![AresWey's tweet photo. A Brief History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem - Written on the Eve of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Boom
The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of the few narratives with technological innovation in this cycle, also being the super narrative that has bulled three times during the bear market. On the second anniversary of the Bitcoin ecosystem, this article records the three bull markets of the past two years and pays tribute to those who have steadfastly remained on the Bitcoin ecosystem front line.
⭕️The Birth of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On December 14, 2022, Bitcoin's #Ordinals protocol officially launched. Casey @rodarmor, the father of the Ordinals protocol, inscribed the first inscription: Inscription 0. From then on, the on-chain ecosystem of Bitcoin officially began
The Ordinals protocol can be simply understood as a protocol for inscribing data onto satoshis. The data can be images, text, JSON, GIFs, HTML, etc. Ordinals were born at the bottom of the bear market in this cycle. The market was dead silent with little promotion, so few within the circle knew about it
It wasn't until early February 2023 that the inscription number reached over 10,000 (now over 80 million). Most of these inscriptions were images, with some GIFs and HTML, mostly scattered pictures inscribed by users themselves, along with a few collections ranging from 50 to 200 items, none of which were large in scale
At this time, holders from the CryptoPunks community initiated an activity to inscribe Bitcoin Punks on Ordinals, downloading images of CryptoPunks to inscribe.
Bitcoin Punks was the first 10K NFT collection on Ordinals, which instantly made many, including myself, aware of Ordinals and shocked us: What? Can you inscribe small images on Bitcoin?!
Directly inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain! Immutable and eternal! Giving each NFT inscription a unique inscription number and timestamp! This was a completely new and disruptive narrative... Previously, BTC could only be transferred; now, BTC has an ecosystem where you can inscribe data. [Link to X post]
I was very excited at the time, feeling the same enthusiasm as when blockchain was poised to revolutionize the world in 2017. In the following months, I was almost obsessed with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This was the first time the Ordinals protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem was promoted within the circle. Everyone rushed to inscribe Bitcoin Punks. There was almost no infrastructure at that time, unlike today with so many tools and platforms for inscribing. To inscribe Bitcoin Punks, you needed your own full Bitcoin node and technical knowledge. Despite this, Bitcoin Punks were inscribed within days.
The inscription number from 0 to over 10,000 took over two months, while from over 10,000 to 30,000 took less than a week...
Bitcoin Punks, although not an original collection, brought two rules to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ First is First
Chinese Explanation: Only the first counts. Since anyone can inscribe images on BTC without a smart contract, if two identical punks are inscribed, which one should be included in the collection? Bitcoin Punks proposed the "First is First" principle, recognizing only the earliest inscription, i.e., the one with the earlier inscription number.
Remember this "First" rule; it's extremely important, essentially the rule that runs through the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Without this rule, later protocols like BRC20 and Runes couldn't function.
2/ Fair Launch (Fair Mint)
Bitcoin Punks were not inscribed and distributed by a project team but by users themselves. This set a precedent for Fair Launch in the Bitcoin ecosystem and paved the way for BRC20 and Runes. It also inspired other chains and ecosystems to adopt Fair Launch.
⭕️February to March 2023: The First Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem NFTs
The popularity of Bitcoin Punks sparked the first bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the NFT bull market. This bull market lasted roughly from early February to March 2023. Bitcoin Punks' floor price went from 0.2 ETH to 2 ETH, which was about 0.12 BTC.
For collections in the Sub10K (the first 10,000 inscriptions):
@Block_Munchers OTC price reached 1.2 BTC
@InscribedPepe floor price hit 1.6 BTC
For collections in the Sub1K (the first 1,000 inscriptions):
@OrdinalPunks floor price even reached over 2 BTC.
At the beginning of February, the Bitcoin ecosystem had almost no infrastructure or exchanges. Buying Bitcoin Punks was extremely difficult; you had to find someone in Discord for OTC, with prices only at 0.2-0.3 ETH, and the fee for the MOD's guarantee was 0.1 ETH, which was quite exaggerated. However, everyone was eager to buy because the price was rising so fast. I bought quite a few Bitcoin PUNKS through OTC. @LeonidasNFT also spent several BTC to buy a lot of rare Bitcoin Punks, the founder of the current Runes $dog.
At that time, @z3thnft also set up the earliest Chinese community for Bitcoin Punks, which was quite nostalgic.
Subsequently, several exchanges emerged, like https://t.co/sowEunDgSR, ordinalswallet, and ordswap (which has since run away), providing trading platforms for Bitcoin NFTs, causing prices to surge.
During that period, Bitcoin Punks and Sub10K NFTs were the most popular, with Bitcoin Punks having the highest trading volume. Sub10K could be considered as having a price but no market, with few collections, meaning there were not many desirable NFTs to buy. Many who bought Sub10K inscriptions were quite discreet, treating them as collectibles, not showing them off or selling them.
To buy a Sub10K collection NFT was like archaeology; you'd spend days lurking in various collection DC groups, looking for traces of collectors. Even if you found them, it wasn't guaranteed you could contact them. Buying a desired Sub10K inscription was like finding a beloved antique.
⭕️March to May 2023: A Brief Bear Market
After March, as more NFT projects were launched on Ordinals, the market supply and demand became imbalanced, leading to a bear market lasting two months, which were the most memorable for me.
During this time, although we were all holding onto our NFTs, we were confident in the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Every night, a group of Bitcoin ecosystem old guard members would chat in space, discussing not just money but dreams and the future, imagining the future of ordinals.
During this period, many OG members often hosted Spaces together, including:
@unisat_wallet's founder, @lorenzonical
Official Ordinals DC MOD, @drjingle (Golden Dog Doctor)
OKX wallet's @KKyleChen
idclub's founder, @moffat2021
ordswap's founder, Jack
OrdinalsCN community's creator, CXO.egg
The founder of the first GameFi in the Bitcoin ecosystem, @OrdzGames, @z3thnft
orc-cash protocol's founder, Sonic
@SuZhe_eth from the CryptoPunk and BAYC community
Market gurus paulwei @coolish, @Lioneming
Bitcoin ecosystem science communicator @practice_y11, @ohxiyu, and others.
Many of these OGs are still active today. At that time, everyone's stance was very unified with no significant disagreements, full of optimism for the future, with many idealistic builders.
During this period, two events changed the landscape of the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ The Birth of the Sats Domain Protocol
By late February 2023, the sats domain protocol was born with an inscription number over 160,000, becoming the first domain supported by unisat and xverse.
The sats domain protocol, while seemingly unnoticed, was a significant development. It was a dominant player in the asset category at that time, with active trading.
It adopted the "First is First" principle and the Fair Launch rule from Bitcoin Punks, also pioneering the JSON format for inscriptions.
One major difference between Sats and ETH domains is that there's no project team, it's permanently free. You can transfer by entering the sats domain in the address field. UniSat and Xverse wallets already support it.
The sats domain inspired the later BRC20.
2/ The Birth of BRC20
ProtocolEngineer @domodata, inspired by sats domains, proposed the JSON format for the inscription token protocol, named BRC20, the first token protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first genesis token of BRC20 was $Ordi, deployed by domo, with an inscription number of 348,020.
(I thought Ordi's deployment inscription would be a rare collectible, so I DMed domo asking for the deploy inscription price, and he said he wouldn't sell for less than $1 million🤣.)
However, domo didn't seem confident in his BRC20 protocol, considering it an experimental idea, not suggesting everyone FOMO.
The BRC20 protocol was indeed relatively rudimentary, causing significant waste due to abandoned inscriptions. At the time, discussions on BRC20 were mostly negative, with many questioning why another token protocol with complex procedures was needed when there was already BTC.
However, gamblers with sharp instincts wouldn't miss such an opportunity: better to be wrong than to miss out.
They minted out Ordi in two days, with a total of 21,000 pieces, each at a cost of 2-3usd, which meant each Ordi cost about 0.003usd.
BRC20 was a novelty at the time, with no infrastructure or exchanges, just OTC in WeChat groups, with no one knowing what its future would hold.
After minting, Ordi's price didn't skyrocket but slowly increased. By the end of April, it was around 50usd per piece, an increase of about 20 times from the mint price, valuing Ordi at about 1 million .
Ordi later indeed lived up to the expectations, embarking on its journey to a thousandfold increase.
⭕️May to June 2023: The Second Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Ignited by BRC20
The rise of BRC20 owes the most gratitude to @unisat_wallet. Without Unisat's continuous development, BRC20 would likely have perished under the circumstances at that time.
Thanks to Unisat's efforts, the BRC20 indexing and trading market launched in May, causing BRC20 to surge, with Ordi's price reaching 0.3u, a hundred times its mint price.
A few days after the trading market opened, a bug surfaced where someone exploited a double-spending flaw in Unisat to steal a significant amount of money from trading users. Unisat promptly compensated for all losses caused by the bug.
This incident was major news at the time, covered by all major crypto media outlets, effectively promoting the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC20 on a large scale. Thus, gamblers from outside the ecosystem learned that a casino had opened on Bitcoin, named BRC20.
Gamblers flocked in, starting the first wave of the BRC20 frenzy.
On May 8, Gate exchange listed Ordi, pushing the price to 29.58u, achieving a thousandfold increase, making many early holders extremely wealthy.
On May 15, OKEx listed Ordi, but the price never returned to its previous peak.
Also in May, Binance launched the Ordinals NFT market (which was recently canceled).
How intense was the BRC20 craze at that time? The Bitcoin blockchain's transaction fees once reached over 500 sats/vB. For quite some time, no matter what BRC20 token was inscribed, it would multiply several times. There were too many gamblers, and BRC20 simply couldn't keep up with the demand.
After the BRC20 frenzy, gamblers turned their attention to the Ordinals NFT market. During that period, small NFT images saw significant price surges, some even multiplying several times in value. Among them, @BitcoinFrogs, the Bitcoin Frogs collection, rose in price from 0.002 BTC in March to 0.12 BTC, achieving a 60x increase in BTC terms. At one point, it transitioned from a niche collection to becoming the highest market-cap collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The rise of Bitcoin Frogs marked a turning point in the dynamics of small-picture collections within the Bitcoin ecosystem. People realized that sub-10K collections with low inscription numbers, while appealing to collectors, were less suitable for speculative hype due to their smaller user base. In contrast, 10K-sized collections had a larger user foundation, making it easier to build cultural and community consensus, which fueled speculative trading.
Bitcoin Frogs was hyped as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, frequent giveaways during March and April on Spaces and Twitter contributed to its popularity. At the time, it seemed like everyone in Western Spaces owned a Bitcoin Frog.
Unfortunately, I missed out on Bitcoin Frogs despite encountering it early on. Back then, I was only focused on sub-10K inscriptions and had little interest in small pictures with high inscription numbers. Moreover, I couldn’t appreciate the artistic style of Bitcoin Frogs at the time. As a result, I sold the few frogs I received during the low-price period of March and April at the lowest price possible.
After the BRC20 boom, many JSON-based token protocols emerged, much like how altcoins followed Bitcoin’s creation by tweaking its code. The earliest one was ORC20, which added some smart functionality to the BRC20 standard. Later, protocols like BRC100 and Orc-cash were introduced.
There was also the STAMP protocol, which operates independently of Ordinals. It developed the SRC20 token protocol, allowing users to inscribe small pictures on STAMP.
Other chains also began imitating inscriptions and BRC20. For example:
• The Doge chain introduced the DRC20 token protocol.
• ETH launched ETH inscriptions.
For a time, the entire crypto community was replicating inscriptions and manually creating them. It was a lively and exciting period.
Rare satoshis also became popular for inscriptions. At the time, an Uncommon satoshi was extremely expensive, costing around $1,200. Rare satoshis were even more valuable, with some priced as high as 10 BTC. The Blob team even traded an Epic rare satoshi for 33 BTC.
This wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem lasted for about a month. However, as inscription assets became oversaturated and funds couldn’t keep up, the market fell silent again. After all, the entire crypto industry was still in a bear market cycle.
⭕️From June to October 2023: A Return to Silence, Yet Innovation Continues
After June, the market returned to the bear cycle. BTC’s on-chain fee rate dropped to 1 sats/vbyte. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem still saw significant developments during this period:
1. The 21 Million Sats Inscription Minting Process
The minting of 21 million sats inscriptions continued steadily and was expected to conclude by October 2023.
2. Ordinals Technical Upgrades
Ordinals underwent a series of technological upgrades, including the introduction of Parent-Child Inscriptions, Recursive Inscriptions, and the refinement of Cursed Inscriptions:
• Parent-Child Inscriptions: This feature allows a “parent” inscription to have “child” inscriptions, establishing hierarchical relationships. It can be used for creating NFT collections, similar to how Ethereum NFTs are tied to smart contracts for provenance and ownership verification.
• Recursive Inscriptions: This allows one inscription to reference and combine infinite other inscriptions, like building with Lego blocks. It provides a foundation for creating more complex structures, potentially enabling metaverse-related applications.
• Cursed Inscriptions: Previously, inscriptions not recognized by the Ordinals system were categorized as “cursed inscriptions,” with negative inscription numbers. After the system upgrade, no new cursed inscriptions could be created, and existing cursed inscriptions (approximately hundreds of thousands) were classified and became limited-edition collectibles.
3. Metaverse Land Projects with Bitcoin Blocks
The Bitmap project emerged, which used Bitcoin blocks as a map for metaverse land ownership.
4. Development of BRC420 and Bitcoin Layer 2
The Merlin team initiated the development of the BRC420 protocol and a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution called Merlin.
5. Growth of the Atomics Protocol
Independent of Ordinals, the Atomics protocol gained traction. It introduced a colored coin model for token issuance, characterized by a 1-token-to-1-satoshi relationship. Atomics tokens offered a much simpler and faster transfer process compared to BRC20, resembling Bitcoin’s native transaction style.
6. Casey’s Announcement of the Runes Protocol
Casey, the creator of Ordinals, announced the development of the Runes protocol. Interestingly, his original intent for Ordinals was to build a platform for art galleries, museums, and libraries on Bitcoin. However, the explosive popularity of BRC20 derailed those plans.
Criticisms of the BRC20 Protocol
Casey’s dissatisfaction with BRC20 stemmed from its inefficiencies and waste, which he viewed as misaligned with Bitcoin’s ethos:
1. Excessive UTXOs and Wasteful Inscriptions:
• BRC20 inscriptions serve as one-time ledgers, meaning that once minted or traded, old inscriptions become invalid.
• This creates a massive amount of “trash” in the Ordinals system, with approximately 95% of inscriptions being obsolete. These “discarded papers” take up at least 330 satoshis per UTXO and are expensive to consolidate or use.
2. Complex and Expensive Transactions:
• A BRC20 transfer involves multiple steps:
• First, inscribe a transfer inscription, which incurs inscription and network fees.
• Then, send the inscription, requiring additional network fees.
• As a result, each transfer requires 1 inscription fee + 2 network fees, taking at least two blocks to complete.
The Vision of Runes
Casey sought to address these flaws by creating a token protocol that:
• Avoids producing excessive UTXOs or wasteful inscriptions.
• Enables seamless, Bitcoin-like transfers.
This vision ultimately led to the Runes protocol, designed to preserve Bitcoin’s simplicity while enabling token issuance without the inefficiencies of BRC20.
⭕️November 2023 - April 2024: The Third Mini-Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The third mini-bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem began on November 6th, 2023, when Binance listed Ordi and Sats tokens. This marked the start of another wave of widespread interest in manually inscribing assets, surpassing the frenzy seen in May 2023. The market saw the rise of new BRC20 tokens, notably $Rats, which created immense wealth for many participants.
Key Highlights from the Bull Run
1. Major Price Surges
• Ordi reached an all-time high of $97 in March 2024, achieving a staggering 30,000x gain.
• $Sats peaked at $94 per token, delivering a 300x return.
• $Rats hit a market cap of $600 million, with a 200x price increase.
