What is an Ordinal / Inscription?
How do I get started?
How do I buy and sell?
What is an ordinal / inscription?
An inscription or ordinal refers to data that is inscribed onto a single Satoshi, which is the smallest unit of Bitcoin. This data can be in the form of images, text, or any other information, as long as it fits within the size limit of the Bitcoin blockchain and is accepted by miners.
Compared to Ethereum, writing data on the Bitcoin blockchain is much cheaper. This is why Ethereum stores its non-fungible token (NFT) metadata off-chain. Nevertheless, all data written onto the Bitcoin blockchain is permanent and cannot be modified or deleted.
Are you wondering how to get started with ordinals and where to look? The first step is to obtain a wallet that can manage ordinals correctly. Sending your inscribed Satoshi to a standard BTC address could result in it being lost or accidentally spent.
You can visit https://ordinalswallet.com to set up a wallet and begin your journey. Once you have set up the wallet, it will be ready to receive your inscriptions. It is not necessary to send BTC to this wallet unless you plan to send your inscriptions elsewhere in the future.
As for purchasing ordinals, there are several marketplaces popping up, but we recommend ordswap.io. Here, you can connect to a Metamask and generate a new wallet to buy and sell ordinals. If you are using a ledger, please note that you will need to use the ETH app instead of the BTC app. Once you have a wallet on https://ordswap.io, you can send BTC to the address provided and start buying from the market.
It's important to keep in mind that this is still a very early market, and improvements will come in time. Nevertheless, this is an exciting and rapidly growing market, and these steps will help you get started.
