Over 7.7M Bitcoin Ordinals Minted Despite BTC USDT Crashing In Q4 2025

Ben Graham · January 16

The Bitcoin price started the week strongly before flatlining from Wednesday. All in all, the BTC USDT price is trading at over $95,000, holding firm despite the sideways move. For now, the ideal target stays at $100,000. If this level is breached, it is likely that Bitcoin and crypto will, once again, trend, attracting “extra” activities.

Good or bad, network activity is gauged by the number of transactions. A healthy BTC USDT uptrend, lifting some of the top Solana meme coins, for instance, should be marked by swelling on-chain activity. If the number of transactions spikes, it means more users are actually posting transactions, not just HODLing, hoping to strike gold.

Apart from ordinary BTC transactions and transfers, Bitcoin is emerging as a “store” of other files, including JPEGs, audio, texts, and more. This is all after the Taproot upgrade, which paved the way for Ordinals, and it has not been the same.

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What are Bitcoin Ordinals?

Ordinals are Bitcoin’s version of NFTs. Think of a satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, like a single penny. Ordinals let people attach images, text, or code directly to that penny and store it permanently on Bitcoin. This became possible after the Bitcoin Taproot upgrade, which opened extra space inside transactions.

After Taproot, anyone can “inscribe” texts on the Bitcoin network without relying on sidechains. Most importantly, inscription is possible even without changes to Bitcoin’s rules. Unlike NFTs on Ethereum, for example, Ordinals live on Bitcoin itself and can’t be removed. Ordinals use a completely different logic. Instead of a separate contract that points elsewhere, data is written into the witness section of a Bitcoin transaction.

When you buy a typical NFT on Ethereum, the blockchain doesn’t usually “hold” the image or video. Because storing large amounts of data on a blockchain is very expensive, the NFT is essentially a smart contract containing a URL link. That link often points to third parties like IPFS or a centralized database where the file is stored.

The design choice adopted by Bitcoin ordinals matters. It means these NFTs inherit Bitcoin’s security and permanence, which appeals to collectors who value durability over flashy features. More than 107.7M Ordinal inscriptions now live on the Bitcoin blockchain. On December 29, fees spent on Bitcoin ordinals stood at over $48,000.

(Source: Dune)

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Over 7.7M Ordinals Minted In Q4 2025 Despite BTC USD Price Falling

In October 2025, the cumulative number of Ordinals inscribed on the Bitcoin network crossed the 100M mark. Since then, over 7.7M more files have been “minted” and sold on marketplaces. Interestingly, millions of files were inscribed despite the Bitcoin price falling to nearly $81,000 in November 2025.

(Source: Dune)

Ordinarily, when crypto prices fall, on-chain activity tends to contract. This trend is mostly seen in meme coin activity on networks like Solana. However, on Bitcoin, the over 7.7M inscriptions made were timely and taken by opportunistic creators. When the price of Bitcoin falls, transaction activity usually slows down.

In the Bitcoin world, this means the Mempool, the waiting room for transactions, clears out, and network fees drop. For creators wanting to inscribe high-resolution art or large collections, a Bitcoin price dip is the “sale” they’ve been waiting for. It can be cheaper to inscribe an Ordinal during a quiet market than during a bull run.

Besides files and monkey pictures that often define ordinals, there is a shift. Creators are rushing to mint BRC-20 tokens and Runes. These are text-based inscriptions that act like tokens, like meme coins. Because they are just small snippets of text, they take up very little space. Traders often continue to mint these regardless of the Bitcoin price because they are speculating on the “next big token” within the Bitcoin ecosystem. In December 2025, nearly 3M BRC-20 tokens were minted, a 3X expansion from September 2025.

(Source: Dune)

Given this trend, it looks likely that the number of ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and Runes will explode once the Bitcoin price breaks key resistance levels. At the moment, creators appear to be laying the foundation, building the “infrastructure” so they are ready when the price eventually spikes and retail investors return.

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