Franklin Templeton Highlights Ordinals as a Catalyst for Bitcoin Innovation

Experts from Franklin Templeton’s digital assets division have identified Ordinals as a key driver of a “renaissance of activity” in Bitcoin’s development in 2023.

The Rise of Bitcoin Ordinals pic.twitter.com/nKLwwlMM4d

— Franklin Templeton Digital Assets (@FTI_DA) April 3, 2024

“The positive momentum in innovation is primarily driven by Bitcoin NFTs, known as Ordinals, new fungible tokens like BRC-20 and Runes, L2 protocols, and DeFi primitives,” the company’s specialists stated.

They noted that network activity began to accelerate following the introduction of the NFT solution in the form of “inscriptions.” The concept was proposed by Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor at the end of 2022.

Franklin Templeton emphasized that previous attempts to implement non-fungible tokens on the blockchain of digital gold had not been successful.

With the advent of Ordinals, Bitcoin has steadily gained market share in the NFT sector, surpassing Ethereum in trading volume of assets in December 2023, the experts pointed out.

Among Ordinals collections, they highlighted NodeMonkes, Runestone, Bitcoin Puppets, Ordinal Maxi Biz, and Bitmap. The company’s analysts based their assessments on market capitalization and 30-day trading volumes.

In March, Franklin Templeton specialists joined the criticism of meme tokens. In their view, such coins lack intrinsic value, are devoid of utility, and are extremely volatile. They later reiterated their position with an ironic post on X.

pic.twitter.com/nfDroxSzJS

— Franklin Templeton Digital Assets (@FTI_DA) March 28, 2024

In February, Franklin Templeton filed an application for the registration of a spot Ethereum ETF.

The company is the issuer of a similar product based on Bitcoin, which received approval from the SEC in January, along with 10 other proposals.