Bitcoin nonfungible token (NFT) sales have surpassed Ethereum in the past week, thanks to a surge in Bitcoin Ordinals-based NFT collections, particularly the NodeMonkes collection. In total, Bitcoin NFT sales have increased by 80% to reach $168.5 million, with three of the top five best-selling NFT collections being Bitcoin Ordinals-based. On the other hand, Ethereum drew in $162 million in sales during the same period, according to data from CryptoSlam!.
Despite having half the number of buyers compared to Ethereum, Bitcoin led in sales for the week. The Ordinals platform, which was launched in January 2023, allows users to create NFT-like assets by inserting files, such as images, into satoshis (sats) — the smallest unit of Bitcoin. The highest sales were recorded by the Uncategorized Ordinals collection, with over $43 million worth of sales across more than 47,000 transactions. The Bitcoin-based NodeMonkes collection came in second with over $41 million in sales, marking a nearly 170% increase from the previous week. The Natcats collection from Ordinals secured the fourth spot with over $10 million in sales.
NodeMonkes is a collection of 10,000 unique pixelated profile picture (PFP)-style NFTs. It was launched in December and claims to be the first 10,000-strong collection on Bitcoin. While other 10,000 count Ordinals collections had been launched earlier, the NodeMonkes team managed to etch their collection onto the blockchain in February 2023, just a month after the launch of Ordinals.
The recent attention garnered by the NodeMonkes collection is still unclear. However, NFT collector GRAYCRAFT founder Kevin Wu mentioned in a post on February 22 that NodeMonkes possesses “meaningful provenance” as it is the first PFP-style NFT collection on “the first chain ever.” This unique aspect gives it a “great competing narrative” that speculative investors may now be interested in. DCinvestor, another NFT collector, questions whether NodeMonkes is the best NFT collection in the world.