Bitcoin Ecosystem — The Engine for the Next Bull Market

Abstract

• As we entered 2023, the wealth effect of Bitcoin has become quite evident, with its price increasing from US$16,500 at the beginning of the year to US$42,000. In addition to Bitcoin itself, market funds have also flowed into its ecosystem.
• The most notable example is the surge in the BRC-20 sector under the Ordinals protocol. The market size of BRC-20 tokens has now surpassed US$4 billion, a nearly 40x increase from the US$100 million in March of this year. This growth has also fueled continuous innovation and development across the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.
• The current market focus on the Bitcoin ecosystem is concentrated on two aspects. First is asset issuance protocols, primarily Ordinals, Atomicals, Runes, PIPE, Taproots Assets, and others. Second is scaling solutions, such as the Lightning Network, RSK, Stacks, RGB, and BitVM.
• In the Bitcoin ecosystem, the sectors currently exhibiting a significant wealth creation effect include BRC-20 assets under the Ordinals protocol, ARC-20 and Realm under the Atomicals protocol, PIPE under the Pipe protocol, and tokens in the Bitcoin expansion sector (RIF, STX), among others. This report analyzes the reasons behind the wealth creation effect of these assets and outlines the avenues through which investors can participate.
• Beyond technological innovation, the thriving Bitcoin ecosystem relies on the participation of various market players, including individual investors, exchanges, projects, miners, and investment institutions. Consequently, this report analyzes the opportunities and risks for these five groups in the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, serving as a reference for their investment and business expansion decisions.
• Given the future macroeconomic environment and market conditions, the Bitcoin ecosystem has a promising outlook. Not only will popular cryptocurrencies like BTC and ORDI have significant room for appreciation, but there will also be new opportunities for 100x coins within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
• The trading volume in the Bitcoin NFT market has surged significantly, yet its current scale remains relatively small. Therefore, there is anticipated potential for over 100x growth in the future. Meanwhile, the Lightning Network is poised to be the primary technological support for the broader adoption of Bitcoin payments in the short to medium term.
• Combining the above analyses, Bitget Research makes six major predictions of future trends in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Main Body

1. What is the Bitcoin Ecosystem?

1.1 Definition of the Bitcoin Ecosystem

The Bitcoin ecosystem refers to a system composed of solutions, protocols, applications, and assets designed to enhance the use and efficiency of the Bitcoin Blockchain Network. Current discussions about the Bitcoin ecosystem focus on two aspects: Asset Issuance Protocols and Scaling Solutions.

• Asset Issuance Protocols: These are protocols defining technical standards for asset issuance. Currently, this includes Ordinals, Atomicals, Runes, PIPE, and Taproot Assets.
• Scaling Solution: These solutions are designed to improve the core performance of the Bitcoin network. The key solutions in this area include Lightning Network, Rootstock (RSK), Stacks, RGB Protocol, and BitVM.

1.2 Development of the Bitcoin Ecosystem from 0 to 1

• The first major technical upgrade: Segregated Witness (SegWit)

• The second major technical upgrade: Taproot Upgrade

1.3 Current Focus of the Bitcoin Ecosystem

1.3.1 Asset Issuance Protocols

1.3.1.1 Ordinals Protocol

• Enhanced Security: BRC-20 tokens are built on the highly secure Bitcoin protocol, making them difficult for hackers to exploit. Additionally, since BRC-20 "tokens" are essentially inscriptions and do not involve smart contracts, they are not subject to contract risks like ERC-20 tokens.
• Fair Issuance Mechanism: For meme coins, a fair issuance mechanism is crucial. Once a BRC-20 token is created, all users with valid BTC wallets can participate in the "new token offering." The issuance of BRC-20 tokens is relatively fair, requiring participants to pay gas fees for minting, which means users must invest an amount of BTC to acquire a corresponding share of the token.

• Reduced Blockchain Space Usage Efficiency: Ordinals work by embedding data into individual Bitcoin transactions, which can take up a significant amount of block space. This leads to an explosive increase in the volume of Bitcoin network UTXO information that miners need to store and can impact the network's processing speed and transaction costs.
• High Complexity for Users: The Ordinals protocol increases the complexity of using the Bitcoin network. Ordinals map BRC-20 and Ordinals NFT to specific Satoshis. To avoid affecting the asset meaning of these Satoshis, users need to store them in isolated wallets, increasing the difficulty for user participation and the challenge of wallet infrastructure development for project teams.

