Bitcoin has moved past 117 million Ordinal inscriptions, while cumulative NFT sales on the network are nearing $5.8 billion. That puts Bitcoin in third place among blockchains by all-time NFT sales, behind Ethereum and Solana, and ahead of Ronin.
Ordinal inscriptions kept growing well after the initial surge
Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor introduced the Ordinals protocol on Dec. 14, 2022, and the first inscription was minted two days later. Interest accelerated in early 2023 and pulled Bitcoin into a part of the digital collectibles market that had long been dominated by other chains.
Ordinals allow arbitrary data such as images, text, code, and applications to be attached directly to individual satoshis through the witness field of a Taproot transaction. Under ordinal theory, each satoshi is assigned a serial number based on mining order, which makes it possible to attach data onchain without changing Bitcoin’s base protocol.
By September 2024, Bitcoin had reached 75 million inscriptions. The total passed 100 million in the first week of November 2025. As of the second week of January 2026, ordinals.com showed more than 117 million inscriptions, and both ord.io and ordinals.com recorded the figure officially crossing that level on Jan. 15, 2026.
Miners collected about $646 million in inscription fees
Data parsed from Dune.com, with an estimated 10.3% undercount, suggests Bitcoin miners have collected roughly $646 million in inscription fees. The total measured fee intake tied to inscriptions stands at about 7,092 BTC.
Most of that revenue was generated around Bitcoin’s fourth halving and in the period leading up to it. Since then, inscription-related income for miners has dropped sharply compared with earlier peaks, even though activity on the network has continued.
Bitcoin ranks third in NFT sales and has overtaken Ronin
According to cryptoslam.io, Bitcoin now holds $5.8 billion in total NFT sales. Only Ethereum and Solana rank higher. The report notes that, if Solana’s numbers were unchanged, Bitcoin would still need about $688 billion in additional sales to catch up.
Bitcoin is now ahead of Ronin, the network associated with Axie Infinity NFTs, which has recorded $4.3 billion in sales. Bitcoin’s total also exceeds Polygon’s $2.2 billion and Flow’s $1.73 billion.
On shorter time frames, Bitcoin posted $6.9 million in NFT sales over the last seven days, placing third. Over the last month, it climbed to second place with $62 million in sales after an 88% month-over-month increase.
Sales kept building even as NFT hype lost momentum
The broader NFT boom that defined 2020 and 2021 is no longer central to daily crypto discussion, and retail attention has shifted elsewhere. Even so, Bitcoin’s NFT figures have continued to rise. In that sense, the network’s advance looks less like a renewed cultural craze and more like a quiet change in the rankings, driven by ordinals and a narrower but persistent user base.