Bitcoin Ordinals Surge Past 5 Million
The Bitcoin network is seeing unprecedented activity as Ordinal inscriptions continue to flood the blockchain. More than 5 million inscriptions have now been recorded, doubling from 2.5 million just a week ago, according to Dune Analytics.
A majority of these are text-based BRC-20 inscriptions, which represent over 86% of all activity, while image-based inscriptions account for roughly 9.5%. The total market capitalization of BRC-20 tokens now stands near $690 million, driven largely by the explosive rise of tokens such as “ordi,” “nals,” and a Bitcoin-based version of the PEPE meme coin.
Taproot Enables New Bitcoin Use Cases
Ordinal Inscriptions are essentially NFTs embedded directly on Bitcoin’s smallest unit, the satoshi — made possible by the Taproot upgrade in 2021. This has transformed Bitcoin into a network capable of supporting digital collectibles and tokenized content beyond simple value transfers.
Binance recently announced that it will add support for Bitcoin Ordinals in its NFT marketplace, including creator royalties and new monetization opportunities for digital artists.
Network Congestion and Rising Fees
The surge in Ordinal inscriptions has caused significant network congestion, leading to record-high Bitcoin transaction fees. According to BitInfoCharts, average fees have reached approximately $31 per transaction — levels not seen since April 2021.
This congestion has slowed transaction confirmations and made smaller payments impractical. However, the upside has been increased miner revenue, as transaction fees have exceeded regular block rewards for the first time in years.
