Bitcoin has never been called “digital art.Bitcoin is always digital money and never digital art. This all changed early last year (2023), with a small protocol change that added unique digital content to each bitcoin satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin. Then suddenly, the term “Bitcoin NFTs” was used in conjunction with the world’s oldest and most conservative blockchain. 

This guide explains what Bitcoin Ordinals are, how the technology works, who created the protocol and what you should know before you dive into the world of Bitcoin Ordinals, whether you’re looking to buy, sell, or just learn more about it. This guide aims to teach you everything you know about ordinals BTC, from how to create an ordinal to the various marketplaces.

Key Takeaways

• Data, like an image, a text or a video, can be “inscribed” on each satoshi via the Bitcoin Ordinals, which give each satoshi a unique number.
• The protocol was by developer Casey Rodarmor, who inscribed the first Ordinal in December 2022, and officially opened for business in January 2023.
• Both Ordinals and Taproot and Segregated Witness were upgrades that were designed for different reasons, but were fortunate enough to enable such an on-chain inscription.
• There are several differences between Ordinals and most other NFTs. Ordinals have their data embedded directly into the Bitcoin blockchain, in contrast to most other NFTs, which refer to an external file.
• To buy, sell or hold Ordinals, you must have a Bitcoin wallet like Xverse, UniSat or Leather, as well as a marketplace such as Gamma or UniSat.
• The price range is huge and is dependent on the collection, the satoshi’s history and the overall market sentiment, so always use a live marketplace, not a fixed price.

What Are Bitcoin Ordinals?

Bitcoin Ordinals are a way to make unique digital assets on Bitcoin. The protocol assigns to each satoshi (a hundred-millionth of a single bitcoin) a permanent serial number that is determined by the order it was mined.The protocol assigns each satoshi (the hundred-millionth of a single bitcoin) a permanent serial number, determined by the order in which it was mined, rather than building a separate token standard. This number is referred to as an “ordinal.” After obtaining a satoshi, a person can add additional information to it (e.g., a picture, a short video, a text or even a tiny piece of software). This attached data is known as an inscription, and a set that has it becomes a digital collectible that is native to Bitcoin.

While it may seem simple, it’s actually a change in the way people perceive the smallest units in Bitcoin. Prior to Ordinals, a satoshi was simply a satoshi, and could be used as any other. Ordinal theory provides sets with an identity and, sometimes, an interesting history that is of interest to collectors.

Who Created Bitcoin Ordinals?

The protocol has been developed by Bitcoin developer and generative artist Casey Rodarmor, who already has a contribution to Bitcoin Core’s codebase. On December 14, 2022, Rodarmor inscribed an original black-and-white skull pixel art (which was assigned the inscription number of zero) for the first time. In January 2023, he officially deployed the Ordinals protocol to the Bitcoin mainnet and published a developer/collector guide, the Ordinal Theory Handbook.

In a series of interviews, Rodarmor has indicated that his fascination with generative art on Ethereum and the challenges of smart contract development on the network drove him to create something that’s more native to Bitcoin. He has also admitted some of the drawbacks of the protocol, including that inscriptions contribute to the amount of data that all Bitcoin nodes have on hand, which has led to some worries about the future size of the network. 

However, a few years later, Rodarmor withdrew from the day-to-day development of Ordinals, but the project kept developing through open source contributions from others in the community. This led him to create another protocol, Runes, which is designed to facilitate fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, due to his dissatisfaction with the current implementation of BRC-20 tokens which are an unofficial and earlier implementation of the Ordinals protocol.

How Do Bitcoin Ordinals Work?

Although the two Bitcoin upgrades were never intended for this purpose, Ordinals were made possible.

In 2017, Segregated Witness (SegWit) came on the scene and split transaction signature data from the rest of a transaction. This led to a witness section that was more available to data that wasn’t directly related to payment.

This was followed by Taproot in November 2021, adding more privacy and efficiency and vastly simplifying the ability to store more arbitrary data within that witness section. Both of these were important upgrades as they presented a practical opportunity to write content into a Bitcoin transaction without altering any of the core rules of Bitcoin.

Anyone who writes an inscription is simply sending out a customised bitcoin transaction. The content, such as an image, or a partial text, is placed into the witness data of the transaction, in a format that is developed by the developers, called envelope format. This data is stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, which means that it is permanently and securely stored, just like any other Bitcoin transaction. Not a separate server, sidechain or company can remove the content.