• Assets from other protocols, such as $Atom and $Quark under the ARC20 protocol, also saw explosive growth. Even the previously overlooked SRC20 tokens experienced a significant rally.
• Bitcoin Frogs (BTC NFT) rose from a low of 0.03 BTC to 0.43 BTC, achieving a 14x increase in BTC terms.
2. Across-the-Board Rally
Virtually all Bitcoin ecosystem assets experienced massive price surges, including those from less popular protocols such as orc20, brc100, brc420, and veda.
3. Market Flow Dynamics
The flow of funds during this bull market replicated that of the May rally:
• BRC20 tokens surged first.
• This was followed by rallies in non-mainstream protocol tokens.
• Finally, the liquidity rotated into the NFT market.
However, this bull market lasted much longer than the one in May 2023.
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys): Changing the BTC NFT Narrative
In late December 2023, a project called Nodemonkes launched using a Dutch auction format, reshaping the BTC NFT market dynamics.
• Inscription Numbers:
Nodemonkes inscriptions range from 83,522 to 111,319, predating Bitcoin Frogs’ inscriptions (321,224–412,389).
This discovery shifted the narrative, as Nodemonkes was recognized as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• Price Performance:
By March 3, 2024, Nodemonkes’ floor price skyrocketed from 0.03 BTC to 0.9 BTC (30x in BTC terms). A rare Alien Nodemonke was sold for 17 BTC (equivalent to 560 ETH at the time), setting the record for the highest transaction in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem.
• Market Impact:
The success of Nodemonkes reignited enthusiasm in the BTC NFT market, cementing its position as a key driver of the bull run.
https://t.co/YNxTgKJhqq
https://t.co/u2XU5OYm7I
Merlin’s L2 staking has also begun, supporting staking for almost all Bitcoin ecosystem assets, including NFTs, BRC20, and BRC420 assets. Merlin is a pioneer in Bitcoin Layer 2 and kicked off the BTCfi era. Despite facing various doubts along the way, the final result has provided users with very impressive staking rewards.
Regarding Runes, Casey announced early on that the Runes protocol would launch in April with the Bitcoin halving block.
In late January, the RSIC project introduced an innovative pre-mining mechanism for Runes, cleverly designing a human game theory and reward system. Subsequently, a large number of RSIC-inspired pre-mining projects were born, including the current leader in Runes, $DOG. RSIC and DOG were even valued at 400-500 million before the official Runes protocol launch.
Between late January and April, before Bitcoin’s halving, NFT and Runes pre-mining projects saw extremely active trading. At that time, almost everyone’s attention was focused on Runes, with discussions in groups and spaces dominated by Runes. Everyone believed that Runes would be a revolutionary token protocol for the Bitcoin ecosystem, sure to trigger another wave of Bitcoin ecosystem growth
But as the saying goes: “What gets too hot will eventually die.” The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment. The Runes protocol launched in April, and it burned bright for about 10 days before dying down, with a shorter duration than the BRC20 market surge
The reasons are as follows:
1/ High initial expectations, with market forecasts being overextended. Many people cashed out pre-mined projects with overvalued estimates.
2/ Only 3-4 Runes in the top 100 were Fair Launch tokens, while the others had reserved allocations, which reduced the playability and lowered user participation.
3/ The Runes names must be at least 13 characters long, and the character count only reduces by one every four months. This strange setting made the token names long and awkward
4/ As the only official Genesis Rune #UNCOMMOMGOODS, Casey set a four-year mint cycle for it, which deprived this potentially top token of short-term speculative appeal, discouraging speculators hoping to profit during the bull market
In conclusion, while the Runes protocol is nearly perfect in design and mechanics, it also challenges traditional token minting rules and naming conventions. Casey’s personal aesthetic as an engineer is evident here. Clearly, the market did not buy in in the short term.
⭕️From May 2024 to Now: The Dormancy After the Market Frenzy
Ordi dropped from 97 to a low of 20
Sats dropped from 94 to a low of 11
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys) dropped from 0.9BTC to a low of 0.09BTC
Bitcoin Frogs dropped from 0.43BTC to a low of 0.028BTC
The Runes protocol never saw an explosive rise. Various Rune tokens continued to decline.
Other non-mainstream protocol assets have fallen back to being ignored, with many projects with low user numbers now on the brink of death.
The Bitcoin ecosystem has become like an accelerated version of the cryptocurrency market, experiencing three rounds of bull and bear markets in just two years.
In early November 2024, Bitcoin led the entire cryptocurrency market into a fierce bull market. It has been over a month now, and all cryptocurrency sectors, even long-neglected altcoins, have surged. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem remains stagnant, showing no signs of recovery
⭕️Conclusion
As the only segment with technical innovation in this cycle, the Bitcoin ecosystem will not miss out on the explosive bull market. The 7 months of dormancy and accumulation have built up enough strength.
Looking at every previous bull market in history, it is always capital that drives asset bubbles.
–– When the capital (numerator) is large, and the asset (denominator) is small, the inflation of assets becomes more severe, and the bull market effect is more pronounced.
This is particularly evident in the three rounds of Bitcoin ecosystem bull markets because the asset pool of the Bitcoin ecosystem is shallower.
Currently, the total assets of the Bitcoin ecosystem are less than 10 billion, which is less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s market value
In contrast, the total market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 300 billion, accounting for 66% of Ethereum’s total market value
At this point, the story and innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem are far from over. A large number of technically innovative projects are still in the pipeline, such as BTCfi, L2, and Runes’ DeFi, among others. The Bitcoin ecosystem still has many narratives waiting to be explored.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ge0HJoZbkAAbHP8.png)
![AresWey's tweet photo. A Brief History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem - Written on the Eve of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Boom
The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of the few narratives with technological innovation in this cycle, also being the super narrative that has bulled three times during the bear market. On the second anniversary of the Bitcoin ecosystem, this article records the three bull markets of the past two years and pays tribute to those who have steadfastly remained on the Bitcoin ecosystem front line.
⭕️The Birth of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On December 14, 2022, Bitcoin's #Ordinals protocol officially launched. Casey @rodarmor, the father of the Ordinals protocol, inscribed the first inscription: Inscription 0. From then on, the on-chain ecosystem of Bitcoin officially began
The Ordinals protocol can be simply understood as a protocol for inscribing data onto satoshis. The data can be images, text, JSON, GIFs, HTML, etc. Ordinals were born at the bottom of the bear market in this cycle. The market was dead silent with little promotion, so few within the circle knew about it
It wasn't until early February 2023 that the inscription number reached over 10,000 (now over 80 million). Most of these inscriptions were images, with some GIFs and HTML, mostly scattered pictures inscribed by users themselves, along with a few collections ranging from 50 to 200 items, none of which were large in scale
At this time, holders from the CryptoPunks community initiated an activity to inscribe Bitcoin Punks on Ordinals, downloading images of CryptoPunks to inscribe.
Bitcoin Punks was the first 10K NFT collection on Ordinals, which instantly made many, including myself, aware of Ordinals and shocked us: What? Can you inscribe small images on Bitcoin?!
Directly inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain! Immutable and eternal! Giving each NFT inscription a unique inscription number and timestamp! This was a completely new and disruptive narrative... Previously, BTC could only be transferred; now, BTC has an ecosystem where you can inscribe data. [Link to X post]
I was very excited at the time, feeling the same enthusiasm as when blockchain was poised to revolutionize the world in 2017. In the following months, I was almost obsessed with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This was the first time the Ordinals protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem was promoted within the circle. Everyone rushed to inscribe Bitcoin Punks. There was almost no infrastructure at that time, unlike today with so many tools and platforms for inscribing. To inscribe Bitcoin Punks, you needed your own full Bitcoin node and technical knowledge. Despite this, Bitcoin Punks were inscribed within days.
The inscription number from 0 to over 10,000 took over two months, while from over 10,000 to 30,000 took less than a week...
Bitcoin Punks, although not an original collection, brought two rules to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ First is First
Chinese Explanation: Only the first counts. Since anyone can inscribe images on BTC without a smart contract, if two identical punks are inscribed, which one should be included in the collection? Bitcoin Punks proposed the "First is First" principle, recognizing only the earliest inscription, i.e., the one with the earlier inscription number.
Remember this "First" rule; it's extremely important, essentially the rule that runs through the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Without this rule, later protocols like BRC20 and Runes couldn't function.
2/ Fair Launch (Fair Mint)
Bitcoin Punks were not inscribed and distributed by a project team but by users themselves. This set a precedent for Fair Launch in the Bitcoin ecosystem and paved the way for BRC20 and Runes. It also inspired other chains and ecosystems to adopt Fair Launch.
⭕️February to March 2023: The First Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem NFTs
The popularity of Bitcoin Punks sparked the first bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the NFT bull market. This bull market lasted roughly from early February to March 2023. Bitcoin Punks' floor price went from 0.2 ETH to 2 ETH, which was about 0.12 BTC.
For collections in the Sub10K (the first 10,000 inscriptions):
@Block_Munchers OTC price reached 1.2 BTC
@InscribedPepe floor price hit 1.6 BTC
For collections in the Sub1K (the first 1,000 inscriptions):
@OrdinalPunks floor price even reached over 2 BTC.
At the beginning of February, the Bitcoin ecosystem had almost no infrastructure or exchanges. Buying Bitcoin Punks was extremely difficult; you had to find someone in Discord for OTC, with prices only at 0.2-0.3 ETH, and the fee for the MOD's guarantee was 0.1 ETH, which was quite exaggerated. However, everyone was eager to buy because the price was rising so fast. I bought quite a few Bitcoin PUNKS through OTC. @LeonidasNFT also spent several BTC to buy a lot of rare Bitcoin Punks, the founder of the current Runes $dog.
At that time, @z3thnft also set up the earliest Chinese community for Bitcoin Punks, which was quite nostalgic.
Subsequently, several exchanges emerged, like https://t.co/sowEunDgSR, ordinalswallet, and ordswap (which has since run away), providing trading platforms for Bitcoin NFTs, causing prices to surge.
During that period, Bitcoin Punks and Sub10K NFTs were the most popular, with Bitcoin Punks having the highest trading volume. Sub10K could be considered as having a price but no market, with few collections, meaning there were not many desirable NFTs to buy. Many who bought Sub10K inscriptions were quite discreet, treating them as collectibles, not showing them off or selling them.
To buy a Sub10K collection NFT was like archaeology; you'd spend days lurking in various collection DC groups, looking for traces of collectors. Even if you found them, it wasn't guaranteed you could contact them. Buying a desired Sub10K inscription was like finding a beloved antique.
⭕️March to May 2023: A Brief Bear Market
After March, as more NFT projects were launched on Ordinals, the market supply and demand became imbalanced, leading to a bear market lasting two months, which were the most memorable for me.
During this time, although we were all holding onto our NFTs, we were confident in the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Every night, a group of Bitcoin ecosystem old guard members would chat in space, discussing not just money but dreams and the future, imagining the future of ordinals.
During this period, many OG members often hosted Spaces together, including:
@unisat_wallet's founder, @lorenzonical
Official Ordinals DC MOD, @drjingle (Golden Dog Doctor)
OKX wallet's @KKyleChen
idclub's founder, @moffat2021
ordswap's founder, Jack
OrdinalsCN community's creator, CXO.egg
The founder of the first GameFi in the Bitcoin ecosystem, @OrdzGames, @z3thnft
orc-cash protocol's founder, Sonic
@SuZhe_eth from the CryptoPunk and BAYC community
Market gurus paulwei @coolish, @Lioneming
Bitcoin ecosystem science communicator @practice_y11, @ohxiyu, and others.
Many of these OGs are still active today. At that time, everyone's stance was very unified with no significant disagreements, full of optimism for the future, with many idealistic builders.
During this period, two events changed the landscape of the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ The Birth of the Sats Domain Protocol
By late February 2023, the sats domain protocol was born with an inscription number over 160,000, becoming the first domain supported by unisat and xverse.
The sats domain protocol, while seemingly unnoticed, was a significant development. It was a dominant player in the asset category at that time, with active trading.
It adopted the "First is First" principle and the Fair Launch rule from Bitcoin Punks, also pioneering the JSON format for inscriptions.
One major difference between Sats and ETH domains is that there's no project team, it's permanently free. You can transfer by entering the sats domain in the address field. UniSat and Xverse wallets already support it.
The sats domain inspired the later BRC20.
2/ The Birth of BRC20
ProtocolEngineer @domodata, inspired by sats domains, proposed the JSON format for the inscription token protocol, named BRC20, the first token protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first genesis token of BRC20 was $Ordi, deployed by domo, with an inscription number of 348,020.
(I thought Ordi's deployment inscription would be a rare collectible, so I DMed domo asking for the deploy inscription price, and he said he wouldn't sell for less than $1 million🤣.)
However, domo didn't seem confident in his BRC20 protocol, considering it an experimental idea, not suggesting everyone FOMO.
The BRC20 protocol was indeed relatively rudimentary, causing significant waste due to abandoned inscriptions. At the time, discussions on BRC20 were mostly negative, with many questioning why another token protocol with complex procedures was needed when there was already BTC.
However, gamblers with sharp instincts wouldn't miss such an opportunity: better to be wrong than to miss out.
They minted out Ordi in two days, with a total of 21,000 pieces, each at a cost of 2-3usd, which meant each Ordi cost about 0.003usd.
BRC20 was a novelty at the time, with no infrastructure or exchanges, just OTC in WeChat groups, with no one knowing what its future would hold.
After minting, Ordi's price didn't skyrocket but slowly increased. By the end of April, it was around 50usd per piece, an increase of about 20 times from the mint price, valuing Ordi at about 1 million .
Ordi later indeed lived up to the expectations, embarking on its journey to a thousandfold increase.
⭕️May to June 2023: The Second Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Ignited by BRC20
The rise of BRC20 owes the most gratitude to @unisat_wallet. Without Unisat's continuous development, BRC20 would likely have perished under the circumstances at that time.
Thanks to Unisat's efforts, the BRC20 indexing and trading market launched in May, causing BRC20 to surge, with Ordi's price reaching 0.3u, a hundred times its mint price.
A few days after the trading market opened, a bug surfaced where someone exploited a double-spending flaw in Unisat to steal a significant amount of money from trading users. Unisat promptly compensated for all losses caused by the bug.
This incident was major news at the time, covered by all major crypto media outlets, effectively promoting the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC20 on a large scale. Thus, gamblers from outside the ecosystem learned that a casino had opened on Bitcoin, named BRC20.
Gamblers flocked in, starting the first wave of the BRC20 frenzy.
On May 8, Gate exchange listed Ordi, pushing the price to 29.58u, achieving a thousandfold increase, making many early holders extremely wealthy.
On May 15, OKEx listed Ordi, but the price never returned to its previous peak.
Also in May, Binance launched the Ordinals NFT market (which was recently canceled).
How intense was the BRC20 craze at that time? The Bitcoin blockchain's transaction fees once reached over 500 sats/vB. For quite some time, no matter what BRC20 token was inscribed, it would multiply several times. There were too many gamblers, and BRC20 simply couldn't keep up with the demand.
After the BRC20 frenzy, gamblers turned their attention to the Ordinals NFT market. During that period, small NFT images saw significant price surges, some even multiplying several times in value. Among them, @BitcoinFrogs, the Bitcoin Frogs collection, rose in price from 0.002 BTC in March to 0.12 BTC, achieving a 60x increase in BTC terms. At one point, it transitioned from a niche collection to becoming the highest market-cap collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The rise of Bitcoin Frogs marked a turning point in the dynamics of small-picture collections within the Bitcoin ecosystem. People realized that sub-10K collections with low inscription numbers, while appealing to collectors, were less suitable for speculative hype due to their smaller user base. In contrast, 10K-sized collections had a larger user foundation, making it easier to build cultural and community consensus, which fueled speculative trading.
Bitcoin Frogs was hyped as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, frequent giveaways during March and April on Spaces and Twitter contributed to its popularity. At the time, it seemed like everyone in Western Spaces owned a Bitcoin Frog.
