The market value of Ordinals Coin (ORDI) crossed the $1 billion mark on Monday, the first Bitcoin Ordinal-linked memecoin to pass that milestone. 

ORDI has climbed 45% in the past 24 hours to $63.22 and is up more than 1,800% since early August when it was trading at about $3.20. ORDI’s market cap at its low in that month dripped below $8 million. 

A large part of the token’s gains came after Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, listed the token in early November. Binance listed ORDI under its “seed” tag used for innovative projects that potentially come with higher volatility and risk. 

But the token also appears to have benefited from wider market forces that sent bitcoin over $44,000 early Tuesday (EST), its highest level since April 2022. 

Renewed Enthusiasm

Christopher MacPherson, an analyst at digital asset investment firm Arca, noted in an email to Unchained that ORDI is the largest BRC-20 token in the Ordinals ecosystem, and has seen its price surge more than 600% since being listed on major centralized exchanges Binance, Kucoin and Gate.io.

“In addition to these listings, ORDI benefits from the potential Bitcoin ETF and a renewed sense of enthusiasm around building on Bitcoin,” MacPherson wrote.

Earlier this week, crypto publication CoinDesk also named Ordinals Theory creator Casey Rodarmor to its Most Influential 2023 list. 

Bitcoin (BTC) has a total cap supply of 21 million bitcoins. Each bitcoin can be subdivided into 100 million units called satoshis. Earlier this year, the Ordinals protocol was launched to allow developers to write and store information such as text or images on those satoshis. The protocol essentially brought non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the Bitcoin network. 

The native token standard of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol is BRC-20, a similar idea to the ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, which can then be used to mint other coins such as ORDI.

In an email to Unchained, Brian D. Evans, the CEO and founder of crypto- and AI-focused venture capital firm BDE Ventures, wrote, “It makes sense that as Bitcoin performs well, ORDI and related tokens will also do well.”

UPDATE (December 5, 2023, 18:14 EST): Added Evans quote.