Each inscription can store up to about 4MB of data, which is the same as the maximum amount of data stored on a Bitcoin block after implementing Taproot. Data that is larger than the blocks will be more expensive due to the transaction fees which are proportional to the volume of data to be processed.

How to Create (Mine) a Bitcoin Ordinal

The term “mining” is sometimes the incorrect term used by people when referring to Ordinals, instead it’s inscription. It’s much like any other Bitcoin transaction, but has two additional requirements.

First, the inscription must have a reference to the data that is actually on the blockchain and not off-chain somewhere else. Secondly, unlike many NFT-optimized chains that adopt proof of stake, all actions which involve inscriptions on Bitcoin must still be mined in the traditional fashion.

People have three ways of inscribing something:

Network fees are very variable, and can cost a few dollars to over a hundred dollars if the mempool is full, so timing can be important if the network fee is a concern.

How to Buy Bitcoin Ordinals

You will not need to download any special software to use an Ordinal, but the following are required for you to buy one. A normal Bitcoin wallet isn’t aware of satoshis, and might mistakenly spend an inscribed sat as regular transaction change and accidentally remove the inscription from the transaction as well. Most collectors, therefore, prefer to use a wallet that was designed to detect and safeguard Ordinal-bearing satoshis.

Wait for a bit and then:

• Create an Ordinals wallet (Xverse, UniSat or Leather).
• Fill your wallet with Bitcoin. The prices of Ordinals change throughout the day, so it’s best to cross-check a live Bitcoin price page, like the price page of BTCC, before buying to see the current price level, as prices may fluctuate.
• Join a marketplace that has Ordinals support.
• View collections, if available, history and scarcity of inscription, make a bid or purchase at stated price.
• Confirm the transaction and wait for it to be confirmed on the Bitcoin network.

Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions is a feature known in BIP 174 that allows for two actors to trade without one party transferring custody of their coins prior to the transaction completing on-chain.

Where to Buy: Bitcoin Ordinals Marketplaces

Since Ordinals opened, the market has certainly changed. Magic Eden was one of the major exchanges for trading them, but it left the Bitcoin Ordinals market in March 2026 and referred its customers to other exchanges. Since then, a number of Bitcoin-specific exchanges have emerged and captured more trading volume.

Ordinals-native marketplaces like UniSat, Gamma, and Ordinals Wallet focus on Bitcoin as their primary business, and they are likely to provide greater functionality for Bitcoin-related tools such as BRC-20 trading and inscription tools, but may also feature a bit lower liquidity than a large generalist platform.

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Bitcoin Ordinals Wallets

The choice of the wallet is more critical in this case than for Bitcoin natively stored wallets since a regular wallet lacks protection for inscribed satoshis.

There are some practices that lower the risk regardless of the wallet that you are using. Have a different wallet for day to day transactions to avoid paying a transaction fee accidentally with a sat inscribed with a bitcoin. Keep your seed phrase on something other than a photo or cloud file, preferably paper or metal. As always, always check a Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction before signing it, and don’t sign one you don’t like because it is a very common way for collectors to lose valuable inscriptions.

Bitcoin Ordinals Explorers

The Ordinals explorer allows you to view an inscription, a particular satoshi, or wallet’s inscriptions, and present precisely what has been inscribed on it and by whom. The most popular are ordinals.com, a tool created at the same time as the protocol, and Ordiscan with a more user-friendly UI and public API for developers.

Typically, searching an explorer will reveal the inscription number, the type of file and the preview, the current holder’s address and the block where the inscription was confirmed. It can be helpful for collectors to check authenticity prior to the buying, and for people who just want to know the story behind a specific satoshi.

Bitcoin Ordinals vs. Traditional NFTs

The key difference between the Ordinals and NFTs on Ethereum or other chains is the location of the data. The basic NFTs usually contain either minimal amounts of metadata or links leading to images uploaded elsewhere off-chain. The actual content is inscribed within the Bitcoin Ordinals’ blockchain, storing this content directly within the inscription.

This means Ordinals have a solid case for both staying permanent and being censorship resistant, as there’s no external server that might go down and disrupt the relationship between the Ordinals and the artwork. There is a compromise in terms of size and cost. Since Bitcoin block space is scarce, and fees are contingent on the size and complexity of inscriptions, large or complex inscriptions can be significantly more costly than an equivalent NFT on a lower-cost blockchain.

The concept of value is a little different, too. The traditional NFTs are typically valued based on the artwork itself and the rarity of the collectibles. Ordinals can also have that same value, but certain collectors will also value sats linked to a memorable occasion in Bitcoin’s past, e.g., very early or sats mined around a halving block.

