Last year, Bitcoin Ordinals took the digital collectibles world by storm, and now they've caught the attention of financial titan Franklin Templeton. The global investment firm's digital assets division revealed common texts in a new prospectus today.
Franklin Templeton of Digital Assets writes that “the past year has seen a resurgence in Bitcoin innovation and development activity.” “Positive progress in innovations is mainly driven by Bitcoin NFTs, known as Ordinals, launching new fungible tokens like BRC-20 and Runes, Bitcoin Layer 2s and other Bitcoin DeFi primitives.”
After Cassie Rodrmore released its formal protocol last year, the company has taken a step towards accelerating activity around Bitcoin NFTs. In the year In 2022, Rodermore developed the concept of “Random Theory”, which assigns a specific number to each Satoshi on the network.
A spokesperson for Franklin Templeton told Decrypt: “Our digital assets research team regularly examines the entire digital asset ecosystem. This piece is particularly driven by the recent increase in trading and normal market value of NFTs on other networks.”
Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has laid out a set of regulars in the NFT market by volume and market capitalization, highlighting Nodmonks, Runestones, Bitcoin Puppets, Ordinal MaxiBiz, and Bitmaps – possibly unfamiliar terms in one of their prospects.
“Bitcoin Ordinals has seen an increase in transaction volume over the past several months,” said Franklin Templeton Digital Assets. “This is reflected in the increase in its dominance that started to surpass ETH trading in December 2023.”
The digital assets group at Franklin Templeton has been a proponent of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology on social media, and in January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was going “full-blown” after the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first round of Bitcoin ETFs, including the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC).
“Franklin Templeton is very progressive when it comes to digital assets, and their creative arm has been behind the scenes investing in the Ordinals infrastructure startup,” Runestone Project contributor and anonymous NFT historian Leonidas told Decrypt on Twitter. “It's no surprise to me that Runestone is on the radar of their digital assets team.
“Runestone dropped only three weeks ago and as of today has become the third largest NFT collection by market value across all blockchains,” he added.
After his Bitcoin ETF went on the market, without wasting any time, Franklin Templeton turned his attention to Ethereum and Solana. In February, Franklin Templeton filed a proposal for the SEC spot Ethereum ETF.
A response to a bully tweet from Franklin Templeton Digital Properties has been met with enthusiasm by the Ordinal community.
🫡🫡🫡🫡
— Magic Eden on Bitcoin 🟧 (@MEonBTC) April 3, 2024
One account tweeted “turns, turns and turns” in response.
NFT archaeologist Adam McBride has responded to the US capture of Saddam Hussein by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”
Last week, Zi Yin, co-founder and chief operating officer of Magic Eden, said the upcoming Rune protocol—a new cryptographic standard launched by Casey Rodermore during Bitcoin's halving this month—”will further enrich the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
“Runes will further enrich the Bitcoin ecosystem, opening up new types of structures and assets,” Yin told Decrypt.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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