The Bitcoin ecosystem has experienced a strong resurgence as the market capitalization of the BRC-20 token has surpassed $4 billion shortly after its introduction in January.
According to a research report on December 15 by the cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, Bitcoin miners’ income from transaction fees on the chain has increased from 1.7% in August to 19.57% in November. Meanwhile, daily mining revenue from block rewards has risen to over $40 million in November.
Invented by Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor in January, the BRC-20 token has gained popularity as one of the significant technological advancements in the blockchain world. Bitcoin Ordinals is a numbering system that assigns a unique number to each satoshi, or 1/100 millionth of a Bitcoin, enabling tracking and transfer. Combined with the inscription process that adds an extra layer of data for each Satoshi, users can mint unique digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Token Ordinals (ORDI), the first memecoin created through the BRC-20 standard but not directly related to the Ordinals protocol, currently has a market capitalization of $1.34 billion. Researchers have also noted the emergence of other Bitcoin token standards, such as ARC-20 from Atomical Protocol:
Unlike Ordinals, which relies on third-party classification tools to order asset transactions, Atomical Protocol’s ARC-20 standard uses the smallest unit of Bitcoin, the Satoshi, as the smallest unit for issuing assets. This allows Atomical to track the complete history of asset transfers without relying on any third-party tools.
Despite high gas fees, the community still has a strong demand for minting BRC-20 tokens. Using the example of the memecoin Sats (SATS), researchers noted that SATS were fully minted on September 24, with 21,107,258 tokens and 36,061 holders, despite gas fees costing over $15 million. “Layer-2 solutions like the Lightning Network will play a significant technical foundation supporting Bitcoin payments on a larger scale,” researchers concluded in their predictions for 2024.
This resurgence in the Bitcoin ecosystem showcases the growing interest and innovation surrounding token standards and the development of Bitcoin-based digital assets, despite the challenges of high transaction fees.