Rare Sats and Satributes

Within Ordinal theory, not all satoshis will have the same value, and this is one of the reasons for some inscriptions having additional value beyond the artwork or text it sits on. Some satoshis have added properties known as satributes associated with the time and/or manner of a sat’s mining. Mining a sat in the first 24 hours of the new difficulty era, or right after a halving, can provide a sort of numismatic worth for that sat, comparable to that of a rare coin’s mint year for collectors.

Rare sats are automatically identified by wallets and marketplaces designed for Ordinals, such as Xverse and UniSat, which will flag the rare sat for the collector to avoid spending the sat as regular transaction change. Some collectors will actually seek out rare sats which are uninscribed and then go back and inscribe them, hoping that the sat and original artwork will be worth more when together than either alone. 

The scarcity layer on top of whatever image or text that is written is also one of the more unique aspects of Ordinals when compared to other blockchains where the token itself doesn’t have a similar past.

Impact on Miners and Bitcoin Network Fees

Ordinal activity has actually led to a noticeable impact on Bitcoin’s fee market, especially when inscription or BRC-20 minting is picking up pace. When inscriptions become more popular on the network, users who were just sending or receiving regular BTC will see their average transaction cost increase as well, due to inscriptions paying fees versus regular BTC transactions.

It has been a boon for miners, which have been struggling to generate extra cash as the block subsidy has been cut in half at each halving. The supporters of Ordinals believe that it is a real advantage, as the fees for inscription contribute to the security of the network, while the income from mining decreases in the near future. 

But critics view the same reality differently, and are convinced that average users end up spending more to move their own bitcoins when the network is busy with inscription traffic. While both opinions are more or less valid and the ratio often changes with the activity of the Ordinals market.

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BRC-20 Tokens and Runes

Shortly after Ordinals’ launch, an anonymous developer, referred to as Domo, took inspiration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard to design BRC-20, an experimental standard for fungible tokens on Bitcoin. The first BRC-20 token was ORDI, which was the most popular experiment.

Rodarmor didn’t like the use of BRC-20 tokens that much, as his Ordinals software was used to create tokens without any intention of it being used for that purpose. He further launched Runes, a specifically designed fungible token protocol on April 20, 2024, coinciding with the Bitcoin halving that took place this year. The Runes have a different output type, OP_RETURN, which is usually less efficient and more expensive than the OP_ANSWER output type for BRC-20 tokens..

What is the value of Bitcoin Ordinals?

The value of a Bitcoin Ordinal cannot be determined by a single price as it is unique and highly dependent on the collection, its history, and market conditions. Major collections have been offered for huge amounts of money – and there are also ordinals attached to historically important satoshis – but most of the inscriptions have been offered for far more modest amounts.

The best way to proceed is to use an active marketplace, such as UniSat or Gamma, where market transactions can change rapidly, instead of a set number. The underlying BTC, used for the funds to make a purchase, can be a live reference, as in the case of the BTCC Bitcoin price page which provides up to date information on Bitcoin trading.

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Risks and Criticism of Bitcoin Ordinals

From the start, ordinals have been quite the contentious topic in the Bitcoin community, and it’s crucial to both sides to appreciate the matter before engaging.

Supporters say Ordinals show Bitcoin’s versatility and potential applications that are not limited to payments, and don’t require any changes to Bitcoin’s basic consensus rules. Critics argue that inscriptions add considerable weight to the data used by each full node, making it more costly to run and store a copy of the blockchain in the future. As a protest, some Bitcoin node operators opt to exclude all inscription-related transactions.

There are also more practical threat for person users. From address poisoning, fake marketplace interfaces to wallet drainer scams via spoofed links, all types of attacks have been directed at Ordinals holders. These issues can be mitigated by taking the following steps: use a separate and trusted wallet, and verify all transactions before signing..

Conclusion

Ordinals BTC did exactly that: They made a network that lets users pay for goods and services easily and securely into a space for unique digital content and did so without altering Bitcoin’s fundamental rules. They may be viewed as a valuable addition to the capabilities of Bitcoin, or as an annoying addition to any payment system, but they have captured a permanent place in the minds of enough people that Casey Rodarmor inscribed his first one in late 2022. If you’re thinking about participating, make sure you select a wallet that is compatible with Ordinals, know the fees you’ll need to pay, and monitor the price of Bitcoin as all inscriptions transactions go through it. A quick glance at the live price source prior to trading purchase, such as Bitcoin’s price page on BTCC, will assist you to better plan your purchase.