1.3.1.2 Atomicals Protocol

• ARC-20: Similar to the BRC-20 token format on Ordinals, with leading projects like $ATOM, $PEPE, and $REALM.
• NFT: Leading projects include PUNK, XCSS (the first original collection), and Atommap (comparable to bitmap).
• Realm: A new concept proposed by Atomicals aimed at revolutionizing traditional domain names, used as a prefix.
• Collection Containers: A data type for defining NFT collections, mainly used for storing readable NFT collections and related metadata, similar to a type of on-chain data object storage.

• Reduced Risk of Errors: The Atomicals protocol features a splat operation, allowing users to selectively separate multiple Atomicals assets combined in the same UTXO. This effectively prevents the accidental use of assets as transaction fees.
• Diverse Asset Distribution Methods: The Atomicals protocol offers decentralized and direct minting methods. Direct minting is relatively centralized but can handle specific distribution scenarios. Decentralized minting requires CPU/GPU calculations on specific characters to complete the minting, representing a fairer distribution method.
• Broad Application Potential: The Atomicals protocol allows users to represent assets on the Bitcoin blockchain in more complex and diverse ways, going beyond traditional simple payment functions.

• Technical Complexity: The implementation of the Atomicals protocol may be relatively complex, requiring an in-depth understanding of Bitcoin scripting and blockchain technology, which could limit its widespread adoption and application. Due to its operational and conceptual complexity, ordinary users might find it challenging to comprehend and accept the Atomicals protocol, potentially limiting its broad application.
• Slow Infrastructure Development: There is currently no efficient trading market for Atomicals assets. The two main trading platforms have experienced several security incidents, and recently, Atomical Market faced a “zero-cost purchase” issue due to technical vulnerabilities. Most trading demands still rely on C2C (consumer-to-consumer). Currently, there are only three public node services (Atomicals Official, Atomical Market, and Nextdao). Occasionally, these nodes face network connectivity issues, leading to the inability to send trade requests, resulting in issues like being unable to mint or minting failures due to prolonged waiting times.

1.3.1.3 Runes Protocol

• Based on the UTXO Model: Closely integrated with Bitcoin's existing UTXO model, enhancing compatibility and natural integration with Bitcoin itself.
• Simplified Operations: The protocol uses a simple (ID, OUTPUT, AMOUNT) tuple mechanism, making token creation, transfer, and distribution intuitive and straightforward.
• User-Friendly: The Runes Protocol focuses on simplifying user experience and reducing dependence on complex operations, making it easier for users to understand and use.
• Transparency and Security: All operations are visible on-chain, offering higher transparency. Additionally, the burning mechanism of runes also provides security for the protocol.

• Symbol Preemption: The lack of a mechanism to prevent symbol preemption could lead to early users occupying short and valuable symbols.
• No Fair Mint: The Runes Protocol does not offer a fair minting function similar to that in the BRC-20 standard, so users cannot perform fair minting.
• Slow Development Progress: The Runes Protocol is still a concept by Casey and currently lacks complete client and development tools.

1.3.1.4 PIPE Protocol

• UTXO Model Compatibility: The RUNES protocol is closely integrated with Bitcoin's UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) model. The PIPE protocol follows this characteristic, ensuring compatibility with Bitcoin's native architecture.
• Simplified Operational Process: Inspired by the simplicity and ease of understanding and operation of the RUNES design, the PIPE protocol adopts a similar simplified approach, facilitating user interaction.
• Fair Minting Mechanism: The BRC-20 standard addresses the fairness issue in the token minting process, and the PIPE protocol has incorporated this feature, offering a fair minting mechanism.

• Technical Complexity: Implementing the PIPE protocol adds additional complexity to Bitcoin's existing framework, which may pose a challenge for ordinary users and developers to understand and implement.

1.3.1.5 Taproot Assets Protocol

• Merkle-Sum Sparse Merkle Trees (MS-SMTs): This data structure is used to efficiently prove the existence, non-existence, and splitting and merging of assets. It supports the proof of the total amount of a particular asset, thus ensuring that the asset is not created or destroyed unprovoked during transmission.
• Taproot Asset Trees: This is a structure embedded in the Taproot script tree to carry assets. Each asset is represented by a series of MS-SMTs, with each asset ID corresponding to an MS-SMT.
  

