14th March 2023 – (New York) Bitcoin has unintentionally given birth to a new type of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that have generated $16.5 million in sales. These NFTs are inscriptions, called Ordinals, which are stored on the smallest denomination of bitcoin, the satoshi, thanks to network upgrades that allowed it to store a few megabytes of data. Over 385,000 inscriptions, including images, text, audio and video, have been embedded on bitcoin since January, and the market for bitcoin NFTs could be worth $4.5 billion by 2025, according to Galaxy Digital Research. However, the lack of user-friendly marketplaces is a barrier to entry and some bitcoin purists are unhappy that the cryptocurrency is being used for non-monetary purposes. Furthermore, some critics argue that Ordinals are clogging up the network and distracting from its core purpose.