Unfortunately, I missed out on Bitcoin Frogs despite encountering it early on. Back then, I was only focused on sub-10K inscriptions and had little interest in small pictures with high inscription numbers. Moreover, I couldn’t appreciate the artistic style of Bitcoin Frogs at the time. As a result, I sold the few frogs I received during the low-price period of March and April at the lowest price possible.
After the BRC20 boom, many JSON-based token protocols emerged, much like how altcoins followed Bitcoin’s creation by tweaking its code. The earliest one was ORC20, which added some smart functionality to the BRC20 standard. Later, protocols like BRC100 and Orc-cash were introduced.
There was also the STAMP protocol, which operates independently of Ordinals. It developed the SRC20 token protocol, allowing users to inscribe small pictures on STAMP.
Other chains also began imitating inscriptions and BRC20. For example:
• The Doge chain introduced the DRC20 token protocol.
• ETH launched ETH inscriptions.
For a time, the entire crypto community was replicating inscriptions and manually creating them. It was a lively and exciting period.
Rare satoshis also became popular for inscriptions. At the time, an Uncommon satoshi was extremely expensive, costing around $1,200. Rare satoshis were even more valuable, with some priced as high as 10 BTC. The Blob team even traded an Epic rare satoshi for 33 BTC.
This wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem lasted for about a month. However, as inscription assets became oversaturated and funds couldn’t keep up, the market fell silent again. After all, the entire crypto industry was still in a bear market cycle.
⭕️From June to October 2023: A Return to Silence, Yet Innovation Continues
After June, the market returned to the bear cycle. BTC’s on-chain fee rate dropped to 1 sats/vbyte. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem still saw significant developments during this period:
1. The 21 Million Sats Inscription Minting Process
The minting of 21 million sats inscriptions continued steadily and was expected to conclude by October 2023.
2. Ordinals Technical Upgrades
Ordinals underwent a series of technological upgrades, including the introduction of Parent-Child Inscriptions, Recursive Inscriptions, and the refinement of Cursed Inscriptions:
• Parent-Child Inscriptions: This feature allows a “parent” inscription to have “child” inscriptions, establishing hierarchical relationships. It can be used for creating NFT collections, similar to how Ethereum NFTs are tied to smart contracts for provenance and ownership verification.
• Recursive Inscriptions: This allows one inscription to reference and combine infinite other inscriptions, like building with Lego blocks. It provides a foundation for creating more complex structures, potentially enabling metaverse-related applications.
• Cursed Inscriptions: Previously, inscriptions not recognized by the Ordinals system were categorized as “cursed inscriptions,” with negative inscription numbers. After the system upgrade, no new cursed inscriptions could be created, and existing cursed inscriptions (approximately hundreds of thousands) were classified and became limited-edition collectibles.
3. Metaverse Land Projects with Bitcoin Blocks
The Bitmap project emerged, which used Bitcoin blocks as a map for metaverse land ownership.
4. Development of BRC420 and Bitcoin Layer 2
The Merlin team initiated the development of the BRC420 protocol and a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution called Merlin.
5. Growth of the Atomics Protocol
Independent of Ordinals, the Atomics protocol gained traction. It introduced a colored coin model for token issuance, characterized by a 1-token-to-1-satoshi relationship. Atomics tokens offered a much simpler and faster transfer process compared to BRC20, resembling Bitcoin’s native transaction style.
6. Casey’s Announcement of the Runes Protocol
Casey, the creator of Ordinals, announced the development of the Runes protocol. Interestingly, his original intent for Ordinals was to build a platform for art galleries, museums, and libraries on Bitcoin. However, the explosive popularity of BRC20 derailed those plans.
Criticisms of the BRC20 Protocol
Casey’s dissatisfaction with BRC20 stemmed from its inefficiencies and waste, which he viewed as misaligned with Bitcoin’s ethos:
1. Excessive UTXOs and Wasteful Inscriptions:
• BRC20 inscriptions serve as one-time ledgers, meaning that once minted or traded, old inscriptions become invalid.
• This creates a massive amount of “trash” in the Ordinals system, with approximately 95% of inscriptions being obsolete. These “discarded papers” take up at least 330 satoshis per UTXO and are expensive to consolidate or use.
2. Complex and Expensive Transactions:
• A BRC20 transfer involves multiple steps:
• First, inscribe a transfer inscription, which incurs inscription and network fees.
• Then, send the inscription, requiring additional network fees.
• As a result, each transfer requires 1 inscription fee + 2 network fees, taking at least two blocks to complete.
The Vision of Runes
Casey sought to address these flaws by creating a token protocol that:
• Avoids producing excessive UTXOs or wasteful inscriptions.
• Enables seamless, Bitcoin-like transfers.
This vision ultimately led to the Runes protocol, designed to preserve Bitcoin’s simplicity while enabling token issuance without the inefficiencies of BRC20.
⭕️November 2023 - April 2024: The Third Mini-Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The third mini-bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem began on November 6th, 2023, when Binance listed Ordi and Sats tokens. This marked the start of another wave of widespread interest in manually inscribing assets, surpassing the frenzy seen in May 2023. The market saw the rise of new BRC20 tokens, notably $Rats, which created immense wealth for many participants.
Key Highlights from the Bull Run
1. Major Price Surges
• Ordi reached an all-time high of $97 in March 2024, achieving a staggering 30,000x gain.
• $Sats peaked at $94 per token, delivering a 300x return.
• $Rats hit a market cap of $600 million, with a 200x price increase.
• Assets from other protocols, such as $Atom and $Quark under the ARC20 protocol, also saw explosive growth. Even the previously overlooked SRC20 tokens experienced a significant rally.
• Bitcoin Frogs (BTC NFT) rose from a low of 0.03 BTC to 0.43 BTC, achieving a 14x increase in BTC terms.
2. Across-the-Board Rally
Virtually all Bitcoin ecosystem assets experienced massive price surges, including those from less popular protocols such as orc20, brc100, brc420, and veda.
3. Market Flow Dynamics
The flow of funds during this bull market replicated that of the May rally:
• BRC20 tokens surged first.
• This was followed by rallies in non-mainstream protocol tokens.
• Finally, the liquidity rotated into the NFT market.
However, this bull market lasted much longer than the one in May 2023.
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys): Changing the BTC NFT Narrative
In late December 2023, a project called Nodemonkes launched using a Dutch auction format, reshaping the BTC NFT market dynamics.
• Inscription Numbers:
Nodemonkes inscriptions range from 83,522 to 111,319, predating Bitcoin Frogs’ inscriptions (321,224–412,389).
This discovery shifted the narrative, as Nodemonkes was recognized as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• Price Performance:
By March 3, 2024, Nodemonkes’ floor price skyrocketed from 0.03 BTC to 0.9 BTC (30x in BTC terms). A rare Alien Nodemonke was sold for 17 BTC (equivalent to 560 ETH at the time), setting the record for the highest transaction in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem.
• Market Impact:
The success of Nodemonkes reignited enthusiasm in the BTC NFT market, cementing its position as a key driver of the bull run.
https://t.co/YNxTgKJhqq
https://t.co/u2XU5OYm7I
Merlin’s L2 staking has also begun, supporting staking for almost all Bitcoin ecosystem assets, including NFTs, BRC20, and BRC420 assets. Merlin is a pioneer in Bitcoin Layer 2 and kicked off the BTCfi era. Despite facing various doubts along the way, the final result has provided users with very impressive staking rewards.
Regarding Runes, Casey announced early on that the Runes protocol would launch in April with the Bitcoin halving block.
In late January, the RSIC project introduced an innovative pre-mining mechanism for Runes, cleverly designing a human game theory and reward system. Subsequently, a large number of RSIC-inspired pre-mining projects were born, including the current leader in Runes, $DOG. RSIC and DOG were even valued at 400-500 million before the official Runes protocol launch.
Between late January and April, before Bitcoin’s halving, NFT and Runes pre-mining projects saw extremely active trading. At that time, almost everyone’s attention was focused on Runes, with discussions in groups and spaces dominated by Runes. Everyone believed that Runes would be a revolutionary token protocol for the Bitcoin ecosystem, sure to trigger another wave of Bitcoin ecosystem growth
But as the saying goes: “What gets too hot will eventually die.” The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment. The Runes protocol launched in April, and it burned bright for about 10 days before dying down, with a shorter duration than the BRC20 market surge
The reasons are as follows:
1/ High initial expectations, with market forecasts being overextended. Many people cashed out pre-mined projects with overvalued estimates.
2/ Only 3-4 Runes in the top 100 were Fair Launch tokens, while the others had reserved allocations, which reduced the playability and lowered user participation.
3/ The Runes names must be at least 13 characters long, and the character count only reduces by one every four months. This strange setting made the token names long and awkward
4/ As the only official Genesis Rune #UNCOMMOMGOODS, Casey set a four-year mint cycle for it, which deprived this potentially top token of short-term speculative appeal, discouraging speculators hoping to profit during the bull market
In conclusion, while the Runes protocol is nearly perfect in design and mechanics, it also challenges traditional token minting rules and naming conventions. Casey’s personal aesthetic as an engineer is evident here. Clearly, the market did not buy in in the short term.
⭕️From May 2024 to Now: The Dormancy After the Market Frenzy
Ordi dropped from 97 to a low of 20
Sats dropped from 94 to a low of 11
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys) dropped from 0.9BTC to a low of 0.09BTC
Bitcoin Frogs dropped from 0.43BTC to a low of 0.028BTC
The Runes protocol never saw an explosive rise. Various Rune tokens continued to decline.
Other non-mainstream protocol assets have fallen back to being ignored, with many projects with low user numbers now on the brink of death.
The Bitcoin ecosystem has become like an accelerated version of the cryptocurrency market, experiencing three rounds of bull and bear markets in just two years.
In early November 2024, Bitcoin led the entire cryptocurrency market into a fierce bull market. It has been over a month now, and all cryptocurrency sectors, even long-neglected altcoins, have surged. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem remains stagnant, showing no signs of recovery
⭕️Conclusion
As the only segment with technical innovation in this cycle, the Bitcoin ecosystem will not miss out on the explosive bull market. The 7 months of dormancy and accumulation have built up enough strength.
Looking at every previous bull market in history, it is always capital that drives asset bubbles.
–– When the capital (numerator) is large, and the asset (denominator) is small, the inflation of assets becomes more severe, and the bull market effect is more pronounced.
This is particularly evident in the three rounds of Bitcoin ecosystem bull markets because the asset pool of the Bitcoin ecosystem is shallower.
Currently, the total assets of the Bitcoin ecosystem are less than 10 billion, which is less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s market value
In contrast, the total market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 300 billion, accounting for 66% of Ethereum’s total market value
At this point, the story and innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem are far from over. A large number of technically innovative projects are still in the pipeline, such as BTCfi, L2, and Runes’ DeFi, among others. The Bitcoin ecosystem still has many narratives waiting to be explored.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ge0F-MvaYAAcMvl.png)
![AresWey's tweet photo. A Brief History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem - Written on the Eve of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Boom
The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of the few narratives with technological innovation in this cycle, also being the super narrative that has bulled three times during the bear market. On the second anniversary of the Bitcoin ecosystem, this article records the three bull markets of the past two years and pays tribute to those who have steadfastly remained on the Bitcoin ecosystem front line.
⭕️The Birth of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On December 14, 2022, Bitcoin's #Ordinals protocol officially launched. Casey @rodarmor, the father of the Ordinals protocol, inscribed the first inscription: Inscription 0. From then on, the on-chain ecosystem of Bitcoin officially began
The Ordinals protocol can be simply understood as a protocol for inscribing data onto satoshis. The data can be images, text, JSON, GIFs, HTML, etc. Ordinals were born at the bottom of the bear market in this cycle. The market was dead silent with little promotion, so few within the circle knew about it
It wasn't until early February 2023 that the inscription number reached over 10,000 (now over 80 million). Most of these inscriptions were images, with some GIFs and HTML, mostly scattered pictures inscribed by users themselves, along with a few collections ranging from 50 to 200 items, none of which were large in scale
At this time, holders from the CryptoPunks community initiated an activity to inscribe Bitcoin Punks on Ordinals, downloading images of CryptoPunks to inscribe.
Bitcoin Punks was the first 10K NFT collection on Ordinals, which instantly made many, including myself, aware of Ordinals and shocked us: What? Can you inscribe small images on Bitcoin?!
Directly inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain! Immutable and eternal! Giving each NFT inscription a unique inscription number and timestamp! This was a completely new and disruptive narrative... Previously, BTC could only be transferred; now, BTC has an ecosystem where you can inscribe data. [Link to X post]
I was very excited at the time, feeling the same enthusiasm as when blockchain was poised to revolutionize the world in 2017. In the following months, I was almost obsessed with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This was the first time the Ordinals protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem was promoted within the circle. Everyone rushed to inscribe Bitcoin Punks. There was almost no infrastructure at that time, unlike today with so many tools and platforms for inscribing. To inscribe Bitcoin Punks, you needed your own full Bitcoin node and technical knowledge. Despite this, Bitcoin Punks were inscribed within days.
The inscription number from 0 to over 10,000 took over two months, while from over 10,000 to 30,000 took less than a week...
Bitcoin Punks, although not an original collection, brought two rules to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ First is First
Chinese Explanation: Only the first counts. Since anyone can inscribe images on BTC without a smart contract, if two identical punks are inscribed, which one should be included in the collection? Bitcoin Punks proposed the "First is First" principle, recognizing only the earliest inscription, i.e., the one with the earlier inscription number.
Remember this "First" rule; it's extremely important, essentially the rule that runs through the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Without this rule, later protocols like BRC20 and Runes couldn't function.
2/ Fair Launch (Fair Mint)
Bitcoin Punks were not inscribed and distributed by a project team but by users themselves. This set a precedent for Fair Launch in the Bitcoin ecosystem and paved the way for BRC20 and Runes. It also inspired other chains and ecosystems to adopt Fair Launch.
⭕️February to March 2023: The First Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem NFTs
The popularity of Bitcoin Punks sparked the first bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the NFT bull market. This bull market lasted roughly from early February to March 2023. Bitcoin Punks' floor price went from 0.2 ETH to 2 ETH, which was about 0.12 BTC.
For collections in the Sub10K (the first 10,000 inscriptions):
@Block_Munchers OTC price reached 1.2 BTC
@InscribedPepe floor price hit 1.6 BTC
For collections in the Sub1K (the first 1,000 inscriptions):
@OrdinalPunks floor price even reached over 2 BTC.
At the beginning of February, the Bitcoin ecosystem had almost no infrastructure or exchanges. Buying Bitcoin Punks was extremely difficult; you had to find someone in Discord for OTC, with prices only at 0.2-0.3 ETH, and the fee for the MOD's guarantee was 0.1 ETH, which was quite exaggerated. However, everyone was eager to buy because the price was rising so fast. I bought quite a few Bitcoin PUNKS through OTC. @LeonidasNFT also spent several BTC to buy a lot of rare Bitcoin Punks, the founder of the current Runes $dog.
At that time, @z3thnft also set up the earliest Chinese community for Bitcoin Punks, which was quite nostalgic.
Subsequently, several exchanges emerged, like https://t.co/sowEunDgSR, ordinalswallet, and ordswap (which has since run away), providing trading platforms for Bitcoin NFTs, causing prices to surge.
During that period, Bitcoin Punks and Sub10K NFTs were the most popular, with Bitcoin Punks having the highest trading volume. Sub10K could be considered as having a price but no market, with few collections, meaning there were not many desirable NFTs to buy. Many who bought Sub10K inscriptions were quite discreet, treating them as collectibles, not showing them off or selling them.
To buy a Sub10K collection NFT was like archaeology; you'd spend days lurking in various collection DC groups, looking for traces of collectors. Even if you found them, it wasn't guaranteed you could contact them. Buying a desired Sub10K inscription was like finding a beloved antique.