• No Gas Fees: Taproot Assets can be transferred via the NostrAsset web client or other decentralized social messaging apps on Nostr without any gas fees.
• Fair Launch: Nostr Assets introduced a feature to launch Taproot Assets fairly, similar to deploying contract tokens on Ethereum. Users can set the token name, symbol, total supply, progress, avatar, and other social information.

• Strong Adaptability: Taproot Assets are entirely based on UTXO, meaning they can integrate well with native Bitcoin technologies like RGB, the Lightning Network, and DLC.
• Low Transaction Costs: Taproot Assets are directly integrated with the Lightning Network. This means users can use Taproot transactions to initiate Lightning channels and deposit BTC and Taproot assets into Lightning channels in a single Bitcoin transaction.
• Minimal Chain Space Usage: Taproot Assets use Taproot to create assets on Bitcoin. Data is stored in the main root tree, and token metadata is by default stored on the creator's device or optionally in an off-chain data repository/indexer called "Universe." This means large transactions have a small on-chain footprint.
• More Efficient: Users can mint three different types of assets in three new categories at once, paying the miner's fee only once. Then, all newly minted assets can be sold to buyers using different Taproot assets via a single vPSBT without paying fees for each asset transfer.

• High Centralization: Taproot Assets rely on third-party storage indexers. Without these indexers, the tokens would be lost forever. Users either have to run their own BTC full node and Taproot Assets client or rely entirely on a centralized server to trade Taproot Assets Tokens. This makes it one of the most centralized solutions in BTC token protocols.
• Unfair Position Distribution: Users cannot mint tokens directly by sending transactions on the BTC mainnet. Instead, a project addresses issues (or registers) all tokens at once, and then the project transfers them to the Lightning Network. Distribution depends on institutions, requiring endorsement and operation by them. Project creators control the entire asset issuance process.

1.3.2 Scaling Solutions

• State channels: For instance, the Lightning Network, which allows a portion of high-frequency transactions to move off-chain.
• Sidechain technology: Such as Liquid, Stacks, and Rootstock.
• Others: BitVM, which utilizes Rollup technology and fraud proofs.

1.3.2.1 The Lightning Network

• Rapid Transactions: The Lightning Network enables almost instantaneous transaction processing, a significant improvement over the typical waiting time for confirmations on the Bitcoin blockchain. Transactions occurring within established payment channels generally take about 1-5 seconds to complete.
• Low Cost: Transactions conducted outside the main Bitcoin blockchain significantly reduce transaction fees, making it particularly suitable for small transactions.
• Reduced Mainchain Burden: By processing transactions off the blockchain, the Lightning Network lessens the load on the Bitcoin main chain, helping to decrease network congestion and delays.
• Support for Micropayments: The Lightning Network is particularly suited for handling small transactions, opening possibilities for micropayment scenarios in the digital economy.

• Complexity: Setting up and maintaining channels on the Lightning Network is more complex than conducting simple Bitcoin transactions. Users need to understand how to open, manage, and close channels, raising the barrier to entry.
• Locked-Up Funds: Participants in the Lightning Network need to lock a certain amount of Bitcoin in channels to support transactions. This means that funds are immobilized for a period and cannot be used for other purposes.
• Routing Challenges: Payments on the Lightning Network need to find a viable path through the network of channels between participants. This process involves considering multiple factors, such as the funding capacity and fees of each channel. If the network cannot effectively find a path, transactions may fail, or the transaction cost may increase.

1.3.2.2 Rootstock

• Merged Mining: Utilizing DECOR+ (a unique variant of the Nakamoto consensus), Rootstock allows merged mining with Bitcoin or any other blockchain sharing Bitcoin's block format and proof-of-work, enabling miners to earn rewards in both RSK and Bitcoin.
• BTC Two-Way Peg: RBTC, Rootstock's native currency used for paying gas fees, is pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin. The two-way peg protocol, Powpeg, allows for the transfer of BTC between the Bitcoin chain and the Rootstock blockchain, facilitating the introduction of BTC assets to Rootstock.
• EVM Compatibility: RVM (Rootstock Virtual Machine) is a fork of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, compatible with Ethereum smart contracts and deployment and interaction tools.

