What Are Bitcoin Ordinals And How Can You Mint Them?

Bitcoin Ordinals is one of the hottest trends in the crypto market right now. What are bitcoin ordinals? These are like NFTs hosted in the bitcoin network. It’s a big deal in the bitcoin community and the entire crypto space because we haven’t had Nfts on the bitcoin network. It has always been on Ethereum and other blockchains. But right now, bitcoin ordinals are taking over.

In this post, you’ll learn how to create a wallet that allows you to mint or buy your own Bitcoin Nfts. You’ll also learn how to mint your own ordinal on chain on the bitcoin network without using a smart contract. And you’ll learn how to make payment for that specific NFT. All these will equip you with what you need to get started early before the profits start rolling in. There’s a great possibility that this trend is going to grow even bigger and Nfts on bitcoin are even going to be more expensive than the ones on the Ethereum network. 

What are Bitcoin Ordinals?

Bitcoin Ordinals enable years to add data of unique images, music, movies, texts, and more on satoshis (one hundred millionths of a single bitcoin) in the Bitcoin base layer. Adding such kinds of data to a satoshi is known as an inscription and the result can be considered as a Bitcoin NFT or an ordinal. Since the launch of the Ordinals Protocol on Jan 21, 2023,  nearly 100,000 inscribed satoshis have been minted, 

Formerly, Satoshis were only used as units of currency, but thanks to this recent invention, it is now possible to encrypt Satoshis with data to create unique Bitcoin NFTs. This invention was introduced by Casey Rodarmor, a former developer for Bitcoin Core. By utilizing the Ordinal protocol, users can create whatever content they want, into a satoshi, which can then be traded as digital assets on the Bitcoin network.

Why would you want to mint a Bitcoin Ordinal?

The Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs aren’t free. You’re going to have to spend a little bit of money to mint them.  So, what’s the fuss about it and why would you want to inscribe a Bitcoin NFT? The reason is clear. The crypto market or ecosystem rewards people who are early adopters. So, if you missed out on the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and other major NFT projects, now is the best time to get into this before it goes mainstream fully.

Since this is a growing trend, there could be airdrops on the way who knows? It’s just very important for you to participate and spend a little bit of money to mint an ordinal and just own it. You never know what might happen, which one is going to be worth more or which one is going to be worth nothing. 

Furthermore, we have even seen Yuga Labs, the people behind the Bored Ape Club, and several other successful collections of Nfts on the Ethereum network bringing their ecosystem to ride on the Ordinals wave. They’re currently running what they called the twelve-fold auction. This is a good indicator of the huge potential of the Ordinals ecosystem.

How to mint Bitcoin Ordinals

Previously, you couldn’t mint your own Ordinals without running a full node. Running a Bitcoin full node requires you to download over 500 gigabytes of data on your computer and set up a node. And then you’d have to interact with the Bitcoin Network command line which is very technical for most people to do. However, due to the continuous development of the Ordinals ecosystem, you can now mint your Ordinals by yourself without running a full Bitcoin node.

More so, you can now buy Ordinals from an Nft marketplace. This is preferred to having to buy from another user via P2P a few months ago. It’s a risky method that involves finding someone who wants to buy your Ordinal NFT and then selling to them in an online crypto community.

Here are the steps to mint a Bitcoin Ordinal:

Step 1

Go to Ordinal’s wallet ordinalswallet.com. and click on create wallet. This is the wallet that we’re going to use to receive our Ordinals and store them. You need to note that this wallet is currently in beta and it’s a web wallet. It’s arguably still the best wallet in Bitcoin Ordinals that I have interacted with. 

Step 2

After creating a wallet, put in a password. This will generate your seed phrase. Write them down on a piece of paper and make sure that you don’t lose them because this is the backup of your wallet. After that, you need to confirm your backup phrase.

Step 3

Now your wallet has been created and you should be able to see your wallet address on the page. Ensure to add your email address to get alerts when you receive ordinals or when you’re sending your Ordinals.

Step 4

Now that you have your wallet, we can now go to ordinalsbot.com This is where you mint your NFT. On the page, you have the option of registering your .satts name if you want. You can either create an NFT from an image or text. Let’s say I want to mint my profile picture, I need to make sure it’s below 64 kilobytes. 

You can use tinyurl.com or tinyjpg.com to compress it. Ensure your image is well-compressed before trying to upload it. After you have compressed your desired image for minting, just drag and drop it into the upload section.

Step 5

The receive BTC address section is where your NFT is going to be received and you have to make sure that this is a Tap Root-activated address. However, the good thing is that if you’re using the Ordinals wallet, it is already Taproot activated. So, go back to your Ordinal wallet and click on receive to copy the Bitcoin address. Go back to Ordinalsbot and paste it in the “receive Btc address” field.

Step 6

Choose your preferred transaction fees. You can choose an economy fee that might take days to be completed on the Bitcoin network. You may also decide to go for the faster options which are more expensive. After that, click on submit and pay the invoice. This will generate an address that you need to use to pay on chain. You can either pay with lightning Network or make a wallet-to-wallet BTC transaction. So copy and paste this address on your Bybit or Binance BTC wallet address, or wherever you have your Bitcoin to pay the invoice. Ensure that you have paid the exact amount shown.

Step 7

After making the transaction, wait for it to be confirmed based on the given time. When it acknowledges payment, the page will change. So just wait for your Ordinal to show up in your wallet.

When payment is successful, you’ll get an invoice. The inscription for your Ordinals will also be initiated for almost the same time it took to confirm the transaction.

Step 8

Go to your Ordinals wallet and click the wallet address in the top right corner to locate your Ordinals NFT. You should see your Bitcoin NFT and its inscription number. 

Congratulations! You can now list it for sale if you want to or you can transfer it to another wallet.

If you want to explore what’s going on in the Bitcoin inscription space or you want to buy some inscriptions, you can click on “inscriptions” in your Ordinals wallet and look for what you might find interesting. You can also go to collections and see what kind of NFT collection is trending at the time. The Bitcoin inscriptions are a little bit interesting because the supply is not as high as 10 000 like that of Ethereum. 

One of the most popular ones right now is the pixel Pepes and they currently have a total volume of 18 Bitcoins transaction volume. You can choose to buy them or go for twelvefold which is currently the largest NFT project on the Bitcoin Network. It is owned by Yuga Labs, the creators of bored Ape Yacht Club. The highest bidder is 7.1 BTC for this inscription.

Conclusion 

Bitcoin Ordinals are fungible tokens that are transforming the Bitcoin blockchain ecosystem. They bring a greater level of utility and could expand the user base of the Bitcoin network  Further, they could inspire more innovation and rare use cases in the future. We’ve outlined easy steps to help you get started. Ensure you start right away and try to stay active in the ordinal ecosystem. If you take advantage of this quickly, you could be onto something life-changing. 

Video Tutorial on how to Mint Bitcoin Ordinals