction for TwelveFold has begun and will conclude on the block immediately prior to 3pm PT tomorrow, March 6th, 2023. Good luck.https://t.co/gvl8IHpekC pic.twitter.com/xGWU9jdCoO

— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) March 5, 2023

A very very important month indeed for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which in addition to many news of collaborations achieved a 42 percent increase over December.

NFT sales reached nearly $1 billion in January, an extraordinary achievement that bodes well for the future of the industry.

Precisely, the value achieved is $997.53 million, a 41.96% increase over December. Non-fungible token sales trends mirror those of cryptocurrency assets.

Among the most profitable blockchain, unsurprisingly, we find Ethereum, which achieved the highest sales volume with $784.87 million, or 78.68 percent of the total. This is followed by Solana with $150.4 million, or 15.7 percent of the total. Cardano, Immutable X, and Polygon follow with equal if lower gains.

So January was a renaissance month for the Non-Fungible Token sector, full of gains and news. In-depth news on the NFT sector will follow in the article. We will see expansions in the market, layoffs, and more about the booming NFT ecosystem.

eBay expands to Non-Fungible Token (NFT) world with job news

One of the largest players in the online marketplace, eBay has posted a series of ads on Linkedin, where it seeks to fill several positions in the NFT technology and Web3 space. So, the online sales company has hinted that it has opened up to the industry, and is interested in manpower to get projects off the ground.

It all starts with Ebay’s acquisition of NFT Knownorigin and the company’s filing of trademark applications for various NFT and metaverse services, all in January.

So Ebay seems to be serious about entering the growth market fully in 2023.

But what is KnownOrigin? It is an NFT marketplace that allows new generations of artists to express themselves and find the right audience to grow. We can call it a very important platform for the growth of emerging artists, a Web3 pioneer.

eBay’s foray into the NFT world is a positive sign for the whole industry, as we have said before, 2023 has started in the best way for Non-Fungible Tokens. Market entries like these give hope for exponential growth and a market restart.

NFT program head quits via resignation letter

“I resigned from Mastercard. For the past year I have been the company’s NFT Product Lead. I promoted Web3 to Mastercard’s leadership and its regional sections, as well as to our Fortune 500 customers and partners. This was not an easy thing to do.”

Thus announced Satvik Sethi, Mastercard’s lead for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), his resignation from the company. Among the reasons for dismissal, Sethi cites a 40 percent pay cut after a move from New York to London.

Although the workload increased, (by 200% says the former project leader), the company did not recognize Satvik Sethi’s true managerial status.

The accusations made by the former executive, are those of real harassment by Mastercard, about which he stated:

“At Mastercard, I was subjected to harassment and emotional distress due to a series of poorly managed processes, poor communications, and internal inefficiencies. There were months when I did not receive my salary until I begged the management hierarchy to give it to me.”

Despite his resignation, the former Product Lead decided to continue his adventure in the world of NFTs, with the project called New Beginnings. The project includes 12 different NFTs, already on sale now at 0.023 ETH, about $40.

RobotEra is one of the most promising NFTs for 2023

RobotEra is a new platform with many attractive qualities for cryptocurrency players and investors. It has built an immersive metaverse to explore through avatar robots. However, the open metaverse experience is not the only attraction of RobotEra.

Through the project, there can be many revenue opportunities for investors to enhance their gaming experience as well. All resources are designed to be NFTs, including robot avatars, virtual lands, and any entity created in the game universe. Users purchase NFTs using TARO, RobotEra’s native token. RobotEra also supports advertising in the metaverse and even the rental of NFT tokens;

RobotEra has seen its value grow exponentially since the beginning of 2023, it ranks undoubtedly among the most important projects in the NFT market.