Since bitcoin’sBTC 0.0% creation in 2009, it has functioned as a sovereign digital currency. In January 2023, bitcoin ordinals introduced a second practical use case for bitcoin: Data storage.
Once inscribed on the blockchain, an ordinal can never be edited or deleted. Ordinals will exist online as long as bitcoin exists. It’s this permanence that make ordinals special. They inherit the power of bitcoin’s forever database to archive data online…forever.
Bitcoin ordinals allow anyone to upload up to 4MB of data to the Bitcoin blockchain. Although, every MB comes at a price.
I’m going to show you how to inscribe your first bitcoin ordinal. Keep reading all the essential information you need to begin!
From Zero To Millions
Inscribing is the process of uploading data. While ordinals denote the unique number assigned to each new ordinal.
Ordinals date back to December 14th, 2022, when Casey Rodarmor discovered a loophole in bitcoin's latest version, enabling him to upload a black and white skull PNG. The skull would come to be known as, “Inscription 0.” Each successive inscription is given an ascending number, signifying a unique identifier: 1,2,3, etc.
Today, there are $12 million ordinal inscriptions. An excess of 46 million in fees spent on the Bitcoin network in the creation of ordinals, according to Dune Analytics.
How To Create A Bitcoin Ordinal
The easiest way to create a bitcoin ordinal is to use an inscription service like Gamma, Unisats, Magic Eden or OrdinalsBot. In the tutorial below I’ll use Gamma to illustrate the process, although the inscription flow is similar on each site so choose whichever you prefer.
Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to inscribe a bitcoin ordinal:
1. Download A Bitcoin Wallet
First you’ll need to download a bitcoin wallet. Before you do, it’s important to understand which wallets you can and can’t use for ordinals.
To inscribe an Ordinal, you will need a Taproot bitcoin address. You’ll know if you have a Taproot address if it begins with “bc1”. For example,
bc1puutp67dsgrh8lvurmdh054tk45t8gfqhd8g46w0q6qnrsa99p6xqtjxqnl
The easiest way to get a Taproot bitcoin address is to download either Xverse, UniSat, or Hiro Wallet.
Download one of those wallets in your web browser. Once you’ve logged in, continue to the next step.
2. Go To Gamma.io
Go to Gamma.io/Ordinals and select which type of Ordinal you’d like to create: Single image, bulk image or text. For this example, let’s select, “Single image.”
3. Upload Your Image To Gamma
While 4MB is the maximum limit for an ordinal, 400KB is the maximum limit for how large you can inscribe without the help of a miner. Anything larger than 400KB and you’d need to work with a bitcoin miner to structure a block for you.
How big is 400KB? Roughly the size of a medium-sized JPG or a PDF with eight pages.
Gamma allows you to inscribe up to 400KB and will help you optimize your image automatically to meet the max limit.
4. Enter The Address Where The Inscription Will Be Sent
With either your Xverse or Hiro Wallet, select “receive” and make sure you're copying the address in your wallet that begins with “bc1p.”
Copy your “bc1p” address from Xverse.
And enter the address as your “receipt bitcoin address.”
5. Pay The Bitcoin Fee And Wait 10 Minutes
If you did everything correctly, you should see your Ordinal appear in your Xverse wallet.
Once you’ve inscribed your first bitcoin ordinal, you can choose to hold it, sell it, or list it for sale. Gamma, Ordswap, and MagicEden are three popular marketplaces where where you can buy and sell bitcoin ordinals.
The Future Of Bitcoin Ordinals
Bitcoin, ever since its inception, has predominantly served as a means for sending, receiving, and holding bitcoin. It seems that bitcoin ordinals have breathed new life into bitcoin.
In the first six months of 2023, bitcoin surpassed Solana to become the second most popular NFT blockchain. Leading the movement are popular creative projects building on bitcoin such as DeGods, OnChain Monkeys, Yuga Labs, Beeple, and MegaPunks.
With ordinals, bitcoin becomes more competitive with chains like Etheruem and Solana, which for years have been the primary ecosystems for NFT collections and token-based innovations like DAOs, voting and tokenization of assets.
The Ordinals protocol has inspired bitcoin derivative token through the BRC-20 protocol and .sats, an attempt at online decentralized identity using bitcoin Ordinals.
“Developers are already pushing bitcoin Ordinals in innovative ways, including recursive inscriptions, which allow for truly decentralized applications, websites, and high-resolution imagery at far lower file sizes and costs,” Nick Sainato, co-founder of Gamma.io, told me in an interview. “We're sure to see much more from this tech over the coming months.”
