Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs Coming to Binance in Late May

Binance will support Bitcoin Ordinals — akin to NFTs on Ethereum — on its NFT marketplace beginning in late May 2023.

This means that Binance users will no longer need a separate Bitcoin wallet that supports Ordinals inscriptions, making transactions quite a bit easier. 

“Binance users will also be able to purchase and trade Bitcoin NFTs directly with their Binance accounts,” a statement from Binance said. “This integration offers even more seamless and efficient trading for Binance users.” 

The largest centralized crypto exchange also said it would be offering Bitcoin NFT creators “royalty support” and additional ways to generate revenue. 

Mayur Kamat, Head of Product at Binance, told Blockworks that it’s too early to tell how transformational bringing Ordinals to the NFT platform will be, but “time will tell.”

“Since the beginning, everyone has wondered about Bitcoin use outside of [an] inflation hedge or [a] store of value. Not only has it shown massive value, but we are now seeing that the network can aspire to be more,” Kamat said.

Ordinals launched in January, allowing users to “inscribe” text, audio, art or even video games into individual satoshis, BTC’s smallest unit. They reside entirely on the blockchain.  

This news of Binance’s integration of Ordinals comes after a rush of Ordinals inscriptions contributed to Bitcoin processing the highest number of transactions in its 14-year history on May 1, 2023, on-chain data shows.

More generally, Bitcoin transactions are breaking all-time records — there were 444,000 unconfirmed transactions sitting in the mempool Monday morning. 

This surge in transactions and the skyrocketing fees were the reasons Binance gave for temporarily halting bitcoin withdrawals on Sunday. The company said it would adjust its fees to “prevent a similar recurrence in the future,” and flirted with a possible integration of the Bitcoin Lightning Network to speed up transactions.

https://twitter.com/binance/status/1655380303383261185

Binance NFT already added support for the Polygon POS network in March 2023 and the Ethereum network in October 2021.

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