OKX NFT marketplace volume surpasses Blur, OpenSea amid Bitcoin Ordinals frenzy

OKX’s non-fungible token trading platform surpassed Blur and OpenSea in daily trading volume as NFT enthusiasts appear to continue trading Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs.

OKX NFT Marketplace recorded a 24-hour trading volume of $50.33 million as of 2 p.m. Hong Kong time — making it the largest NFT marketplace by daily trading volume, according to data from DappRadar. Blur came in second with a daily trading volume of $13.21 million, followed by Magic Eden’s $7.63 million, UniSat’s $3.82 million and OpenSea’s $3.25 million.

“OKX has become the number one NFT marketplace after enabling trading of BTC Ordinals NFTs,” Nick Ruck, chief operating officer of ContentFi Labs, told The Block. “Blur and OpenSea have not yet allowed trading of these Bitcoin-based NFTs, so they’ve started to fall behind in terms of volume due to the huge demand of Ordinals.”

The rise of OKX’s platform comes as the NFT trading volume on the Bitcoin network climbed to $305.44 million in the week of Dec. 10 to Dec. 17 from $121.28 million in the previous week, according to CryptoSlam data. The NFT trading volume on Ethereum in the same week amounted to $93.45 million, while Solana saw $90.74 million.

“The primary catalyst behind this remarkable growth can be attributed to OKX’s strategic support for BRC-20 tokens and Bitcoin Ordinals,” R.J. Ke, a researcher at Ethereum scaling firm Taiko, said. “This includes their collaboration with the UniSat Wallet to develop a cross-verification process for BRC-20 transaction indexing on the Bitcoin blockchain and the development of an official BRC-20 explorer.”

Ke, however, added that it’s crucial to highlight that investment markets, especially those as nascent and dynamic as cryptocurrency, are prone to saliency bias. “This tendency is more pronounced in the crypto market due to its relative immaturity, the scarcity of extensive historical data, and the predominance of retail investors who are often influenced by market hype.”

Bitcoin Ordinals has been the talk of the industry since earlier this year, with many firms attempting to capitalize on the trend. Ordinals-based Tap Protocol, for example, announced over the weekend that it raised $4.2 million to develop on Bitcoin.