The latest figures indicate that the Bitcoin blockchain has recorded over 12.49 million Ordinal inscriptions as of June 18, 2023. This sustained trend has resulted in substantial gains for Bitcoin miners, who have earned a total of 1,732 BTC, equivalent to $46 million using current exchange rates, from these inscriptions. These earnings were accumulated from various types of transactions confirmed by Bitcoin miners, including traditional financial transfers and the inscriptions above. Despite this positive news for Bitcoin miners, the BRC20 economy has suffered a significant decline in value due to Bitcoin’s recent price drop. As of June 18, BRC20 tokens had a market valuation of $141.97 million, with a trading volume of approximately $25.51 million within the past 24 hours. This is a notable drop in value from its previous valuation of nearly half a billion dollars. Several top BRC20 tokens have been affected by the decline, such as ORDI and PEPE, which have seen their values drop from $11.36 to $6.263 and $0.20 to $0.050 per token, respectively, in just two weeks. Despite the decline in the BRC20 market valuation, the number of BRC20 tokens has grown by over 38% since June 3. Marketplaces such as Magic Eden, Okx, Ordinals Market, Ordswap, Ordinals Wallet, Open Ordex, Gamma, and Unisat continue to witness active trading of BRC20 and Ordinal inscriptions. This growth in the number of BRC20 tokens is in contrast to the decline in the value of these tokens, indicating that there may still be significant interest in trading them. Regarding the Ordinal inscriptions themselves, the majority of them are plain text, accounting for 90.7% of all inscriptions. The remaining portion comprises various file formats such as JPEGs, PNGs, SVGs, GIFs, video files, software files, and applications. Out of the overall inscriptions, a significant 11,259,647 are composed solely of plain text. In terms of Bitcoin-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs), sales have decreased by more than 22% in the past week, totaling $21.49 million in sales, according to data from cryptoslam.io. The second highest-priced NFT sold during this period was a Bitcoin-based “uncategorized Ordinal,” which fetched $3.52 million. This decrease in NFT sales may be related to the recent downturn in the crypto market, which has affected the value of several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and BRC20 tokens. Source: Bitcoin.com

The cryptocurrency market has been experiencing a bearish trend lately as the total market capitalization fell to $1.02 trillion on June 15, its lowest level in three months. This is due to regulatory uncertainty and lack of transparency on stablecoins, with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, XRP, and Ether experiencing losses while others like BNB saw small gains. The regulatory environment is also worsening globally, with exchanges such as Bakkt delisting certain cryptocurrencies due to recent regulatory developments in the United States, and Binance facing legal and regulatory challenges in France and the Netherlands. Despite this, two derivatives metrics show balanced demand for BTC and ETH leverage, indicating that bulls are not yet giving up. Perpetual futures contracts have a neutral seven-day funding rate for BTC and ETH, indicating balanced demand from leveraged longs (buyers) and shorts (sellers). However, BNB was the only exception, with traders paying up to 1% per week for short bets due to added risks after regulatory scrutiny over the Binance exchange. The Tether premium is also a good gauge of China-based crypto retail trader demand, and it measures the difference between China-based peer-to-peer trades and the United States dollar. The Tether premium in Asian markets fell to 99.2% after being flat since June 6, indicating moderate discomfort. Reports on June 16 regarding Tether reserves’ exposure to Chinese debt markets could have been the cause. Despite the most recent bounce from the support level, any gains above $1.12 trillion in capitalization (up 10% from the $1.02 trillion low) will likely be short-lived over the next few months. Consequently, bears are yet to prove their strength if they intend to push crypto below the $1 trillion mark. Bulls are hoping for a Bitcoin ETF approval or a Federal Reserve rate cut to trigger a potential bull market, with the Bitcoin halving still over 300 days away. Source: Cryptopanic