⭕️March to May 2023: A Brief Bear Market
After March, as more NFT projects were launched on Ordinals, the market supply and demand became imbalanced, leading to a bear market lasting two months, which were the most memorable for me.
During this time, although we were all holding onto our NFTs, we were confident in the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Every night, a group of Bitcoin ecosystem old guard members would chat in space, discussing not just money but dreams and the future, imagining the future of ordinals.
During this period, many OG members often hosted Spaces together, including:
@unisat_wallet's founder, @lorenzonical
Official Ordinals DC MOD, @drjingle (Golden Dog Doctor)
OKX wallet's @KKyleChen
idclub's founder, @moffat2021
ordswap's founder, Jack
OrdinalsCN community's creator, CXO.egg
The founder of the first GameFi in the Bitcoin ecosystem, @OrdzGames, @z3thnft
orc-cash protocol's founder, Sonic
@SuZhe_eth from the CryptoPunk and BAYC community
Market gurus paulwei @coolish, @Lioneming
Bitcoin ecosystem science communicator @practice_y11, @ohxiyu, and others.
Many of these OGs are still active today. At that time, everyone's stance was very unified with no significant disagreements, full of optimism for the future, with many idealistic builders.
During this period, two events changed the landscape of the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ The Birth of the Sats Domain Protocol
By late February 2023, the sats domain protocol was born with an inscription number over 160,000, becoming the first domain supported by unisat and xverse.
The sats domain protocol, while seemingly unnoticed, was a significant development. It was a dominant player in the asset category at that time, with active trading.
It adopted the "First is First" principle and the Fair Launch rule from Bitcoin Punks, also pioneering the JSON format for inscriptions.
One major difference between Sats and ETH domains is that there's no project team, it's permanently free. You can transfer by entering the sats domain in the address field. UniSat and Xverse wallets already support it.
The sats domain inspired the later BRC20.
2/ The Birth of BRC20
ProtocolEngineer @domodata, inspired by sats domains, proposed the JSON format for the inscription token protocol, named BRC20, the first token protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first genesis token of BRC20 was $Ordi, deployed by domo, with an inscription number of 348,020.
(I thought Ordi's deployment inscription would be a rare collectible, so I DMed domo asking for the deploy inscription price, and he said he wouldn't sell for less than $1 million🤣.)
However, domo didn't seem confident in his BRC20 protocol, considering it an experimental idea, not suggesting everyone FOMO.
The BRC20 protocol was indeed relatively rudimentary, causing significant waste due to abandoned inscriptions. At the time, discussions on BRC20 were mostly negative, with many questioning why another token protocol with complex procedures was needed when there was already BTC.
However, gamblers with sharp instincts wouldn't miss such an opportunity: better to be wrong than to miss out.
They minted out Ordi in two days, with a total of 21,000 pieces, each at a cost of 2-3usd, which meant each Ordi cost about 0.003usd.
BRC20 was a novelty at the time, with no infrastructure or exchanges, just OTC in WeChat groups, with no one knowing what its future would hold.
After minting, Ordi's price didn't skyrocket but slowly increased. By the end of April, it was around 50usd per piece, an increase of about 20 times from the mint price, valuing Ordi at about 1 million .
Ordi later indeed lived up to the expectations, embarking on its journey to a thousandfold increase.
⭕️May to June 2023: The Second Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Ignited by BRC20
The rise of BRC20 owes the most gratitude to @unisat_wallet. Without Unisat's continuous development, BRC20 would likely have perished under the circumstances at that time.
Thanks to Unisat's efforts, the BRC20 indexing and trading market launched in May, causing BRC20 to surge, with Ordi's price reaching 0.3u, a hundred times its mint price.
A few days after the trading market opened, a bug surfaced where someone exploited a double-spending flaw in Unisat to steal a significant amount of money from trading users. Unisat promptly compensated for all losses caused by the bug.
This incident was major news at the time, covered by all major crypto media outlets, effectively promoting the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC20 on a large scale. Thus, gamblers from outside the ecosystem learned that a casino had opened on Bitcoin, named BRC20.
Gamblers flocked in, starting the first wave of the BRC20 frenzy.
On May 8, Gate exchange listed Ordi, pushing the price to 29.58u, achieving a thousandfold increase, making many early holders extremely wealthy.
On May 15, OKEx listed Ordi, but the price never returned to its previous peak.
Also in May, Binance launched the Ordinals NFT market (which was recently canceled).
How intense was the BRC20 craze at that time? The Bitcoin blockchain's transaction fees once reached over 500 sats/vB. For quite some time, no matter what BRC20 token was inscribed, it would multiply several times. There were too many gamblers, and BRC20 simply couldn't keep up with the demand.
After the BRC20 frenzy, gamblers turned their attention to the Ordinals NFT market. During that period, small NFT images saw significant price surges, some even multiplying several times in value. Among them, @BitcoinFrogs, the Bitcoin Frogs collection, rose in price from 0.002 BTC in March to 0.12 BTC, achieving a 60x increase in BTC terms. At one point, it transitioned from a niche collection to becoming the highest market-cap collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The rise of Bitcoin Frogs marked a turning point in the dynamics of small-picture collections within the Bitcoin ecosystem. People realized that sub-10K collections with low inscription numbers, while appealing to collectors, were less suitable for speculative hype due to their smaller user base. In contrast, 10K-sized collections had a larger user foundation, making it easier to build cultural and community consensus, which fueled speculative trading.
Bitcoin Frogs was hyped as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, frequent giveaways during March and April on Spaces and Twitter contributed to its popularity. At the time, it seemed like everyone in Western Spaces owned a Bitcoin Frog.
Unfortunately, I missed out on Bitcoin Frogs despite encountering it early on. Back then, I was only focused on sub-10K inscriptions and had little interest in small pictures with high inscription numbers. Moreover, I couldn’t appreciate the artistic style of Bitcoin Frogs at the time. As a result, I sold the few frogs I received during the low-price period of March and April at the lowest price possible.
After the BRC20 boom, many JSON-based token protocols emerged, much like how altcoins followed Bitcoin’s creation by tweaking its code. The earliest one was ORC20, which added some smart functionality to the BRC20 standard. Later, protocols like BRC100 and Orc-cash were introduced.
There was also the STAMP protocol, which operates independently of Ordinals. It developed the SRC20 token protocol, allowing users to inscribe small pictures on STAMP.
Other chains also began imitating inscriptions and BRC20. For example:
• The Doge chain introduced the DRC20 token protocol.
• ETH launched ETH inscriptions.
For a time, the entire crypto community was replicating inscriptions and manually creating them. It was a lively and exciting period.
Rare satoshis also became popular for inscriptions. At the time, an Uncommon satoshi was extremely expensive, costing around $1,200. Rare satoshis were even more valuable, with some priced as high as 10 BTC. The Blob team even traded an Epic rare satoshi for 33 BTC.
This wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem lasted for about a month. However, as inscription assets became oversaturated and funds couldn’t keep up, the market fell silent again. After all, the entire crypto industry was still in a bear market cycle.
⭕️From June to October 2023: A Return to Silence, Yet Innovation Continues
After June, the market returned to the bear cycle. BTC’s on-chain fee rate dropped to 1 sats/vbyte. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem still saw significant developments during this period:
1. The 21 Million Sats Inscription Minting Process
The minting of 21 million sats inscriptions continued steadily and was expected to conclude by October 2023.
2. Ordinals Technical Upgrades
Ordinals underwent a series of technological upgrades, including the introduction of Parent-Child Inscriptions, Recursive Inscriptions, and the refinement of Cursed Inscriptions:
• Parent-Child Inscriptions: This feature allows a “parent” inscription to have “child” inscriptions, establishing hierarchical relationships. It can be used for creating NFT collections, similar to how Ethereum NFTs are tied to smart contracts for provenance and ownership verification.
• Recursive Inscriptions: This allows one inscription to reference and combine infinite other inscriptions, like building with Lego blocks. It provides a foundation for creating more complex structures, potentially enabling metaverse-related applications.
• Cursed Inscriptions: Previously, inscriptions not recognized by the Ordinals system were categorized as “cursed inscriptions,” with negative inscription numbers. After the system upgrade, no new cursed inscriptions could be created, and existing cursed inscriptions (approximately hundreds of thousands) were classified and became limited-edition collectibles.
3. Metaverse Land Projects with Bitcoin Blocks
The Bitmap project emerged, which used Bitcoin blocks as a map for metaverse land ownership.
4. Development of BRC420 and Bitcoin Layer 2
The Merlin team initiated the development of the BRC420 protocol and a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution called Merlin.
5. Growth of the Atomics Protocol
Independent of Ordinals, the Atomics protocol gained traction. It introduced a colored coin model for token issuance, characterized by a 1-token-to-1-satoshi relationship. Atomics tokens offered a much simpler and faster transfer process compared to BRC20, resembling Bitcoin’s native transaction style.
6. Casey’s Announcement of the Runes Protocol
Casey, the creator of Ordinals, announced the development of the Runes protocol. Interestingly, his original intent for Ordinals was to build a platform for art galleries, museums, and libraries on Bitcoin. However, the explosive popularity of BRC20 derailed those plans.
Criticisms of the BRC20 Protocol
Casey’s dissatisfaction with BRC20 stemmed from its inefficiencies and waste, which he viewed as misaligned with Bitcoin’s ethos:
1. Excessive UTXOs and Wasteful Inscriptions:
• BRC20 inscriptions serve as one-time ledgers, meaning that once minted or traded, old inscriptions become invalid.
• This creates a massive amount of “trash” in the Ordinals system, with approximately 95% of inscriptions being obsolete. These “discarded papers” take up at least 330 satoshis per UTXO and are expensive to consolidate or use.
2. Complex and Expensive Transactions:
• A BRC20 transfer involves multiple steps:
• First, inscribe a transfer inscription, which incurs inscription and network fees.
• Then, send the inscription, requiring additional network fees.
• As a result, each transfer requires 1 inscription fee + 2 network fees, taking at least two blocks to complete.
The Vision of Runes
Casey sought to address these flaws by creating a token protocol that:
• Avoids producing excessive UTXOs or wasteful inscriptions.
• Enables seamless, Bitcoin-like transfers.
This vision ultimately led to the Runes protocol, designed to preserve Bitcoin’s simplicity while enabling token issuance without the inefficiencies of BRC20.
⭕️November 2023 - April 2024: The Third Mini-Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The third mini-bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem began on November 6th, 2023, when Binance listed Ordi and Sats tokens. This marked the start of another wave of widespread interest in manually inscribing assets, surpassing the frenzy seen in May 2023. The market saw the rise of new BRC20 tokens, notably $Rats, which created immense wealth for many participants.
Key Highlights from the Bull Run
1. Major Price Surges
• Ordi reached an all-time high of $97 in March 2024, achieving a staggering 30,000x gain.
• $Sats peaked at $94 per token, delivering a 300x return.
• $Rats hit a market cap of $600 million, with a 200x price increase.
• Assets from other protocols, such as $Atom and $Quark under the ARC20 protocol, also saw explosive growth. Even the previously overlooked SRC20 tokens experienced a significant rally.
• Bitcoin Frogs (BTC NFT) rose from a low of 0.03 BTC to 0.43 BTC, achieving a 14x increase in BTC terms.
2. Across-the-Board Rally
Virtually all Bitcoin ecosystem assets experienced massive price surges, including those from less popular protocols such as orc20, brc100, brc420, and veda.
3. Market Flow Dynamics
The flow of funds during this bull market replicated that of the May rally:
• BRC20 tokens surged first.
• This was followed by rallies in non-mainstream protocol tokens.
• Finally, the liquidity rotated into the NFT market.
However, this bull market lasted much longer than the one in May 2023.
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys): Changing the BTC NFT Narrative
In late December 2023, a project called Nodemonkes launched using a Dutch auction format, reshaping the BTC NFT market dynamics.
• Inscription Numbers:
Nodemonkes inscriptions range from 83,522 to 111,319, predating Bitcoin Frogs’ inscriptions (321,224–412,389).
This discovery shifted the narrative, as Nodemonkes was recognized as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• Price Performance:
By March 3, 2024, Nodemonkes’ floor price skyrocketed from 0.03 BTC to 0.9 BTC (30x in BTC terms). A rare Alien Nodemonke was sold for 17 BTC (equivalent to 560 ETH at the time), setting the record for the highest transaction in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem.
• Market Impact:
The success of Nodemonkes reignited enthusiasm in the BTC NFT market, cementing its position as a key driver of the bull run.
https://t.co/YNxTgKJhqq
https://t.co/u2XU5OYm7I
Merlin’s L2 staking has also begun, supporting staking for almost all Bitcoin ecosystem assets, including NFTs, BRC20, and BRC420 assets. Merlin is a pioneer in Bitcoin Layer 2 and kicked off the BTCfi era. Despite facing various doubts along the way, the final result has provided users with very impressive staking rewards.
Regarding Runes, Casey announced early on that the Runes protocol would launch in April with the Bitcoin halving block.
In late January, the RSIC project introduced an innovative pre-mining mechanism for Runes, cleverly designing a human game theory and reward system. Subsequently, a large number of RSIC-inspired pre-mining projects were born, including the current leader in Runes, $DOG. RSIC and DOG were even valued at 400-500 million before the official Runes protocol launch.
Between late January and April, before Bitcoin’s halving, NFT and Runes pre-mining projects saw extremely active trading. At that time, almost everyone’s attention was focused on Runes, with discussions in groups and spaces dominated by Runes. Everyone believed that Runes would be a revolutionary token protocol for the Bitcoin ecosystem, sure to trigger another wave of Bitcoin ecosystem growth
But as the saying goes: “What gets too hot will eventually die.” The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment. The Runes protocol launched in April, and it burned bright for about 10 days before dying down, with a shorter duration than the BRC20 market surge
The reasons are as follows:
1/ High initial expectations, with market forecasts being overextended. Many people cashed out pre-mined projects with overvalued estimates.
2/ Only 3-4 Runes in the top 100 were Fair Launch tokens, while the others had reserved allocations, which reduced the playability and lowered user participation.
3/ The Runes names must be at least 13 characters long, and the character count only reduces by one every four months. This strange setting made the token names long and awkward
4/ As the only official Genesis Rune #UNCOMMOMGOODS, Casey set a four-year mint cycle for it, which deprived this potentially top token of short-term speculative appeal, discouraging speculators hoping to profit during the bull market
In conclusion, while the Runes protocol is nearly perfect in design and mechanics, it also challenges traditional token minting rules and naming conventions. Casey’s personal aesthetic as an engineer is evident here. Clearly, the market did not buy in in the short term.
⭕️From May 2024 to Now: The Dormancy After the Market Frenzy
Ordi dropped from 97 to a low of 20
Sats dropped from 94 to a low of 11
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys) dropped from 0.9BTC to a low of 0.09BTC
Bitcoin Frogs dropped from 0.43BTC to a low of 0.028BTC
The Runes protocol never saw an explosive rise. Various Rune tokens continued to decline.
Other non-mainstream protocol assets have fallen back to being ignored, with many projects with low user numbers now on the brink of death.
The Bitcoin ecosystem has become like an accelerated version of the cryptocurrency market, experiencing three rounds of bull and bear markets in just two years.
In early November 2024, Bitcoin led the entire cryptocurrency market into a fierce bull market. It has been over a month now, and all cryptocurrency sectors, even long-neglected altcoins, have surged. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem remains stagnant, showing no signs of recovery
⭕️Conclusion
As the only segment with technical innovation in this cycle, the Bitcoin ecosystem will not miss out on the explosive bull market. The 7 months of dormancy and accumulation have built up enough strength.
Looking at every previous bull market in history, it is always capital that drives asset bubbles.
–– When the capital (numerator) is large, and the asset (denominator) is small, the inflation of assets becomes more severe, and the bull market effect is more pronounced.
This is particularly evident in the three rounds of Bitcoin ecosystem bull markets because the asset pool of the Bitcoin ecosystem is shallower.
