Bitcoin Ordinals and Artificial Intelligence
Top of Mind
Over the past few weeks, two major trends have impacted NFTs and will likely continue to make waves in the wider ecosystem:
- Bitcoin Ordinals: This new Bitcoin NFT project stores NFT data in the witness space of Bitcoin blocks. It has exploded by over 300x causing debate within the community.
- Artificial Intelligence: Both ChatGPT and image generation are finding their way into NFTs, expanding the scope of ownable digital content.
Bitcoin Ordinals
The purpose of Bitcoin has been a longstanding debate among its community since its early days. Some believe it should primarily be used for simple financial transactions, while others think it should support more complex data. The new Ordinals NFT project on Bitcoin works by individually tracking the smallest fungible unit of Bitcoin, known as satoshis. It then inscribes the fungible token with arbitrary data, thereby converting it into an NFT. This process, called inscription, enables the creation of non-fungible tokens while still preserving the key feature of fungibility in Bitcoin's design.
Ally is a Research Analyst on the Enterprise team at Messari. Prior to joining the team, Ally worked as a Structural Engineer at Magnusson Klemencic Associates. Ally graduated from the University of Illinois in 2018 with a master’s degree in Civil and Structural Engineering.