Introduction to BRC-20 token standard.
Crypto regulars must know this simple rule by now, that the trend is your friend. This has applied in trading derivatives or leveraged trading where traders follow the direction of the market because you don’t wanna bet against the trend. Well this same rule applies to more than just derivatives in crypto. Old coins or tokens often perform less in every cycle, even Bitcoin included. It’s nothing bad and is simply due to the large market cap gained over the period of time, making it incapable of high pumps and dumps. You could say they are rhetorically becoming stable coins. New coins or tokens will surely have enough juice in them especially when they are adopted massively. BRC-20 tokens are the new trends, where one of them has even pumped about 23000% in the past 5 months. Just mind blowing right… but many people are still not aware of this new wave and why they are so important. But as an introduction you should know that they are worth looking into and being a part of especially with the bull run around the corner. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
What are BRC-20 tokens?
They are new programmable tokens that are built on the Bitcoin blockchain. We all know how massive bitcoin is yet very isolated in its might and only repeats a continuous 4 year cycle.
For such a long time, one altcoin has been the standard upon which other tokens including NFTs and Memes have been built on and that’s the Ethereum standard, also called ERC-20 standard. This has brought so much utilization to the Ethereum network making it the largest single ecosystem in the blockchain industry with a whooping $145B TVL(Total Value Locked) in 2023. But unlike the ERC-20 token , the BRC-20 token doesn’t require smart contracts to function; rather it uses the Ordinal protocols which programmers have enabled to send fungible tokens with bitcoin wallets from one wallet to the other.
Ordinals
With the short introduction of BRC-20 Tokens above; I would like to continue with the creation of ordinals so you get a good idea of the back story to led to this huge moment.
The main idea of ordinals was birthed in a bid to add more functions to the bitcoin blockchain other than just sending bitcoin. So this was made possible by assigning ordinal numbers(ordinals) to satoshis and by so doing tracks their movement across transactions. This is like saying you can attach different forms of data(images, audios, codes…) to satoshis on the bitcoin network . The best part is that ordinals can also anchor other types of tokens like NFTs, Security tokens and more.
Learn more about the creation of BRC-20 ORDINALS with the video below.
Getting Started With Ordinals: Interacting with the Ordinals Protocol.
Just like many protocols out there, you will need a dedicated marketplace or decentralized application to interact with them. Here with ordinals you will need to create a bitcoin ordinals wallet. It is essential you get this dedicated wallet because it has a feature called taproot enabled on the wallet which was initially added for more security on the Bitcoin network.
Best wallets to get started with on Ordinals
- Unisat wallet.: this tops the list because it is the first and largest efficient marketplace for ordinals.
- Leather wallet
- Xverse wallet
Step
- Go to https://unisat.io/ and create a new wallet.
- Set a password and recovery phrase.
- Click on receive to copy address or scan a QR code
- Deposit some bitcoins from a centralized exchange e.g. Coinbase or Binance
Watch this video below for a step by step guide on how to create an ordinals wallet.
After successful creation of your wallet, you will need to carry out some transactions to really be in the loop and secure a spot for yourself in this new Bitcoin kind of opportunity. But note that you will need to have deposited some Bitcoin into your ordinals wallet. Upon the successful deposit you need to probably go to mint some BRC-20 NFTs or even trade some of the tokens.
Watch this video below for a step by step guide on how to buy bitcoin ordinals NFTs, Bitcoin frogs and more