• Limited Scaling Performance: Rootstock's capacity to handle up to 100 transactions per second is 20 times that of the Bitcoin network but still insufficient compared to current high-performance Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains, making it challenging to support high-concurrency applications.
• Centralization in PowPeg: The notaries protecting locked funds in Rootstock are members of the PowPeg Federation, composed of prominent blockchain companies with high security standards, meaning this third-party organization handles the locking and unlocking of BTC funds, leading to centralization issues.
• Insufficient Value Capture and Slow Ecosystem Growth: With Bitcoin's market cap reaching US$700 billion, Rootstock's overall ecosystem has only captured approximately US$100 million in BTC assets. Additionally, with fewer than 20 Defi projects in its ecosystem and slow TVL growth, it has not surpassed its peak at the end of 2021.

1.3.2.3 Stacks

• Main Speculative Target as a Bitcoin Layer 2: Stacks' STX is currently the main speculative target in the market as a Bitcoin Layer 2 project. When the Bitcoin ecosystem fully explodes, there will not be many low-threshold speculative targets available to retail investors in the secondary market.
• Compliance Narrative: In Q3 2019, Stacks became the first token offering crypto project qualified by the U.S. SEC, providing a natural compliance narrative advantage. This makes it less susceptible to issues faced by some public chain tokens, which are often viewed as securities, and avoids related black swan events and FUD.
• Nakamoto Upgrade: Expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2024, the upgrade has four anticipated outcomes: first, Stacks will share the security of BTC, with transactions settling on the Bitcoin network (currently, Stacks' transactions settle on its local mainnet, with final confirmations depending on the Bitcoin chain); second, significantly faster block times (reduced from 10 minutes to 4-5 seconds); third, the introduction of the Bitcoin-pegged asset sBTC to enable smart contracts to run faster and cheaper; fourth, subnet will support multiple languages like Ethereum's Solidity and EVM, facilitating the migration of existing EVM DeFi protocols.

• Technical Challenges: The technical development of Stacks is relatively complex, and its Clarity language is relatively niche, making it difficult to increase developer activity (though this may improve after the Nakamoto upgrade).
• Slow Growth in Developer and User Numbers: Stacks has always experienced slow growth in attracting developers and users.
• Need for Improved Marketing, Social Media Operations, and Market Recognition: Despite its unique technical advantages, Stacks noticeably lacks commercialization capability and the ability to capture market enthusiasm.

1.3.2.4 RGB Protocol

1.3.2.5 BitVM

2. Those Sectors with Strong Wealth Effects of the Bitcoin Ecosystem

2.1 BRC-20 (Ordinals Protocol)

• Tokens with Viral Names: Most assets (such as $ORDI and $SATS) are associated with Bitcoin and inscription culture. Others (such as $RATS) are named after animals, continuing the trend of the 2021 meme craze (DOGE, etc.)
• Originality: These assets are not simple copies of other memes but rather unique and self-created IPs.
• Community Driven: These projects have strong community support and a clear vision and outreach plan. The position distribution of early-stage whales is relatively dispersed, and community participants are able to drive project development effectively.
  

• Consensus Among Inscription Minters: Using SATS as an example — the total supply of SATS is 2100 trillion, 100 million times that of Bitcoin. The maximum amount of SATS that can be created in a single mint is 100 million. In other words, at least 21 million mints are required to reach the maximum supply of SATS. The gas fees needed to fully mint SATS are estimated to be as high as US$15 million. As such, at the time of its launch, many users were not convinced that this BRC-20 token would ever be fully minted. However, on September 24, SATS was fully minted, with a total of 21,107,258 mints and 36,061 holders. The minting started on March 9, 2023, and took a total of 6 months, indicating that there is strong market consensus for participation in the project.

• Improved Miner Revenue: The launch of the Ordinals protocol has significantly boosted Bitcoin miners' earnings over the past three months, with the proportion of earnings from on-chain fees rising gradually from 1.7% in August to a peak of 19.57% on November 10. These improvements to miners' earnings will, in turn, lead to further support for the BRC-20 asset class and the Bitcoin ecosystem from the heavily capitalized miner community.

• Fair Launch: After all the BRC-20 tokens are created, all users who hold BTC only need to pay the gas fees to mint them, meaning that ordinary users can also fairly participate in the "primary market." This fairness ensures that BRC-20 tokens have a strong consensus from the onset, serving as a foundation for price growth.
• Familiar Name: BRC-20‘s token name is a reference to those of Ethereum's ERC-20, reminding people of the great ICO boom that took place when ERC-20 was first introduced. This similarity has been used by capital flows and the community alike to promote the BRC-20's narrative on its launch, thereby increasing its acceptance.

