Magic Eden launches marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals

cointelegraph.com:

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden has launched its own “fully audited” marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals, leveraging the surging interest in “Bitcoin NFTs.” 

The newly launched marketplace allows Bitcoin (BTC) NFT traders to buy and sell Bitcoin Ordinal collections, giving users a similar experience it offers for Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana-based NFTs.

Extremely excited to announce that @MagicEden is now on Bitcoin. With this, we are simplifying the journey for collectors and creators to get started on Bitcoin - the granddaddy of all chains. Kudos to @kevcode_art @zhouzhuojie @ChartFuMonkey who championed this effort. https://t.co/0W7i0uBvPT

“Just as we have expanded into other chains, we now aim to bring our expertise in building marketplaces to the nascent, yet flourishing Ordinals ecosystem,” the firm said in a March 21 statement. 

The new Ordinals protocol was introduced in January 2023 by former Bitcoin core contributor Casey Rodarmor. Since then, the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals has surged.

According to data from Dune analytics, between Feb. 1 and March 1, the total number of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions surged from 679 to 240,000. As of March 21, a total of 567,087 have been inscribed.

“We paid close attention to the release of Ordinal Theory and the lightning pace of adoption that soon followed,” said Magic Eden, adding it built the new marketplace in less than a month:

Currently, the marketplace only supports secondary sales of Bitcoin Ordinals. The marketplace said it is also looking into future tools that would allow creators to more easily mint or inscribe Bitcoin NFTs, such as its Launchpad which it offers for other chains.

In order to enable permissionless swaps, it uses partially signed Bitcoin