Binance has just launched its Inscription Marketplace, a new platform dedicated to inscriptions that will let users trade BRC-20, EVM, and other inscription tokens.
The crypto exchange is looking to capitalize on the hype as inscriptions expand beyond Bitcoin, but do these digital assets have a future, or are they just a fad?
Inscriptions are similar to NFTs and initially used the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol so users could transact images on the network. While Ordinals arose as a solution to the Bitcoin network's unique limitations, developers building on other networks soon began replicating the process on other chains. Currently, there are over 11 blockchains that have their own inscriptions, such as Polygon's PRC-20 or Ethereum's Ethscriptions.
The popularity of ordinals and inscriptions has grown in the last few months. In December, the BRC-20 token ORDI crossed the $1 billion market cap mark, and in January, NodeMonkes was the seventh top NFT collection by trading volume, according to DappRadar.
OKX, whose current leading position among NFT marketplaces is largely due to its listing of Bitcoin Ordinals, announced last week that it will start listing inscriptions from four other chains in February.
But inscriptions have also been dividing opinions within the crypto community.
Their success so far is attracting people looking to make a profit. But puritans are concerned over the negative impact inscriptions have on blockchains, such as clogging the network or leading to a massive increase in transaction fees.
In opening up the new marketplace, Binance is looking to tap into the increasing demand for these tokens. After a year since their launch, Bitcoin Ordinals are showing signs of maturity; the same might not happen for other blockchain inscriptions.
Looking at the closely related market of non-fungible tokens, which has been around for much longer than that of inscriptions, it is possible to see that the collections which survived the market downturn have either artistic value, strong community building, or utility.
Contrary to that, most inscription collections so far have focused exclusively on being novelty items to trade.
Furthermore, while anything Bitcoin-related is highly likely to generate interest, other chains do not share the same status level.
Binance claims that its "arrival into this space is timely rather than belated, marking the ripe moment for Binance users to explore and benefit from this evolving realm."
Yet, as the latest data already points to a notable decline in trading levels from the December peak, it raises questions over whether Binance Inscription Marketplace has arrived in time, and how long it will last.