• KOL Influence and Community Consensus: The Bitcoin inscription community started promotion efforts on March 10, 2023. In the following months, the success of ORDI attracted the participation of a large number of KOLs, which further attracted the attention of retail and early investors. In addition, BRC-20's low barrier-to-entry means that KOLs have been able to draw a large number of users from outside the crypto space. As the early price of BRC-20 tokens was low with ample room to surge, successive gains motivated many users to continue holding rather than selling, further driving up prices.
• CEX Support: Listings on major CEXes such as Bitget, Binance, OKX, Gate.io, and others have led to a huge improvement in the liquidity of BRC-20 tokens. The listing of leading BRC-20 assets such as $ORDI and $SATS on CEXes grants them greater exposure and more traders, who, in turn, are more inclined to hold liquid assets.

• For $ORDI, there are two methods to estimate a valuation:

• For Mid-tail BRC-20 tokens, when first minted, will generate a level of wealth due to short-term participation. But as money dries up and the community consensus deteriorates, most mid-tail BRC-20s will go to zero. As such, it's important to get in and get out fast. When hotspots shift, rapid declines in the BRC-20 sector over a given cycle may be difficult to avoid, and it's likely that mid- and long-tail assets will face liquidity crises or simply go to zero.

2.2 ARC-20 and Realm (Atomicals Protocol)

2.3 PIPE (Pipe Protocol)

2.4 Tokens in the Bitcoin Scaling Solution Sector

• Further breakthroughs in performance.
• Significant growth in ecosystem assets, which would have a direct positive impact on RIF's price.

3. Opportunities and Risks Faced by Various Players in the Current Bitcoin Ecosystem

3.1 Individual Investors

• Enjoy Beta Gains: Participating in asset issuance protocols within the Bitcoin ecosystem is the same as indirectly holding Bitcoin. The Bitcoin market has always been the leading asset of the cryptocurrency industry's trends. As such, users who participate in the Bitcoin ecosystem and hold Bitcoin will enjoy the industry's base beta gains.
• Fair Offering: The vast majority of asset protocols in the current Bitcoin ecosystem are openly and fairly minted. Fair minting gives more ordinary users the opportunity to participate in early-stage engagement projects, which gives them a greater chance of obtaining higher returns.
• Inadequate Infrastructure: The Bitcoin ecosystem is currently in a stage of competition, and many asset protocols have emerged in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the early stage, most of these asset protocols were only available through clients, and there was no mature marketplace for trading, meaning that users who participated early on were more likely to capture outsized returns.

• Lack of Foundational Bitcoin Knowledge: For example, in Ordinals, users engrave inscriptions on UTXOs. If they are not paying attention, they may mistakenly use inscribed UTXOs as payment for gas or for other purposes, resulting in them losing the value of the inscription.
• Rudimentary Stage: Early ecosystems represent opportunities but also hidden risks, such as fatal loopholes in protocols that lead to asset theft or double-spending. Investors must be fully aware of the risks before participating.

3.2 Exchanges

• Exchanges that list popular BRC-20 tokens can attract a large number of BTC traders and improve their trading volume and reputation through huge wealth creation effects. The earliest exchanges to list ORDI and SATS have already enjoyed such benefits.
• The first exchanges to list the assets of various new BTC ecosystem protocols (such as Atomicals, Runes, PIPE, and Taproot Assets) can gain exclusive users who are following such assets. Exchanges can also draw users who have been unable to participate in such projects due to the high barrier to entry.
• There are some low-market-cap projects within the Bitcoin Layer 2 Stacks ecosystem (such as ALEX and Arkadiko) that have already issued tokens. If the Bitcoin Layer 2 sector experiences rapid development and a vigorous influx of funds in the future, exchanges that list their low-market-cap tokens early will be able to seize the opportunity and allow their users to receive profits.

• Potential Technical Risks: For exchange engineers who are more familiar with EVM public chains and other mainstream public chains, there are known technical challenges and unknown risks when it comes to new ecosystem assets. For example, UniSat Wallet has suffered a double-spend attack in the past. The rapid development of the Bitcoin ecosystem may expose new problems, and if exchanges don't update their client-side code of certain assets in a timely manner, they could be subject to double-spend attacks and other issues.
• Market-Making and Low Liquidity Risk: At present, the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially when it comes to the trading of inscription assets, does not have a mature AMM such as Uniswap on Ethereum. There are significant liquidity problems in asset trading, and exchanges' market-making departments have to bear a lot of pressure and risk.