Currently, the total assets of the Bitcoin ecosystem are less than 10 billion, which is less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s market value
In contrast, the total market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 300 billion, accounting for 66% of Ethereum’s total market value
At this point, the story and innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem are far from over. A large number of technically innovative projects are still in the pipeline, such as BTCfi, L2, and Runes’ DeFi, among others. The Bitcoin ecosystem still has many narratives waiting to be explored.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ge0BgHNaMAA0eWh.jpg)
Olivia
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这段时间重新翻看了自己的推文，把其中我觉得比较精华的内容和一些高光操作整理了出来，虽然市场状况一直在变化，具体的方法未必适用了，但是如何寻找alpha、怎么将认知与实践相结合，这些思维依然是有共性的，希望能对大家有所帮助。
以下按时间顺序列出：
2022.04.22
NFT图狗Mint指南
https://t.co/p2iWg1Y9tz
2022.05.02
猴地逃顶获利200ETH
https://t.co/D3dM6YPZ6d
2022.07.21
NFT抢购Bot指南
https://t.co/5DSQ8ZRlqP
2022.09.21
DogeClub单个图狗获利70ETH
https://t.co/e6v6JNpSq1
2023.04.19
Memecoin基础科普（当时市场热点正从NFT转移到土狗币）
https://t.co/pKUzISskNb
2023.05.09
重心换到土狗币后单周浮盈100ETH
https://t.co/M6IE1iMbCp
2023.07.29
Pauly的Pond开盘3分钟1ETH变成44.5ETH
https://t.co/qF8qXaMvtn
2023.09.12
香蕉枪Banana Gun发币复盘，白名单+开盘限购获利50ETH
https://t.co/fa6gjJX65i
2024.01.05
节点猴NodeMonkes复盘，参与荷兰拍，0.03BTC成本最高地板价0.8BTC，获利3BTC
https://t.co/sZSZC54Nac
2024.01.29
从1万~1000万资金量级，各个阶段的思考与经历
https://t.co/SLcVyYVPAK
2024.02.26
通过链上交易一个月赚$1M的复盘（发射台Moby的预售、Shib官方的404项目Sheb、DN404项目ASTX、公售随便打开盘上币安的Portal、Merlin链的$Huhu等）
https://t.co/RBmigAeMKm
2024.06.19
反思自己在擅长的链上赛道过于谨慎，在不熟的山寨操作上仓位过重
https://t.co/USewGYUnmV
2024.07.08
各种原因导致一天踏空数个金狗后的思考
https://t.co/Qs8LzKKTJe
2024.07.17
特朗普枪击事件，相关热点土狗$Fight获利13万u复盘
https://t.co/8TjFp3rDTG
2024.07.24
关于“聪明钱”和“跟单”的看法
https://t.co/JRUYNn1h1V
2024.07.31
麻吉图币项目“BAYC”开盘发现套利方法，1分钟收获15万u
https://t.co/YK4DgpCtzA
2024.08.23
Simon Cat预售复盘，一次堪称完美的打新机会
https://t.co/3FlbGJ1Y9w
2024.10.11
2M市值开始转推Goat相关内容，获利10万u
https://t.co/u5ixxYF9qb
2024.11.03
马斯克置顶松鼠第一时间发推，获利19万u
https://t.co/Hy0umF6Cat
2024.11.11
复盘SOL单链单月1M收益
https://t.co/ZMDGnL4rCy
2024.11.16
DeSci生态起飞前梳理线索，RIF+URO获利30万u
https://t.co/83bcfXyzz3
2024.12.14
复盘为什么会卖飞自己早期发掘的项目，做多Goat和Pnut获利$2M
https://t.co/Duj29TIe2i
2025.01.05
AI赛道相关代币一周获利$1M复盘
https://t.co/kYrRBaKIzI
2025.01.18
特朗普推特发布代币合约后“人只活一次”
https://t.co/Pl2GYHvjX6
2025.01.19
$Trump单币浮盈$20M+
https://t.co/8wpEfG34Hq
2025.01.25
特朗普老婆发币$Melania，对后市看法由乐观变为不确定
https://t.co/9flGJySQqV
2025.02.03
认为不存在全面普涨，开始低倍做空山寨币
https://t.co/KN7ZYtjSGq
2025.03.30
对自己三年来币圈笔记的整理与分享
https://t.co/6ixE2dT7nj
2025.04.07
做空山寨币的黄金期已经过去
https://t.co/Njw0ACOhxd
2025.04.19
不要用战术上的勤奋掩盖战略上的懒惰
https://t.co/JYLPtIk9Vn
2025.05.01
$Gork获利18万u
https://t.co/4r6jg7XGIE
2025.05.31
认为大部分山寨已经重新进入下跌趋势
https://t.co/i7esMiGsfT
2025.07.08
PumpFun公售是机会
https://t.co/JVIqiEgpPC
2025.07.23
链上Meme两大方法论，叙事交易和地址挖掘
https://t.co/GsQz7d2ZrO
2025.08.01
做多ETH，做空山寨币对冲
https://t.co/bAQUJhXYX0
2025.09.02
复盘做空WLFI获利$1M
https://t.co/EmXIZlNy6b
持续分享观点，一是因为我一直都是一个表达欲较强，乐于总结归纳的人，二是这种公开发表的看法，假如后续能被市场所印证，其中收获的快乐甚至已经超越了交易盈利的数字本身。
至今读到最有深度的链上交易心流文章
放一些其中的圣经值得反复咀嚼思考：
真正要讲的，其实是交易心理
不是“用什么工具”、“抄什么钱包”这种技术层面的问题，而是：如何重建你的思维方式，适应这个变化莫测的市场
☄️Obsession（执念）
执念的定义是：一种强大且持续控制人思想的念头
你见过的每一个天才交易者、成功者，他们的起点也许不同，但他们有一个共同点：都曾陷入对某件事的“执念”中
你看那些人每天泡图表泡20小时，眼都不眨一下，觉得他是不是疯了？不，那是因为他喜欢这个过程，就像你当年玩《堡垒之夜》连续通宵，只因为你想赢得更多
链上交易想做成，必须有这种执念。否则你根本坐不住，也无法日复一日投入十几个小时琢磨同样的事情
所以第一步很简单：你到底够不够喜欢这个游戏？能不能玩疯它？
如果不能，就别进来。因为你会被那些真正的疯子碾压
🧠 改变你的思维方式（Rewire Your Brain）
第一步，清空旧认知。
把你脑子里关于链上交易的偏见统统扔掉：
“Memescope 是赌博！”
“全靠运气！”
“这只是一个零和游戏，没技术含量！”
全是垃圾，忘掉。
链上交易本质上是一场游戏，你赚的每一刀其实都是分数。你的目标是找到市场中的信息不对称和低效区，比其他人先看到
所以，想清楚：
- “你现在看的这个币，有什么是别人还没看到的？”
- “你能预判它未来会受到多少关注吗？”
- “别人会在什么时候发现它的价值？”
如果这些你都答不上来，那就换一个，别交易
这个过程会逼着你思考，逼着你重建判断框架
🎯 如何进步？关键在“专注力最大化（Flow）”
人类天生能进入一种“心流状态”，也叫“沉浸式高效专注”。在这种状态下，你能高效处理大量信息，迅速判断、做出决策。
Senna就曾描述过自己比赛时的体验：“我不再用意识控制赛车，而是全凭本能。我进入了另一个维度，这种感觉太强烈了甚至让我害怕。”
第一次我感受到这种状态时，我一口气干了10小时，仿佛只过了30分钟。全神贯注、极速思考，每个交易都像玩命一样精确。
如何训练这种状态？设定合理的目标：
如果你月均 PnL 有1.5-2万刀，那就不要再设置什么“赚5千”这种无聊目标，因为你根本不会认真对待；
反过来，10k净资产的人如果一心想着下个月赚50万，那也只会感到焦虑，进不了状态。
给自己一个合理又有挑战性的目标，比如：“今天赚2.5 SOL” 或者 “年底前达到6位数净值”，这样你才会真正进入高效状态。
🎮 当前环境下该怎么玩？
现在的链上环境比以往任何时候都更卷。
以前只要买个有锁LP的币就能赚钱。现在？仅靠技术面已经越来越无效了。
真正一直没变的是：人性。
参与者对项目的情绪反应是这个游戏中唯一稳定的变量。
我的核心策略是：蹲 memescope / pulse camp，手动筛所有“迁移完成”的项目，寻找非典型币种——无论是 narrative（叙事）还是 tech（技术）上的差异点
看到疑似潜力项目，我会在低市值（200k以下）买入1-2%的仓位。如果表现不好我退出；如果是真东西，我会加仓
我从不抄单、不靠Volume工具、不看alerts。我脑子里会实时构建一个“注意力热度图”，并基于此决定进场、加仓与否
归根结底，叙事的提前定价，完全取决于你对注意力的预测能力
💥 关于“没进步”、“玩了几年还是菜”的问题
最大的原因就是：你从来不对自己的失败负责
一个币你明明该抓住，却没抓住，还自我安慰说“还有下一个”。久而久之，你就原地踏步，踏破铁鞋也无收获
最经典的案例是 $TRUMP 那一波。大部分人错过之后分两种：
淡定装死，毫无反应（这些人继续摆烂）
焦虑崩溃，自我剖析3天（这些人迅速崛起）
你必须体验失败，感受失败，反思失败。否则你根本不会改变
🌌 是否值得为这件事付出生命中的一段时光？
我会坚定不移地说：值得
如果你真有破局的欲望，肯为它一次又一次重建自己，这将是一个低本金、高爆发力的最好机会
很多人天生就不适合——认知跟不上，思维又死板。但也有一部分人，你们其实有潜力，只是从没真正下注过
不要让人生留白- 投入进去，直到你破解这个谜题
流动性枯竭了，感觉回到了2022。
接触币圈这三年多以来，除了平时在推特上对大大小小的项目做比较系统化的复盘总结，我偶尔也会用笔记工具进行一些碎片化的梳理，昨天抽空翻看了一下，觉得这些经验对自己最终完成Trump上的操作起到了很大帮助，也简单整理一下分享给大家，其中部分文字是直接摘抄的：
2023
5.3
不追求绝对的底部，不要担心卖飞，所谓卖飞的本质是怕错过高倍机会，而一级市场最不怕的就是高倍机会。所谓怕卖飞，对于信息滞后、介入慢的人来说是这样，因为他们可供选择的标的不多，但是玩一级不应该有这种顾虑，抓住10个10倍的机会要比抓住1个100倍的机会容易的多，很可能在追寻后者的过程中损失本金。
7.24
已经不止一次出现这种问题，在自己不熟悉的领域，例如现货投入几十万u，有10~30%的收益却不愿意止盈，在自己熟悉的链上一级市场，总觉得5~10E已经是重仓，而且拿不住也害怕亏损。
8.31
Sei空投和Friend Tech：以最快速度做出能用的技术脚本，响应速度非常重要，慢1天可能就少10倍收益。
Shia：判断土狗币是否是合适的买入点位，应该看预期的上涨空间有多少，而不能简单根据底部筹码的倍数判断，因为大部分土狗币都会有比你买入位置更低的筹码，另一个原因是看到几个群都开始讨论了，于是觉得已经错过了早期机会，但实际上G2老板实名发土狗币应该是类似FUMO级别的利好，至少能发酵几天，如果出于理性判断，而不是被这两种心理导致不敢上的话，应该可以做到百E级别利润，因为逃顶一直是我比较擅长的。
9.3
永远不要在极短时间内把大部分子弹打出去，可以接受少赚一点，不能接受严重亏损甚至爆仓的风险，其次面对自己不熟悉的领域，不要用太想当然的逻辑去操作。
9.4
学习快速干净地止损。别希望自己每次都正确。如果犯了错，越快止损越好。
10.12
今天打牌意识到一点，自己喜欢根据自己的筹码量下注，而非场上形式下注，这带来一个问题就是抗风险能力其实并没有随着筹码量的上升而提高，反而变得更加脆弱。
10.24
小机会可能是免费或只花费时间就能够赚 5000-30000u的预期收益，数量较多且市场容量较有限，风险性较低；
中机会可能是花费时间钻研之后能够赚 50000-300000u的预期收益，投入成本不低，每个月产生该规模的机会不多，市场容量较大，一份风险一份收获。
大机会可能是直接摆在大家面前也很难抓住的机会，往往需要做少数派。一种是投入适中但赔率超乎想象的机会，另一种是投入较高但赔率合理的高概率机会。
2024
1.21
两个年度级别机会的复盘，节点猴和SatoshiVM。能实现利润千万以上级别的项目属于年度级别项目，一个月的时间内已经出现了两次。
节点猴做的不够好的地方在于事先没有调研清楚，居然打完才知道它是第一个比特币上的原创10k PFP，在不知道这个信息的情况下依然判断出了0.03btc是值得参与的，但是没有敢上大仓位，最终投入0.6btc获利3btc左右，这是一个能容纳过亿资金的10倍机会。
SAVM更离谱，关注了一周，在开盘1~2天前分别和三位朋友讨论过项目，结果却没有注意开盘时间导致错过，这是一个可以实现1天千万利润的机会。
在这两个项目上面犯的错误实际是一致的，因为各种原因导致对项目的分析和关注有所懈怠，虽然只是少赚，但是机会成本也是成本，应该极力避免这种情况发生，对于关注度足够或是自己看好的项目，一定要各方面调研清楚。我相信这类机会在一年内会不断出现，平均到月份上可能每1~2个月就有一个可以做到短时间内大资金10倍的项目，下次好好把握。
3.28
这个月的关键词是没有做好止盈，玩链上永远不缺新项目，所以分批出货止盈一定是最优解法，一直以来自己践行的都算出色，这个月为什么没有做好，主要是两个原因，一是因为Bome大家的盈利都太疯狂了，所以对比之下显得钱都变成了数字，几十万u的盈利都不去做止盈，这肯定是一种错误的情绪；二是另两个项目其实都到了卖出的心理价位，但是因为刚发完推不久就暴涨上去，觉得卖出不好意思，其实不必有这种心理，该卖就卖。
4.5
过分保守也是一种冒险。
4.14
Study GCR.
Within alt cycles, you should crank up risk when the trend first reverses, and begin to gradually protect capital as time passes.
People lose because they do the exact opposite;slow early, and increasingly greedy with time.
