Bitcoin non-fungible token (NFT) sales have surged in the past week, surpassing Ethereum sales due to a sudden increase in Bitcoin Ordinals-based NFT collections, particularly led by the NodeMonkes collection.
Sales of Bitcoin NFTs jumped by 80% week-over-week to reach $168.5 million, with three of the top five best-selling NFT collections being Bitcoin Ordinals-based. In comparison, Ethereum sales totaled $162 million for the same period, according to data from CryptoSlam!.
The Ordinals platform, launched in January 2023, allows users to create NFT-like assets by embedding files, such as images, into satoshis (sats) – the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
The top-selling collection was the Uncategorized Ordinals, with sales exceeding $43 million across more than 47,000 transactions. Following closely was the NodeMonkes collection, a Bitcoin-based series of 10,000 unique pixelated profile pictures (PFP), which saw sales of over $41 million, marking a nearly 170% increase from the previous week.
NodeMonkes claims to be the first 10,000-strong collection on Bitcoin, having been launched in December. Despite other 10,000 count Ordinals collections existing prior to NodeMonkes, its team managed to etch their collection onto the blockchain in February 2023, just a month after Ordinals’ launch.
NodeMonkes’ market capitalization has soared to over $500 million, making it the third-largest PFP-style NFT collection across all blockchains, trailing only the Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
While the exact reason for NodeMonkes’ recent surge in attention remains unclear, some speculate that its significance as the first PFP-style NFT collection on the “first chain ever” could be driving speculative investors to buy into it, as noted by NFT collection GRAYCRAFT founder Kevin Wu in a post on February 22.
