By Michael Scott
Investment and assets management giant Franklin Templeton considers the Bitcoin Ordinals a popular project portraying positive momentum in innovations powering BTC activity.
Franklin Templeton illustrates that Bitcoin Ordinals have, in the past 12 months, affirmed their influence in the digital collectible world. The Bitcoin Ordinals caught the attention of the firm’s crypto assets division and was featured in the new prospectus.
Franklin Templeton Witnesses Accelerated Activity in Ordinals
Franklin Templeton’s digital assets division indicated that the Bitcoin network has witnessed a renaissance in activity, resulting in innovations and development in the past year. The investment firm noted that the positive momentum is primarily fueled via Bitcoin nonfungible tokens popularly identified as Ordinals. Besides, Bitcoin hosts BRC-20, Layer 2, Runes and other decentralized finance (DeFi) primitives.
Franklin Templeton reflected on the accelerated activity portrayed by Bitcoin NFTs following the release of the Ordinal protocol by Casey Rodarmor last year. The project traces back to 2022, when Rodarmor unveiled the ordinal theory concept, assigning a unique number to Satoshi. Each Satoshi in the network portrays the lowest denomination to the Bitcoin.
Franklin Templeton illustrated that digital assets researchers continually survey the crypto ecosystem.
The scrutiny allows the team to observe market activity witnessed in the trading volume and market value surge witnessed recently on Ordinals compared to the NFTs running on other networks.
Ordinals Collections Surge in the NFT Market
Franklin Templeton’s digital assets division observed the surge in Ordinal collections within the NFT market. The segment has seen increased trade volume and a market cap that it attributes to NodeMonkes, Ordinal Maxi Biz, Bitcoin Puppets, Runestone and Bitmap and is new to its prospectus.
Franklin Templeton illustrates that Bitcoin Ordinals have witnessed a trading volume surge beginning towards the end of 2023. In particular, the Franklin Templeton Digital Assets indicates that the dominance started in December 2023 when it triumphed over ETH in trading volume.
The digital assets division at the investment firm is a vocal proponent of crypto and blockchain technology. The team advocated for going full degen following the approval of the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) by the Gary Gensler-led Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Community Excited on Runestone Protocol
The Runestone project contributor and the anonymous NFT historian identified pseudonymously as Leonidas and hailed Franklin Templeton for its progressive input to the digital assets. Also, the firm’s venture arm has committed huge investments towards the Ordinals’ infrastructure startups.
The developer indicates that it is unsurprising that Runestone appears on the digital asset radar. He revealed that Runestone is barely a month since its unveiling and has witnessed a speedy rise across various blockchains to rank as the third-largest NFT collection by market value.
Franklin Templeton portrays a keen interest in the digital assets ecosystem and has been actively involved since the approval of Bitcoin ETF. The investment firm turned its attention to Ethereum and Solana, particularly in February.
Franklin Templeton filed its bid seeking approval from the SEC to issue the spot Ethereum ETF. The proposal was disclosed in a bullish tweet that triggered excitement among the Ordinals community.
The community led by NFT archaeologist Adam McBride hailed the surge in Ordinals trading volume, signalling increased interest. Magic Eden chief operating executive Z Yin illustrated that the segment is bound to witness energized activity.
Yin considers the Rune protocol a new NFT standard that Casey Rodarmor plans to unveil during the Bitcoin Halving, which will supercharge the entire Bitcoin network.
Yin considers that the Runes will not only supercharge the ecosystem but also open up opportunities for new builders’ and assets’ waves on layer-1 chains.
The Magic Eden chief considers the awareness of Rune’s potential made it inevitable for its addition to the existing Ordinals marketplace. The decision is supported by the surge in trading volume to surpass $1 billion in 2024.
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