BRC-20 coins, or altcoins built on the Bitcoin network, have reached over $300 million in market capitalization within just 2 months of their release. So it’s gaining momentum these days. There are more than 13,000 tokens in circulation on the platform. According to network metrics, most meme coins are also transitioning to the BRC-20 standard. Trends indicate that there is a BRC-20 meme coin craze on the Bitcoin network.
Excitement continues for BRC-20 coins
Currently, there are many coins that have the BRC-20 standard. The most popular ones in circulation are ORDI, PEPE, PIZA, MEME, MOON, PUNK, DOMO, OSHI, XING and SHIB. The BRC-20 version of Pepe, for example, has a market capitalization of approximately $17.6 million. The other top BRC-20 token accounts for 86.55 percent of the total $300 million market cap. According to Dune Analytics, the highest number of transactions were recorded on the last trading day, with an average fee of close to 400,000 and more than 245 BTC. The total fee for these Bitcoin Ordinals was 641 BTC.
With the rise of these tokens, the Bitcoin ecosystem is facing a very high demand for BRC -20 tokens. These are essentially text-based Ordinals, which are nothing but new types of NFTs created on the Bitcoin Blockchain. According to Glassnode data, the network is experiencing high demand for block space driven by BRC-20 tokens. From another perspective, transaction fees in Bitcoin exceeded 400 BTC on May 7, an 18-fold increase from a month ago.
Also, the growing demand for these tokens has put the entire network in deep trouble. Currently, there are approximately 400,000 unconfirmed transactions assumed to have occurred due to these BRC-20 tokens. Meanwhile, fees have also increased drastically, with mining rewards becoming parabolic. The latest Taproot update has simplified productizing the Bitcoin block field in any arbitrary protocol. Therefore, certainly not as an attack on the Bitcoin network. On the contrary, it can be considered as a chance to improve the usage areas of the platform.
Meme coins clog the Bitcoin network
Bitcoin BRC-20 minting sees the daily Ordinals fee hit all-time highs. Just like PEPE and WOJAK (meme coins) clogging Ethereum, Ordinals printing is clogging the Bitcoin network. BRC-20 tokens have clearly taken over the Bitcoin network and these tokens have reached a market cap of $541 million so far. The platform has a total of 14,079 tokens, most of which are meme coins. This has been a major reason for the growth of NFTs as well as Ordinals.
A possible reason for meme coins to shift to BRC-20 could be because meme coins have clogged the Ethereum network. PEPE, a popular meme token, has greatly contributed to this congestion. As we reported on cryptokoin.com, meme coin has taken over the community recently and has increased by about 40,000 percent. The popularity of Ordinals has also led to Binance stopping BTC withdrawals. The exchange stopped withdrawals twice within 12 hours due to a large amount of pending transactions. The fact that these meme coins are influencing the world’s largest crypto exchange proves that we are in the midst of a frenzy right now.
BRC-20 tokens are exchangeable tokens on Bitcoin. It’s an experimental token standard, but users are starting to flock to it, as evidenced by the high activity. While the BRC-20 is taking over the network, work is already underway for a new standard called BRC-21. The new standard was first proposed on May 7. BRC-21 will allow the minting and Bitcoin Blockchain and redemption of tokens on other chains. The documents describe the main use case of the BRC-21 standard as “embedding decentralized stablecoins on the Lightning Network or similar payment protocols.”
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