The launch of Bitcoin Ordinals last month created quite a stir within the cryptocurrency community, stirring plenty of debate regarding its place within the digital asset ecosystem. Community members are deliberating whether Ordinals offer any new use cases for crypto, Bitcoin specifically, or if it is a negative for Bitcoin’s future.
Regardless of the community’s opinion of the Bitcoin-based NFT topic, BTC mining firm Luxor Mining moved forward with its acquisition of OrdinalHub, the market’s top platform for Bitcoin NFTs at this time. The purchase comes with 150,000 inscriptions (Ordinals) having already been created, an increase of 15,000% from the 1st of January.
Luxor mentioned that the present state of Ordinals being minted and then escrowed through a variety of Discord servers has presented a challenge to collectors and creators who would like to keep track of the projects. Luxor promised that they will resolve this problem by creating a “central hub” for use by the community.
Luxor’s CEO, Nick Hansen, applauded the groundbreaking aspects of Ordinals, mentioning how they can possess the ability to create synergies between their pool and the OridinalHub:
“Ordinals have opened the door for exciting new monetization strategies for Bitcoin miners.”
As previously reported, miners have already earned roughly $600K from Ordinals’ transactions. Additionally, NFT inscriptions are now taking up more than 50% of BTC block space.
OrdinalHub took to Twitter to share the news of the acquisition. Users reacted in a generally positive manner toward the new development. Having said that, some community members were skeptical about the purchase and the Ordinal hype in general, declaring the “hype might be over.”
Traditional NFTs have gone through many cycles with regard to popularity. At the end of 2022, the hype surrounding NFTs seemed to be at an all-time low. However, based on a recent report published by DappRadar, they are starting to make a comeback, with transactions increasing 37% between December 2022 and the end of January 2023.