对宏观和微观都很重要的一条建议，应该在价格最初上涨的时候加大风险敞口，随后慢慢降低，而不是相反，同样对于看好的土狗，前期先以较大仓位建好底仓，后续再做操作，自己往往是底部没买够，涨上去加仓，最后导致亏损
6.10
总结一下自己最近链上操作最大的问题，一是上的仓位不够，且害怕亏损，二是前期犹豫，后期加仓，导致被动，有五六个单币盈利十万u以上的机会，但最后总收益也就只有七八万u
6.18
入圈差不多三年了，最近一直在思考自己平时操作容易犯的错误，不得不说人是很容易受惯性思维影响的。
我算是比较幸运的，进圈不久就接触了链上交易，最开始玩的是BSC上的小池子土狗，后来是NFT，这两者的共性是大部分项目资金容量不大，但是数量多，以小博大，日积月累。
其实现在早已时过境迁了，链上经常会有上百万U的池子，而且因为AMM机制流动性非常好，而CEX除了头部几家交易所里最热门的山寨外，大部分流动性是很差的，但是我脑子里早期形成的思维定式还是潜意识觉得，链上项目不适合用较大资金去参与，大资金还是得去CEX做二级交易。这就导致了一种割裂，明明我所擅长的赛道是链上，现在的热点也是链上，但我往往过度谨慎，反而在交易所下手比较重。
客观来看，以我的能力承担着十分之一的风险、利用着十分之一的本金，就能在链上取得CEX交易山寨同个数量级的利润，我在两者之间下注的比例明显是本末倒置的。这就是我提到的惯性思维所带来的弊病，不过好在终于是渐渐让这个问题暴露了出来，希望早日精进。
7.28
Neiro犯了几个经典错误，第一个是这种级别的叙事，自己第一反应也是很有机会的，结果600k都不敢上，总是莫名其妙顾虑太多，可能是因为要做社群的缘故，容易瞻前顾后，又受特朗普大会一堆死狗的影响，又觉得是20分钟前的新闻，其实完全没有必要过于谨慎，很多压力纯粹是自己给自己的，不需要有太大负担，这种级别的机会还是早期看到的一定要去赌。另外保持敏感性，既然是20分钟前的，为什么想不到去找更早的PumpFun，这些都是要潜意识就去做的操作。
11.3
10月的链上行情达到了又一个高峰，整体结果还可以，应该有盈利50~70万u，但是依然有很多操作没有做好，钻了不该钻的，卖飞了不该卖飞的，简单总结的话，我觉得是新叙事、新赛道的龙头可以格局，例如Goat，Pnut，而仿盘Beta，要及时获利止盈，仿盘上面能浮盈20万u级别就要开始坚决止盈。
11.24
在这笔交易中我愿意损失的最大金额是多少？
链上交易的核心是以小博大，在大部分时候，可以接受投入的本金归零，因为换取的是5~10X甚至更多的利润，除非是重仓高位接盘，那其实类似于二级交易。二级交易的核心是最小化潜在损失，以5~10%的止损认为该交易无效，换取20~50%的潜在收益。每一笔交易，下注前，考虑清楚自己愿意承受的损失是多少。
当有“太容易，太顺利”此类感受的时候，就应该将大部分仓位换成稳定币，经验表明，这样的感受一方面是因为市场到了最容易的阶段，此后容易转向，另一方面也容易因为自负导致误操作。
12.1
下半月投入比较多的项目，大概五六个Meme币，都买入了10~15万u这个数量级，加大链上出手的仓位不是问题，错在正好赶上了链上遇冷，再这样的大背景下，流动性和情绪难以维持，更适合早期以小博大，而不是上仓位追高。
这几个项目的判断本身我觉得没有问题，只是过程执行的细节不好，类似大池子的局，如果要中期上仓位，假如没有推背感，就要及时注意止盈或者止损，而不是拿到归零。
此外Hyperliquid是我一年来都非常看好的项目，开盘也给了3以下买入的机会，结果因为市价单买入成交价高了10%，限价单又没有成交，准备好的50万u只买入了15万u，而且又过早卖出了，最后只获利7万u，对于这个级别的项目操作的非常差，要么投入更多仓位，适当止盈，要么买少了就多拿一拿。
看完就会发现，我花了整整两年多时间，反复练习，加大链上出手的仓位，分批止盈防止卖飞和利润回撤，面对大部分人眼里的“不确定机会”下重注，最后才有了Trump一战的结果。
@Sh1l1b34tRun3St runecoin need you
A Brief History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem - Written on the Eve of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Boom
The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of the few narratives with technological innovation in this cycle, also being the super narrative that has bulled three times during the bear market. On the second anniversary of the Bitcoin ecosystem, this article records the three bull markets of the past two years and pays tribute to those who have steadfastly remained on the Bitcoin ecosystem front line.
⭕️The Birth of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On December 14, 2022, Bitcoin's #Ordinals protocol officially launched. Casey @rodarmor, the father of the Ordinals protocol, inscribed the first inscription: Inscription 0. From then on, the on-chain ecosystem of Bitcoin officially began
The Ordinals protocol can be simply understood as a protocol for inscribing data onto satoshis. The data can be images, text, JSON, GIFs, HTML, etc. Ordinals were born at the bottom of the bear market in this cycle. The market was dead silent with little promotion, so few within the circle knew about it
It wasn't until early February 2023 that the inscription number reached over 10,000 (now over 80 million). Most of these inscriptions were images, with some GIFs and HTML, mostly scattered pictures inscribed by users themselves, along with a few collections ranging from 50 to 200 items, none of which were large in scale
At this time, holders from the CryptoPunks community initiated an activity to inscribe Bitcoin Punks on Ordinals, downloading images of CryptoPunks to inscribe.
Bitcoin Punks was the first 10K NFT collection on Ordinals, which instantly made many, including myself, aware of Ordinals and shocked us: What? Can you inscribe small images on Bitcoin?!
Directly inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain! Immutable and eternal! Giving each NFT inscription a unique inscription number and timestamp! This was a completely new and disruptive narrative... Previously, BTC could only be transferred; now, BTC has an ecosystem where you can inscribe data. [Link to X post]
I was very excited at the time, feeling the same enthusiasm as when blockchain was poised to revolutionize the world in 2017. In the following months, I was almost obsessed with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This was the first time the Ordinals protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem was promoted within the circle. Everyone rushed to inscribe Bitcoin Punks. There was almost no infrastructure at that time, unlike today with so many tools and platforms for inscribing. To inscribe Bitcoin Punks, you needed your own full Bitcoin node and technical knowledge. Despite this, Bitcoin Punks were inscribed within days.
The inscription number from 0 to over 10,000 took over two months, while from over 10,000 to 30,000 took less than a week...
Bitcoin Punks, although not an original collection, brought two rules to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ First is First
Chinese Explanation: Only the first counts. Since anyone can inscribe images on BTC without a smart contract, if two identical punks are inscribed, which one should be included in the collection? Bitcoin Punks proposed the "First is First" principle, recognizing only the earliest inscription, i.e., the one with the earlier inscription number.
Remember this "First" rule; it's extremely important, essentially the rule that runs through the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Without this rule, later protocols like BRC20 and Runes couldn't function.
2/ Fair Launch (Fair Mint)
Bitcoin Punks were not inscribed and distributed by a project team but by users themselves. This set a precedent for Fair Launch in the Bitcoin ecosystem and paved the way for BRC20 and Runes. It also inspired other chains and ecosystems to adopt Fair Launch.
⭕️February to March 2023: The First Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem NFTs
The popularity of Bitcoin Punks sparked the first bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the NFT bull market. This bull market lasted roughly from early February to March 2023. Bitcoin Punks' floor price went from 0.2 ETH to 2 ETH, which was about 0.12 BTC.
For collections in the Sub10K (the first 10,000 inscriptions):
@Block_Munchers OTC price reached 1.2 BTC
@InscribedPepe floor price hit 1.6 BTC
For collections in the Sub1K (the first 1,000 inscriptions):
@OrdinalPunks floor price even reached over 2 BTC.
At the beginning of February, the Bitcoin ecosystem had almost no infrastructure or exchanges. Buying Bitcoin Punks was extremely difficult; you had to find someone in Discord for OTC, with prices only at 0.2-0.3 ETH, and the fee for the MOD's guarantee was 0.1 ETH, which was quite exaggerated. However, everyone was eager to buy because the price was rising so fast. I bought quite a few Bitcoin PUNKS through OTC. @LeonidasNFT also spent several BTC to buy a lot of rare Bitcoin Punks, the founder of the current Runes $dog.
At that time, @z3thnft also set up the earliest Chinese community for Bitcoin Punks, which was quite nostalgic.
Subsequently, several exchanges emerged, like https://t.co/sowEunDgSR, ordinalswallet, and ordswap (which has since run away), providing trading platforms for Bitcoin NFTs, causing prices to surge.
During that period, Bitcoin Punks and Sub10K NFTs were the most popular, with Bitcoin Punks having the highest trading volume. Sub10K could be considered as having a price but no market, with few collections, meaning there were not many desirable NFTs to buy. Many who bought Sub10K inscriptions were quite discreet, treating them as collectibles, not showing them off or selling them.
To buy a Sub10K collection NFT was like archaeology; you'd spend days lurking in various collection DC groups, looking for traces of collectors. Even if you found them, it wasn't guaranteed you could contact them. Buying a desired Sub10K inscription was like finding a beloved antique.
⭕️March to May 2023: A Brief Bear Market
After March, as more NFT projects were launched on Ordinals, the market supply and demand became imbalanced, leading to a bear market lasting two months, which were the most memorable for me.
During this time, although we were all holding onto our NFTs, we were confident in the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Every night, a group of Bitcoin ecosystem old guard members would chat in space, discussing not just money but dreams and the future, imagining the future of ordinals.
During this period, many OG members often hosted Spaces together, including:
@unisat_wallet's founder, @lorenzonical
Official Ordinals DC MOD, @drjingle (Golden Dog Doctor)
OKX wallet's @KKyleChen
idclub's founder, @moffat2021
ordswap's founder, Jack
OrdinalsCN community's creator, CXO.egg
The founder of the first GameFi in the Bitcoin ecosystem, @OrdzGames, @z3thnft
orc-cash protocol's founder, Sonic
@SuZhe_eth from the CryptoPunk and BAYC community
Market gurus paulwei @coolish, @Lioneming
Bitcoin ecosystem science communicator @practice_y11, @ohxiyu, and others.
Many of these OGs are still active today. At that time, everyone's stance was very unified with no significant disagreements, full of optimism for the future, with many idealistic builders.
During this period, two events changed the landscape of the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ The Birth of the Sats Domain Protocol
By late February 2023, the sats domain protocol was born with an inscription number over 160,000, becoming the first domain supported by unisat and xverse.
The sats domain protocol, while seemingly unnoticed, was a significant development. It was a dominant player in the asset category at that time, with active trading.
It adopted the "First is First" principle and the Fair Launch rule from Bitcoin Punks, also pioneering the JSON format for inscriptions.
One major difference between Sats and ETH domains is that there's no project team, it's permanently free. You can transfer by entering the sats domain in the address field. UniSat and Xverse wallets already support it.
The sats domain inspired the later BRC20.
2/ The Birth of BRC20
ProtocolEngineer @domodata, inspired by sats domains, proposed the JSON format for the inscription token protocol, named BRC20, the first token protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first genesis token of BRC20 was $Ordi, deployed by domo, with an inscription number of 348,020.
(I thought Ordi's deployment inscription would be a rare collectible, so I DMed domo asking for the deploy inscription price, and he said he wouldn't sell for less than $1 million🤣.)
However, domo didn't seem confident in his BRC20 protocol, considering it an experimental idea, not suggesting everyone FOMO.
The BRC20 protocol was indeed relatively rudimentary, causing significant waste due to abandoned inscriptions. At the time, discussions on BRC20 were mostly negative, with many questioning why another token protocol with complex procedures was needed when there was already BTC.
However, gamblers with sharp instincts wouldn't miss such an opportunity: better to be wrong than to miss out.
They minted out Ordi in two days, with a total of 21,000 pieces, each at a cost of 2-3usd, which meant each Ordi cost about 0.003usd.
BRC20 was a novelty at the time, with no infrastructure or exchanges, just OTC in WeChat groups, with no one knowing what its future would hold.
After minting, Ordi's price didn't skyrocket but slowly increased. By the end of April, it was around 50usd per piece, an increase of about 20 times from the mint price, valuing Ordi at about 1 million .
Ordi later indeed lived up to the expectations, embarking on its journey to a thousandfold increase.
⭕️May to June 2023: The Second Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Ignited by BRC20
The rise of BRC20 owes the most gratitude to @unisat_wallet. Without Unisat's continuous development, BRC20 would likely have perished under the circumstances at that time.
Thanks to Unisat's efforts, the BRC20 indexing and trading market launched in May, causing BRC20 to surge, with Ordi's price reaching 0.3u, a hundred times its mint price.
A few days after the trading market opened, a bug surfaced where someone exploited a double-spending flaw in Unisat to steal a significant amount of money from trading users. Unisat promptly compensated for all losses caused by the bug.
This incident was major news at the time, covered by all major crypto media outlets, effectively promoting the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC20 on a large scale. Thus, gamblers from outside the ecosystem learned that a casino had opened on Bitcoin, named BRC20.
Gamblers flocked in, starting the first wave of the BRC20 frenzy.
On May 8, Gate exchange listed Ordi, pushing the price to 29.58u, achieving a thousandfold increase, making many early holders extremely wealthy.
On May 15, OKEx listed Ordi, but the price never returned to its previous peak.
Also in May, Binance launched the Ordinals NFT market (which was recently canceled).
How intense was the BRC20 craze at that time? The Bitcoin blockchain's transaction fees once reached over 500 sats/vB. For quite some time, no matter what BRC20 token was inscribed, it would multiply several times. There were too many gamblers, and BRC20 simply couldn't keep up with the demand.
After the BRC20 frenzy, gamblers turned their attention to the Ordinals NFT market. During that period, small NFT images saw significant price surges, some even multiplying several times in value. Among them, @BitcoinFrogs, the Bitcoin Frogs collection, rose in price from 0.002 BTC in March to 0.12 BTC, achieving a 60x increase in BTC terms. At one point, it transitioned from a niche collection to becoming the highest market-cap collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The rise of Bitcoin Frogs marked a turning point in the dynamics of small-picture collections within the Bitcoin ecosystem. People realized that sub-10K collections with low inscription numbers, while appealing to collectors, were less suitable for speculative hype due to their smaller user base. In contrast, 10K-sized collections had a larger user foundation, making it easier to build cultural and community consensus, which fueled speculative trading.
Bitcoin Frogs was hyped as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, frequent giveaways during March and April on Spaces and Twitter contributed to its popularity. At the time, it seemed like everyone in Western Spaces owned a Bitcoin Frog.
Unfortunately, I missed out on Bitcoin Frogs despite encountering it early on. Back then, I was only focused on sub-10K inscriptions and had little interest in small pictures with high inscription numbers. Moreover, I couldn’t appreciate the artistic style of Bitcoin Frogs at the time. As a result, I sold the few frogs I received during the low-price period of March and April at the lowest price possible.
After the BRC20 boom, many JSON-based token protocols emerged, much like how altcoins followed Bitcoin’s creation by tweaking its code. The earliest one was ORC20, which added some smart functionality to the BRC20 standard. Later, protocols like BRC100 and Orc-cash were introduced.
There was also the STAMP protocol, which operates independently of Ordinals. It developed the SRC20 token protocol, allowing users to inscribe small pictures on STAMP.
Other chains also began imitating inscriptions and BRC20. For example:
• The Doge chain introduced the DRC20 token protocol.
• ETH launched ETH inscriptions.
For a time, the entire crypto community was replicating inscriptions and manually creating them. It was a lively and exciting period.
Rare satoshis also became popular for inscriptions. At the time, an Uncommon satoshi was extremely expensive, costing around $1,200. Rare satoshis were even more valuable, with some priced as high as 10 BTC. The Blob team even traded an Epic rare satoshi for 33 BTC.
This wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem lasted for about a month. However, as inscription assets became oversaturated and funds couldn’t keep up, the market fell silent again. After all, the entire crypto industry was still in a bear market cycle.
⭕️From June to October 2023: A Return to Silence, Yet Innovation Continues
After June, the market returned to the bear cycle. BTC’s on-chain fee rate dropped to 1 sats/vbyte. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem still saw significant developments during this period:
1. The 21 Million Sats Inscription Minting Process
The minting of 21 million sats inscriptions continued steadily and was expected to conclude by October 2023.
2. Ordinals Technical Upgrades
Ordinals underwent a series of technological upgrades, including the introduction of Parent-Child Inscriptions, Recursive Inscriptions, and the refinement of Cursed Inscriptions:
• Parent-Child Inscriptions: This feature allows a “parent” inscription to have “child” inscriptions, establishing hierarchical relationships. It can be used for creating NFT collections, similar to how Ethereum NFTs are tied to smart contracts for provenance and ownership verification.
• Recursive Inscriptions: This allows one inscription to reference and combine infinite other inscriptions, like building with Lego blocks. It provides a foundation for creating more complex structures, potentially enabling metaverse-related applications.
• Cursed Inscriptions: Previously, inscriptions not recognized by the Ordinals system were categorized as “cursed inscriptions,” with negative inscription numbers. After the system upgrade, no new cursed inscriptions could be created, and existing cursed inscriptions (approximately hundreds of thousands) were classified and became limited-edition collectibles.
