OKX to Offer Ordinals Trading Within its Wallet by June
Lightning Network support will be coming to the OKX Wallet as well
photo_gonzo/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
OKX will be debuting a marketplace within its wallet that supports minting trading Bitcoin Ordinals across over 60 supported chains by June.
Right now, users can only view and transfer their Ordinals in OKX’s wallet, but this week, they’ll be able to trade BRC-20 tokens. By late May, customers will be able to mint Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens within the wallet.
And by June, the ability to trade Ordinals will come to the OKX platform. That follows Binance plans to add Bitcoin NFT compatibility to its marketplace.
OKX Chief of Innovation Jason Lau told Blockworks that his company is “bullish” on Bitcoin and Ordinals.
“What we’re really excited to see is this new energy around expanding the use cases of Bitcoin [and] expanding the design space that allows developers and users to start to tinker and do more with Bitcoin,” Lau said.
There are hurdles to adoption, though, because Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens are a new way to transact, Lau said. Accessibility and ease of use are things OKX is trying to tackle.
In a bid to make things less complicated for current traders of Ordinals, Lau told Blockworks that OKX partnered with open source Bitcoin wallet UniSat to sync up their respective indexers.
“We’re working with that community to make sure that there’s no conflict between how we recognize these Ordinals and how we recognize these BRC-20 transactions on top of the blockchain,” Lau said.
Another potential headache for OKX is how to deal with the cyclical nature of crypto and NFTs. It’s hard to predict when people will be interested in trading, so there’s often a boom and a bust.
Currently, NFT daily trading volumes have come way down since this year’s peak in late February. More specifically, the daily trading volume for Ordinals skyrocketed in early May, topping at over $15 million on May 8.
Bitcoin even broke transactions records set way back in the bull run of 2017 thanks to Ordinals. Since then, the numbers have come back down to reality.
“The highs are high and the lows are low…if people aren’t keen on NFTs today, that’s okay. There’s other things for them to do, even if they’re just managing and safely storing their assets,” Lau said.
He continued, “We are taking a very long term approach to this. We believe that users will ultimately not only be playing with NFTs but they’ll be doing it across multiple chains.”
Additionally, the Seychelles-based crypto exchange will soon support the Bitcoin Lightning Network on the OKX Wallet. Previously, Lightning was only supported on the exchange.
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