(Some Fortune Crypto pricing data is provided by Binance.)
More from Fortune: 5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year—all while working from home Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now Buying a house? Here's how much to save This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home
Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the most interesting news in the world of NFTs, culture, and the metaverse. Email marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
Although long known for financial utility, the Bitcoin blockchain was never a player when it came to NFTs, which became one of the main use cases for Ethereum, followed later by Solana and Polygon.
But the Bitcoin network just surpassed Solana in NFT sales volume over the past seven days, and now trails only Ethereum, according to CryptoSlam. While some critics have said Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, slow down the network and increase fees, supporters have said the tech will enhance the blockchain.
One such supporter is Bob Bodily, who is working on an NFT marketplace for Ordinals called bioniq. Bodily told me that by the time the 10th Ordinal was inscribed earlier this year, he knew the technology was going to be huge. Two factors stand out to him as evidence that Ordinals have even more room to grow: Bitcoin’s $518 billion market cap—still more than twice Ethereum’s—and the fact that with Ordinals all data for an NFT are on-chain.
“A lot of collections are down pretty bad, and so the fact that you have the excitement and the energy of Ordinals in the middle of a bear market, I think it's pretty telling,” he told Fortune.
Already, he noted, Bitcoin is attracting developers who originally were Bitcoin advocates but found it hard to build on-chain. He said he's seen several developers starting to build on Bitcoin again after leaving years ago for Bitcoin Cash, which was created as a result of a disagreement between developers in 2017.
Decrypt reported on Thursday that the network is also attracting developers from Ethereum, which has long been attractive for teams looking to build dapps that use smart contracts.
Ordinals have exploded in popularity, with 9.3 million inscriptions created since they were introduced in December, according to Dune. Soon enough we’ll see whether Ordinals have opened the door to a flurry of new applications for Bitcoin, or if, ultimately, it’s just another hype cycle.
New launch spotlight
Binance wants to facilitate your next NFT loan. With the Binance NFT Loan product announced this week, the world’s largest crypto exchange is offering users 3.36% interest rates on loans, whose amount can fluctuate depending on the price floor of an NFT that's put up for collateral. Only NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, and Doodles collections are currently accepted.