Magic Eden launches Bitcoin market as ordinal listings continue to grow

Magic Eden, one of the largest cross-chain NFT platforms, has launched a Bitcoin marketplace for digital artifacts, the company shared on Tuesday.

“We are already a multi-chain platform and believe that adding Bitcoin will connect us to a deep community of people and a rapidly growing collectibles market through Ordinals,” said Zhuoxun Yin, COO and co. -founder of Magic Eden, at TechCrunch. “Adding a Bitcoin marketplace allows us to continue our multi-chain vision.”

Ordinals, an NFT-like project on the Bitcoin blockchain, has grown significantly since the first listing in December. As of mid-February, over 90,000 ordinals were registered – which is the jargon for created (or minted) – on the Bitcoin blockchain. About a month later, there are over 400,000 registrations on the Bitcoin blockchain, up 344% in that time, Magic Eden shared.

Prior to the announcement, Magic Eden supported NFT trading on Solana and Polygon and provided aggregate listings for Ethereum-based NFTs. The platform is backed by major companies like Paradigm, Sequoia, Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures and others, and has over 22 million unique visitors per month and over 100,000 wallets logging into its network daily, its site says. website.

Magic Eden Launches Bitcoin Marketplace could be a significant step forward as there are limited tools and products for the blockchain trading market, which has made the space inaccessible and unsafe for non-professional users. In the future, this could extend its reach to a wider audience.

The launch will also integrate two noncustodial crypto wallets, Hiro and Xverse, so users can process transactions.

“The Bitcoin NFT ecosystem is very new, and much of the tools that exist today are suboptimal and lack robust security measures,” Yin said. “We want to seriously focus on security and transparency while leveraging our brand so people can feel safe trading their Ordinals, opening up the ecosystem to flourish even more. “

While the overall NFT market continues to grow, the subsector is still figuring out its product-market fit, Yin believes. “The growth of Bitcoin NFTs indicates that there is a market for people who want to own real digital artifacts or collectibles.”

Magic Eden has “always taken a long-term view” that NFTs will be the center of culture for many years to come, Yin said.

While NFTs have grown in popularity in the crypto industry, the mainstream world is still slow to adopt it, although major brands and companies like Starbucks, Adidas and Nike have launched initiatives over the year. elapsed to implement NFT type products and services.

For the initial Magic Eden beta launch of its Bitcoin Marketplace, it selected 13 collections to partner with, including Taproot Wizards, Inrated Pepes, and Bitcoin Bandits, to name a few. These collections were selected because they were among the first to be listed and had the “strongest communities”, Yin said. “We see value in partnering with early adopters, as many of them have been pioneers of ordinal theory as well as contributors to Bitcoin culture for many years.”

In the near future, all Bitcoin listings will be available for trading on Magic Eden, Yin noted. In the long term, Magic Eden plans to continue to develop new use cases on new chains.

“Despite where the market is, we continue to build in the bear and show people that we are doubling down on our commitment to the long-term potential of NFTs,” Yin added.