3. Metaverse Land Projects with Bitcoin Blocks
The Bitmap project emerged, which used Bitcoin blocks as a map for metaverse land ownership.
4. Development of BRC420 and Bitcoin Layer 2
The Merlin team initiated the development of the BRC420 protocol and a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution called Merlin.
5. Growth of the Atomics Protocol
Independent of Ordinals, the Atomics protocol gained traction. It introduced a colored coin model for token issuance, characterized by a 1-token-to-1-satoshi relationship. Atomics tokens offered a much simpler and faster transfer process compared to BRC20, resembling Bitcoin’s native transaction style.
6. Casey’s Announcement of the Runes Protocol
Casey, the creator of Ordinals, announced the development of the Runes protocol. Interestingly, his original intent for Ordinals was to build a platform for art galleries, museums, and libraries on Bitcoin. However, the explosive popularity of BRC20 derailed those plans.
Criticisms of the BRC20 Protocol
Casey’s dissatisfaction with BRC20 stemmed from its inefficiencies and waste, which he viewed as misaligned with Bitcoin’s ethos:
1. Excessive UTXOs and Wasteful Inscriptions:
• BRC20 inscriptions serve as one-time ledgers, meaning that once minted or traded, old inscriptions become invalid.
• This creates a massive amount of “trash” in the Ordinals system, with approximately 95% of inscriptions being obsolete. These “discarded papers” take up at least 330 satoshis per UTXO and are expensive to consolidate or use.
2. Complex and Expensive Transactions:
• A BRC20 transfer involves multiple steps:
• First, inscribe a transfer inscription, which incurs inscription and network fees.
• Then, send the inscription, requiring additional network fees.
• As a result, each transfer requires 1 inscription fee + 2 network fees, taking at least two blocks to complete.
The Vision of Runes
Casey sought to address these flaws by creating a token protocol that:
• Avoids producing excessive UTXOs or wasteful inscriptions.
• Enables seamless, Bitcoin-like transfers.
This vision ultimately led to the Runes protocol, designed to preserve Bitcoin’s simplicity while enabling token issuance without the inefficiencies of BRC20.
⭕️November 2023 - April 2024: The Third Mini-Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The third mini-bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem began on November 6th, 2023, when Binance listed Ordi and Sats tokens. This marked the start of another wave of widespread interest in manually inscribing assets, surpassing the frenzy seen in May 2023. The market saw the rise of new BRC20 tokens, notably $Rats, which created immense wealth for many participants.
Key Highlights from the Bull Run
1. Major Price Surges
• Ordi reached an all-time high of $97 in March 2024, achieving a staggering 30,000x gain.
• $Sats peaked at $94 per token, delivering a 300x return.
• $Rats hit a market cap of $600 million, with a 200x price increase.
• Assets from other protocols, such as $Atom and $Quark under the ARC20 protocol, also saw explosive growth. Even the previously overlooked SRC20 tokens experienced a significant rally.
• Bitcoin Frogs (BTC NFT) rose from a low of 0.03 BTC to 0.43 BTC, achieving a 14x increase in BTC terms.
2. Across-the-Board Rally
Virtually all Bitcoin ecosystem assets experienced massive price surges, including those from less popular protocols such as orc20, brc100, brc420, and veda.
3. Market Flow Dynamics
The flow of funds during this bull market replicated that of the May rally:
• BRC20 tokens surged first.
• This was followed by rallies in non-mainstream protocol tokens.
• Finally, the liquidity rotated into the NFT market.
However, this bull market lasted much longer than the one in May 2023.
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys): Changing the BTC NFT Narrative
In late December 2023, a project called Nodemonkes launched using a Dutch auction format, reshaping the BTC NFT market dynamics.
• Inscription Numbers:
Nodemonkes inscriptions range from 83,522 to 111,319, predating Bitcoin Frogs’ inscriptions (321,224–412,389).
This discovery shifted the narrative, as Nodemonkes was recognized as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• Price Performance:
By March 3, 2024, Nodemonkes’ floor price skyrocketed from 0.03 BTC to 0.9 BTC (30x in BTC terms). A rare Alien Nodemonke was sold for 17 BTC (equivalent to 560 ETH at the time), setting the record for the highest transaction in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem.
• Market Impact:
The success of Nodemonkes reignited enthusiasm in the BTC NFT market, cementing its position as a key driver of the bull run.
https://t.co/YNxTgKJhqq
https://t.co/u2XU5OYm7I
Merlin’s L2 staking has also begun, supporting staking for almost all Bitcoin ecosystem assets, including NFTs, BRC20, and BRC420 assets. Merlin is a pioneer in Bitcoin Layer 2 and kicked off the BTCfi era. Despite facing various doubts along the way, the final result has provided users with very impressive staking rewards.
Regarding Runes, Casey announced early on that the Runes protocol would launch in April with the Bitcoin halving block.
In late January, the RSIC project introduced an innovative pre-mining mechanism for Runes, cleverly designing a human game theory and reward system. Subsequently, a large number of RSIC-inspired pre-mining projects were born, including the current leader in Runes, $DOG. RSIC and DOG were even valued at 400-500 million before the official Runes protocol launch.
Between late January and April, before Bitcoin’s halving, NFT and Runes pre-mining projects saw extremely active trading. At that time, almost everyone’s attention was focused on Runes, with discussions in groups and spaces dominated by Runes. Everyone believed that Runes would be a revolutionary token protocol for the Bitcoin ecosystem, sure to trigger another wave of Bitcoin ecosystem growth
But as the saying goes: “What gets too hot will eventually die.” The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment. The Runes protocol launched in April, and it burned bright for about 10 days before dying down, with a shorter duration than the BRC20 market surge
The reasons are as follows:
1/ High initial expectations, with market forecasts being overextended. Many people cashed out pre-mined projects with overvalued estimates.
2/ Only 3-4 Runes in the top 100 were Fair Launch tokens, while the others had reserved allocations, which reduced the playability and lowered user participation.
3/ The Runes names must be at least 13 characters long, and the character count only reduces by one every four months. This strange setting made the token names long and awkward
4/ As the only official Genesis Rune #UNCOMMOMGOODS, Casey set a four-year mint cycle for it, which deprived this potentially top token of short-term speculative appeal, discouraging speculators hoping to profit during the bull market
In conclusion, while the Runes protocol is nearly perfect in design and mechanics, it also challenges traditional token minting rules and naming conventions. Casey’s personal aesthetic as an engineer is evident here. Clearly, the market did not buy in in the short term.
⭕️From May 2024 to Now: The Dormancy After the Market Frenzy
Ordi dropped from 97 to a low of 20
Sats dropped from 94 to a low of 11
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys) dropped from 0.9BTC to a low of 0.09BTC
Bitcoin Frogs dropped from 0.43BTC to a low of 0.028BTC
The Runes protocol never saw an explosive rise. Various Rune tokens continued to decline.
Other non-mainstream protocol assets have fallen back to being ignored, with many projects with low user numbers now on the brink of death.
The Bitcoin ecosystem has become like an accelerated version of the cryptocurrency market, experiencing three rounds of bull and bear markets in just two years.
In early November 2024, Bitcoin led the entire cryptocurrency market into a fierce bull market. It has been over a month now, and all cryptocurrency sectors, even long-neglected altcoins, have surged. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem remains stagnant, showing no signs of recovery
⭕️Conclusion
As the only segment with technical innovation in this cycle, the Bitcoin ecosystem will not miss out on the explosive bull market. The 7 months of dormancy and accumulation have built up enough strength.
Looking at every previous bull market in history, it is always capital that drives asset bubbles.
–– When the capital (numerator) is large, and the asset (denominator) is small, the inflation of assets becomes more severe, and the bull market effect is more pronounced.
This is particularly evident in the three rounds of Bitcoin ecosystem bull markets because the asset pool of the Bitcoin ecosystem is shallower.
Currently, the total assets of the Bitcoin ecosystem are less than 10 billion, which is less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s market value
In contrast, the total market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 300 billion, accounting for 66% of Ethereum’s total market value
At this point, the story and innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem are far from over. A large number of technically innovative projects are still in the pipeline, such as BTCfi, L2, and Runes’ DeFi, among others. The Bitcoin ecosystem still has many narratives waiting to be explored.
![AresWey's tweet photo. A Brief History of the Bitcoin Ecosystem - Written on the Eve of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Boom
The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of the few narratives with technological innovation in this cycle, also being the super narrative that has bulled three times during the bear market. On the second anniversary of the Bitcoin ecosystem, this article records the three bull markets of the past two years and pays tribute to those who have steadfastly remained on the Bitcoin ecosystem front line.
⭕️The Birth of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
On December 14, 2022, Bitcoin's #Ordinals protocol officially launched. Casey @rodarmor, the father of the Ordinals protocol, inscribed the first inscription: Inscription 0. From then on, the on-chain ecosystem of Bitcoin officially began
The Ordinals protocol can be simply understood as a protocol for inscribing data onto satoshis. The data can be images, text, JSON, GIFs, HTML, etc. Ordinals were born at the bottom of the bear market in this cycle. The market was dead silent with little promotion, so few within the circle knew about it
It wasn't until early February 2023 that the inscription number reached over 10,000 (now over 80 million). Most of these inscriptions were images, with some GIFs and HTML, mostly scattered pictures inscribed by users themselves, along with a few collections ranging from 50 to 200 items, none of which were large in scale
At this time, holders from the CryptoPunks community initiated an activity to inscribe Bitcoin Punks on Ordinals, downloading images of CryptoPunks to inscribe.
Bitcoin Punks was the first 10K NFT collection on Ordinals, which instantly made many, including myself, aware of Ordinals and shocked us: What? Can you inscribe small images on Bitcoin?!
Directly inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain! Immutable and eternal! Giving each NFT inscription a unique inscription number and timestamp! This was a completely new and disruptive narrative... Previously, BTC could only be transferred; now, BTC has an ecosystem where you can inscribe data. [Link to X post]
I was very excited at the time, feeling the same enthusiasm as when blockchain was poised to revolutionize the world in 2017. In the following months, I was almost obsessed with the Bitcoin ecosystem.
This was the first time the Ordinals protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem was promoted within the circle. Everyone rushed to inscribe Bitcoin Punks. There was almost no infrastructure at that time, unlike today with so many tools and platforms for inscribing. To inscribe Bitcoin Punks, you needed your own full Bitcoin node and technical knowledge. Despite this, Bitcoin Punks were inscribed within days.
The inscription number from 0 to over 10,000 took over two months, while from over 10,000 to 30,000 took less than a week...
Bitcoin Punks, although not an original collection, brought two rules to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ First is First
Chinese Explanation: Only the first counts. Since anyone can inscribe images on BTC without a smart contract, if two identical punks are inscribed, which one should be included in the collection? Bitcoin Punks proposed the "First is First" principle, recognizing only the earliest inscription, i.e., the one with the earlier inscription number.
Remember this "First" rule; it's extremely important, essentially the rule that runs through the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. Without this rule, later protocols like BRC20 and Runes couldn't function.
2/ Fair Launch (Fair Mint)
Bitcoin Punks were not inscribed and distributed by a project team but by users themselves. This set a precedent for Fair Launch in the Bitcoin ecosystem and paved the way for BRC20 and Runes. It also inspired other chains and ecosystems to adopt Fair Launch.
⭕️February to March 2023: The First Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem NFTs
The popularity of Bitcoin Punks sparked the first bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the NFT bull market. This bull market lasted roughly from early February to March 2023. Bitcoin Punks' floor price went from 0.2 ETH to 2 ETH, which was about 0.12 BTC.
For collections in the Sub10K (the first 10,000 inscriptions):
@Block_Munchers OTC price reached 1.2 BTC
@InscribedPepe floor price hit 1.6 BTC
For collections in the Sub1K (the first 1,000 inscriptions):
@OrdinalPunks floor price even reached over 2 BTC.
At the beginning of February, the Bitcoin ecosystem had almost no infrastructure or exchanges. Buying Bitcoin Punks was extremely difficult; you had to find someone in Discord for OTC, with prices only at 0.2-0.3 ETH, and the fee for the MOD's guarantee was 0.1 ETH, which was quite exaggerated. However, everyone was eager to buy because the price was rising so fast. I bought quite a few Bitcoin PUNKS through OTC. @LeonidasNFT also spent several BTC to buy a lot of rare Bitcoin Punks, the founder of the current Runes $dog.
At that time, @z3thnft also set up the earliest Chinese community for Bitcoin Punks, which was quite nostalgic.
Subsequently, several exchanges emerged, like https://t.co/sowEunDgSR, ordinalswallet, and ordswap (which has since run away), providing trading platforms for Bitcoin NFTs, causing prices to surge.
During that period, Bitcoin Punks and Sub10K NFTs were the most popular, with Bitcoin Punks having the highest trading volume. Sub10K could be considered as having a price but no market, with few collections, meaning there were not many desirable NFTs to buy. Many who bought Sub10K inscriptions were quite discreet, treating them as collectibles, not showing them off or selling them.
To buy a Sub10K collection NFT was like archaeology; you'd spend days lurking in various collection DC groups, looking for traces of collectors. Even if you found them, it wasn't guaranteed you could contact them. Buying a desired Sub10K inscription was like finding a beloved antique.
⭕️March to May 2023: A Brief Bear Market
After March, as more NFT projects were launched on Ordinals, the market supply and demand became imbalanced, leading to a bear market lasting two months, which were the most memorable for me.
During this time, although we were all holding onto our NFTs, we were confident in the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Every night, a group of Bitcoin ecosystem old guard members would chat in space, discussing not just money but dreams and the future, imagining the future of ordinals.
During this period, many OG members often hosted Spaces together, including:
@unisat_wallet's founder, @lorenzonical
Official Ordinals DC MOD, @drjingle (Golden Dog Doctor)
OKX wallet's @KKyleChen
idclub's founder, @moffat2021
ordswap's founder, Jack
OrdinalsCN community's creator, CXO.egg
The founder of the first GameFi in the Bitcoin ecosystem, @OrdzGames, @z3thnft
orc-cash protocol's founder, Sonic
@SuZhe_eth from the CryptoPunk and BAYC community
Market gurus paulwei @coolish, @Lioneming
Bitcoin ecosystem science communicator @practice_y11, @ohxiyu, and others.
Many of these OGs are still active today. At that time, everyone's stance was very unified with no significant disagreements, full of optimism for the future, with many idealistic builders.
During this period, two events changed the landscape of the Bitcoin ecosystem:
1/ The Birth of the Sats Domain Protocol
By late February 2023, the sats domain protocol was born with an inscription number over 160,000, becoming the first domain supported by unisat and xverse.
The sats domain protocol, while seemingly unnoticed, was a significant development. It was a dominant player in the asset category at that time, with active trading.
It adopted the "First is First" principle and the Fair Launch rule from Bitcoin Punks, also pioneering the JSON format for inscriptions.
One major difference between Sats and ETH domains is that there's no project team, it's permanently free. You can transfer by entering the sats domain in the address field. UniSat and Xverse wallets already support it.
The sats domain inspired the later BRC20.
2/ The Birth of BRC20
ProtocolEngineer @domodata, inspired by sats domains, proposed the JSON format for the inscription token protocol, named BRC20, the first token protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first genesis token of BRC20 was $Ordi, deployed by domo, with an inscription number of 348,020.
(I thought Ordi's deployment inscription would be a rare collectible, so I DMed domo asking for the deploy inscription price, and he said he wouldn't sell for less than $1 million🤣.)
However, domo didn't seem confident in his BRC20 protocol, considering it an experimental idea, not suggesting everyone FOMO.
The BRC20 protocol was indeed relatively rudimentary, causing significant waste due to abandoned inscriptions. At the time, discussions on BRC20 were mostly negative, with many questioning why another token protocol with complex procedures was needed when there was already BTC.
However, gamblers with sharp instincts wouldn't miss such an opportunity: better to be wrong than to miss out.
They minted out Ordi in two days, with a total of 21,000 pieces, each at a cost of 2-3usd, which meant each Ordi cost about 0.003usd.
BRC20 was a novelty at the time, with no infrastructure or exchanges, just OTC in WeChat groups, with no one knowing what its future would hold.
After minting, Ordi's price didn't skyrocket but slowly increased. By the end of April, it was around 50usd per piece, an increase of about 20 times from the mint price, valuing Ordi at about 1 million .
Ordi later indeed lived up to the expectations, embarking on its journey to a thousandfold increase.
⭕️May to June 2023: The Second Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem Ignited by BRC20
The rise of BRC20 owes the most gratitude to @unisat_wallet. Without Unisat's continuous development, BRC20 would likely have perished under the circumstances at that time.
Thanks to Unisat's efforts, the BRC20 indexing and trading market launched in May, causing BRC20 to surge, with Ordi's price reaching 0.3u, a hundred times its mint price.
A few days after the trading market opened, a bug surfaced where someone exploited a double-spending flaw in Unisat to steal a significant amount of money from trading users. Unisat promptly compensated for all losses caused by the bug.
This incident was major news at the time, covered by all major crypto media outlets, effectively promoting the Bitcoin ecosystem and BRC20 on a large scale. Thus, gamblers from outside the ecosystem learned that a casino had opened on Bitcoin, named BRC20.
Gamblers flocked in, starting the first wave of the BRC20 frenzy.
On May 8, Gate exchange listed Ordi, pushing the price to 29.58u, achieving a thousandfold increase, making many early holders extremely wealthy.
On May 15, OKEx listed Ordi, but the price never returned to its previous peak.
Also in May, Binance launched the Ordinals NFT market (which was recently canceled).
How intense was the BRC20 craze at that time? The Bitcoin blockchain's transaction fees once reached over 500 sats/vB. For quite some time, no matter what BRC20 token was inscribed, it would multiply several times. There were too many gamblers, and BRC20 simply couldn't keep up with the demand.
After the BRC20 frenzy, gamblers turned their attention to the Ordinals NFT market. During that period, small NFT images saw significant price surges, some even multiplying several times in value. Among them, @BitcoinFrogs, the Bitcoin Frogs collection, rose in price from 0.002 BTC in March to 0.12 BTC, achieving a 60x increase in BTC terms. At one point, it transitioned from a niche collection to becoming the highest market-cap collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The rise of Bitcoin Frogs marked a turning point in the dynamics of small-picture collections within the Bitcoin ecosystem. People realized that sub-10K collections with low inscription numbers, while appealing to collectors, were less suitable for speculative hype due to their smaller user base. In contrast, 10K-sized collections had a larger user foundation, making it easier to build cultural and community consensus, which fueled speculative trading.
Bitcoin Frogs was hyped as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, frequent giveaways during March and April on Spaces and Twitter contributed to its popularity. At the time, it seemed like everyone in Western Spaces owned a Bitcoin Frog.
Unfortunately, I missed out on Bitcoin Frogs despite encountering it early on. Back then, I was only focused on sub-10K inscriptions and had little interest in small pictures with high inscription numbers. Moreover, I couldn’t appreciate the artistic style of Bitcoin Frogs at the time. As a result, I sold the few frogs I received during the low-price period of March and April at the lowest price possible.
After the BRC20 boom, many JSON-based token protocols emerged, much like how altcoins followed Bitcoin’s creation by tweaking its code. The earliest one was ORC20, which added some smart functionality to the BRC20 standard. Later, protocols like BRC100 and Orc-cash were introduced.
There was also the STAMP protocol, which operates independently of Ordinals. It developed the SRC20 token protocol, allowing users to inscribe small pictures on STAMP.
Other chains also began imitating inscriptions and BRC20. For example:
• The Doge chain introduced the DRC20 token protocol.
• ETH launched ETH inscriptions.
For a time, the entire crypto community was replicating inscriptions and manually creating them. It was a lively and exciting period.
Rare satoshis also became popular for inscriptions. At the time, an Uncommon satoshi was extremely expensive, costing around $1,200. Rare satoshis were even more valuable, with some priced as high as 10 BTC. The Blob team even traded an Epic rare satoshi for 33 BTC.
This wave of excitement in the Bitcoin ecosystem lasted for about a month. However, as inscription assets became oversaturated and funds couldn’t keep up, the market fell silent again. After all, the entire crypto industry was still in a bear market cycle.
⭕️From June to October 2023: A Return to Silence, Yet Innovation Continues
After June, the market returned to the bear cycle. BTC’s on-chain fee rate dropped to 1 sats/vbyte. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem still saw significant developments during this period:
1. The 21 Million Sats Inscription Minting Process
The minting of 21 million sats inscriptions continued steadily and was expected to conclude by October 2023.
2. Ordinals Technical Upgrades
Ordinals underwent a series of technological upgrades, including the introduction of Parent-Child Inscriptions, Recursive Inscriptions, and the refinement of Cursed Inscriptions:
• Parent-Child Inscriptions: This feature allows a “parent” inscription to have “child” inscriptions, establishing hierarchical relationships. It can be used for creating NFT collections, similar to how Ethereum NFTs are tied to smart contracts for provenance and ownership verification.
• Recursive Inscriptions: This allows one inscription to reference and combine infinite other inscriptions, like building with Lego blocks. It provides a foundation for creating more complex structures, potentially enabling metaverse-related applications.
• Cursed Inscriptions: Previously, inscriptions not recognized by the Ordinals system were categorized as “cursed inscriptions,” with negative inscription numbers. After the system upgrade, no new cursed inscriptions could be created, and existing cursed inscriptions (approximately hundreds of thousands) were classified and became limited-edition collectibles.
3. Metaverse Land Projects with Bitcoin Blocks
The Bitmap project emerged, which used Bitcoin blocks as a map for metaverse land ownership.
4. Development of BRC420 and Bitcoin Layer 2
The Merlin team initiated the development of the BRC420 protocol and a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution called Merlin.
5. Growth of the Atomics Protocol
Independent of Ordinals, the Atomics protocol gained traction. It introduced a colored coin model for token issuance, characterized by a 1-token-to-1-satoshi relationship. Atomics tokens offered a much simpler and faster transfer process compared to BRC20, resembling Bitcoin’s native transaction style.
6. Casey’s Announcement of the Runes Protocol
Casey, the creator of Ordinals, announced the development of the Runes protocol. Interestingly, his original intent for Ordinals was to build a platform for art galleries, museums, and libraries on Bitcoin. However, the explosive popularity of BRC20 derailed those plans.
Criticisms of the BRC20 Protocol
Casey’s dissatisfaction with BRC20 stemmed from its inefficiencies and waste, which he viewed as misaligned with Bitcoin’s ethos:
1. Excessive UTXOs and Wasteful Inscriptions:
• BRC20 inscriptions serve as one-time ledgers, meaning that once minted or traded, old inscriptions become invalid.
• This creates a massive amount of “trash” in the Ordinals system, with approximately 95% of inscriptions being obsolete. These “discarded papers” take up at least 330 satoshis per UTXO and are expensive to consolidate or use.
2. Complex and Expensive Transactions:
• A BRC20 transfer involves multiple steps:
• First, inscribe a transfer inscription, which incurs inscription and network fees.
• Then, send the inscription, requiring additional network fees.
• As a result, each transfer requires 1 inscription fee + 2 network fees, taking at least two blocks to complete.
The Vision of Runes
Casey sought to address these flaws by creating a token protocol that:
• Avoids producing excessive UTXOs or wasteful inscriptions.
• Enables seamless, Bitcoin-like transfers.
This vision ultimately led to the Runes protocol, designed to preserve Bitcoin’s simplicity while enabling token issuance without the inefficiencies of BRC20.
⭕️November 2023 - April 2024: The Third Mini-Bull Market of the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The third mini-bull market in the Bitcoin ecosystem began on November 6th, 2023, when Binance listed Ordi and Sats tokens. This marked the start of another wave of widespread interest in manually inscribing assets, surpassing the frenzy seen in May 2023. The market saw the rise of new BRC20 tokens, notably $Rats, which created immense wealth for many participants.
Key Highlights from the Bull Run
1. Major Price Surges
• Ordi reached an all-time high of $97 in March 2024, achieving a staggering 30,000x gain.
• $Sats peaked at $94 per token, delivering a 300x return.
• $Rats hit a market cap of $600 million, with a 200x price increase.
• Assets from other protocols, such as $Atom and $Quark under the ARC20 protocol, also saw explosive growth. Even the previously overlooked SRC20 tokens experienced a significant rally.
• Bitcoin Frogs (BTC NFT) rose from a low of 0.03 BTC to 0.43 BTC, achieving a 14x increase in BTC terms.
2. Across-the-Board Rally
Virtually all Bitcoin ecosystem assets experienced massive price surges, including those from less popular protocols such as orc20, brc100, brc420, and veda.
3. Market Flow Dynamics
The flow of funds during this bull market replicated that of the May rally:
• BRC20 tokens surged first.
• This was followed by rallies in non-mainstream protocol tokens.
• Finally, the liquidity rotated into the NFT market.
However, this bull market lasted much longer than the one in May 2023.
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys): Changing the BTC NFT Narrative
In late December 2023, a project called Nodemonkes launched using a Dutch auction format, reshaping the BTC NFT market dynamics.
• Inscription Numbers:
Nodemonkes inscriptions range from 83,522 to 111,319, predating Bitcoin Frogs’ inscriptions (321,224–412,389).
This discovery shifted the narrative, as Nodemonkes was recognized as the first original 10K collection in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• Price Performance:
By March 3, 2024, Nodemonkes’ floor price skyrocketed from 0.03 BTC to 0.9 BTC (30x in BTC terms). A rare Alien Nodemonke was sold for 17 BTC (equivalent to 560 ETH at the time), setting the record for the highest transaction in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem.
• Market Impact:
The success of Nodemonkes reignited enthusiasm in the BTC NFT market, cementing its position as a key driver of the bull run.
https://t.co/YNxTgKJhqq
https://t.co/u2XU5OYm7I
Merlin’s L2 staking has also begun, supporting staking for almost all Bitcoin ecosystem assets, including NFTs, BRC20, and BRC420 assets. Merlin is a pioneer in Bitcoin Layer 2 and kicked off the BTCfi era. Despite facing various doubts along the way, the final result has provided users with very impressive staking rewards.
Regarding Runes, Casey announced early on that the Runes protocol would launch in April with the Bitcoin halving block.
In late January, the RSIC project introduced an innovative pre-mining mechanism for Runes, cleverly designing a human game theory and reward system. Subsequently, a large number of RSIC-inspired pre-mining projects were born, including the current leader in Runes, $DOG. RSIC and DOG were even valued at 400-500 million before the official Runes protocol launch.
Between late January and April, before Bitcoin’s halving, NFT and Runes pre-mining projects saw extremely active trading. At that time, almost everyone’s attention was focused on Runes, with discussions in groups and spaces dominated by Runes. Everyone believed that Runes would be a revolutionary token protocol for the Bitcoin ecosystem, sure to trigger another wave of Bitcoin ecosystem growth
But as the saying goes: “What gets too hot will eventually die.” The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment. The Runes protocol launched in April, and it burned bright for about 10 days before dying down, with a shorter duration than the BRC20 market surge
The reasons are as follows:
1/ High initial expectations, with market forecasts being overextended. Many people cashed out pre-mined projects with overvalued estimates.
2/ Only 3-4 Runes in the top 100 were Fair Launch tokens, while the others had reserved allocations, which reduced the playability and lowered user participation.
3/ The Runes names must be at least 13 characters long, and the character count only reduces by one every four months. This strange setting made the token names long and awkward
4/ As the only official Genesis Rune #UNCOMMOMGOODS, Casey set a four-year mint cycle for it, which deprived this potentially top token of short-term speculative appeal, discouraging speculators hoping to profit during the bull market
In conclusion, while the Runes protocol is nearly perfect in design and mechanics, it also challenges traditional token minting rules and naming conventions. Casey’s personal aesthetic as an engineer is evident here. Clearly, the market did not buy in in the short term.
⭕️From May 2024 to Now: The Dormancy After the Market Frenzy
Ordi dropped from 97 to a low of 20
Sats dropped from 94 to a low of 11
Nodemonkes (Node Monkeys) dropped from 0.9BTC to a low of 0.09BTC
Bitcoin Frogs dropped from 0.43BTC to a low of 0.028BTC
The Runes protocol never saw an explosive rise. Various Rune tokens continued to decline.
Other non-mainstream protocol assets have fallen back to being ignored, with many projects with low user numbers now on the brink of death.
The Bitcoin ecosystem has become like an accelerated version of the cryptocurrency market, experiencing three rounds of bull and bear markets in just two years.
In early November 2024, Bitcoin led the entire cryptocurrency market into a fierce bull market. It has been over a month now, and all cryptocurrency sectors, even long-neglected altcoins, have surged. However, the Bitcoin ecosystem remains stagnant, showing no signs of recovery
⭕️Conclusion
As the only segment with technical innovation in this cycle, the Bitcoin ecosystem will not miss out on the explosive bull market. The 7 months of dormancy and accumulation have built up enough strength.
Looking at every previous bull market in history, it is always capital that drives asset bubbles.
–– When the capital (numerator) is large, and the asset (denominator) is small, the inflation of assets becomes more severe, and the bull market effect is more pronounced.
This is particularly evident in the three rounds of Bitcoin ecosystem bull markets because the asset pool of the Bitcoin ecosystem is shallower.
Currently, the total assets of the Bitcoin ecosystem are less than 10 billion, which is less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s market value
In contrast, the total market cap of the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 300 billion, accounting for 66% of Ethereum’s total market value
At this point, the story and innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem are far from over. A large number of technically innovative projects are still in the pipeline, such as BTCfi, L2, and Runes’ DeFi, among others. The Bitcoin ecosystem still has many narratives waiting to be explored.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ge0HPzkbIAE5x5g.png)
@bioprotocol BIO/ACC
@kevwuzy It's time to SEND NODES！
@BTCBruce1 大B哥牛逼，冲啊
@LianhuaQiao 我会拿到下一次BTC生态热度爆发
当大家都疯狂讨论的时候开始出货
@LianhuaQiao runecoin是目前BTC生态为数不多的几个好项目之一（只要他不RUG）。
要么等他出产品，要么等币安上一个BTC生态的代币重新激活铭文符文热度。（如果可能的话）
I was a co-founder of Ordinals. I’ve never said that publicly, and to my knowledge, nobody else has either. But it’s true.
Before Casey, I was already working on implementing NFTs on Bitcoin. When he told me he believed he was the best person in the world to do it, I agreed. His unique blend of skills — an elite engineer with deep knowledge of Bitcoin transactions and a love of art — made him perfect for the task. He is an artisan.
Casey wrote the code with Raph, Ordinally, and a few others. From day one, I was on every dev call with Casey and Raph. For the most part, it was just the three of us. Ordinally too sometimes. When we did spaces on X, hardly anyone showed up. I remember an Indian guy once came on stage and said Ordinals was the best thing ever, then he vanished. Casey eventually canceled the spaces due to a lack of interest.
After the mainnet launch, inscriptions were slow. At times, I inscribed things myself to create the illusion of more interest, hoping to motivate Casey and Raph. They’d ask if I did it, and I’d lie and say no.
Then it happened — suddenly, the whole world cared. The weight of that attention was overwhelming, but it was an incredible experience that transformed my life in ways I’m still processing, both good and bad.
I left in March 2023.
Maybe I’ll share more details someday, but for now, I’d rather focus on the future. I just needed to get this off my chest.
Quoquo modo. 🫡
@scriptdotmoney @fractal_bitcoin @CodeMorePanda bc1p2fqch6ep9duy9new6uyak8enmkjx8ggvz0estnd5w58alxplyvfsu4l72c
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