3.3 Projects

• In terms of these projects, Taproot Assets is the most complete and friendly in terms of service. Users cannot send transactions in the Bitcoin mainnet to mint tokens directly. Instead, the project has an address that issues (or registers) all the tokens at once, which are then transferred by the project to the Lightning Network for distribution. Relying on institutional backing and issuance OM, the project controls the entire asset issuance process. The project has a high degree of control over the assets.
• At the same time, such assets are different from ERC-20 assets. Bitcoin itself has greater asset value and more users and purchasing power. Moreover, with the exception of BRC-20, the assets of each protocol are relatively scarce, and they are all in relatively early stages of development. From a competitive perspective, this is undoubtedly a blue ocean market.

• Risk of Asset Loss: These protocols are technically immature, and there is a risk of loss of funds. For example, on the evening of April 23, a BTC address starting with "bc1pw" carried out a double-spend attack on UniSat's BRC-20 Marketplace. Although UniSat suspended trading in a timely manner, this was not a risk that the project could fix or avoid.

• Low Barrier to Entry: For projects, the business models of exchanges and market quotation websites are relatively unified. Although the profit points are different, they are all essentially traffic-oriented businesses. The Bitcoin ecosystem is still in a blue ocean market. At present, except for UniSat, which has the potential to become a leading player in the BRC-20 asset space, the competitive pattern of each project has not yet been determined. It's currently relatively easy for new projects to enter the market.
• Larger Market: Bitcoin's greater asset value, userbase, and purchasing power also means that it has a higher upside than the Ethereum network.

• Due to the complexity of Bitcoin technology, lack of product technical capabilities or user awareness can lead to financial losses , public opinion risk, and customer complaints.

• Broad Space for Value: These projects primarily provide public services, so the products generally lack clear profit models. However, due to the current hype for asset projects, infrastructure that serves as public services and traffic portals have the ability to realize transactions on the Bitcoin network for users and projects. Due to Bitcoin's asset volume, leading projects are able to command very high valuations.

• High Uncertainty: Due to the complexity of Bitcoin technology, the different innovation ideas and priorities of each protocol, and the varied technical capabilities of each product, RD risks are higher for these projects.

3.4 Miners

• Improved Miner Revenue: With the boom of BTC ecosystems, especially with the hype and enthusiasm for BRC-20 tokens, the network needs to record more information than ever before, which requires more fees to be given to miners. This has led to record revenues for Bitcoin miners, mainly due to an increase in transaction fees.

• Improved Revenue for Mining Equipment Manufacturers: Some mining machine manufacturers are also preparing to deploy BTC ecosystem projects and incubate projects to realize rapid BTC payments and issue on-chain NFTs, tokens, and more. This drives a greater influx of users into the BTC ecosystem and increases demand for using the Bitcoin network. This is conducive to increasing the revenue of Bitcoin miners and helping Bitcoin miner manufacturers sell their products.

• High Revenue Uncertainty: The revenue of miners is directly tied to the activity of BTC ecosystem projects and users. If the demand for transactions is significantly reduced, then the income of miners will also drop significantly. This leads to a relatively large fluctuation of miner revenue and the inability to achieve expected static returns.

3.5 Investment Institutions

• Secondary Market Allocation of BTC: Wall Street investment institutions, large public companies, family offices, and other institutions can enjoy the beta gains of the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem by allocating BTC.
• Primary Market Investment in BTC Ecosystem Associated Projects: Investment institutions can deeply invest in various segments of the BTC ecosystem, especially infrastructure projects needed in the early stages of ecosystem development, such as Bitcoin wallets for various protocols, trading markets, domain names, market quote websites, and more.

• Fair Launch Methods Make Early Investment Difficult: Many projects in the BTC ecosystem, such as BRC-20 projects, have a fair issuance mechanism. Ordinary users and investment institutions begin from the same starting line, which makes it difficult for investment institutions to invest early by relying on their legacy resources. The leading project, $ORDI, has achieved a market value exceeding $500 million through free minting, with no investment institution having the opportunity to participate in primary market subscriptions.
• High Ecosystem Uncertainty: There has yet to be a highly successful BTC ecosystem project capable of scaling the performance of the Bitcoin network and carrying its assets. The ecosystem is in a bottleneck, with great uncertainty and unclear profit models. It is difficult to invest according to traditional investment principles, and short-term losses may be suffered.

4. Possible Future Trends and Bottlenecks in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

5. Conclusion

6. Reference Tools and Websites

• UniSat: https://unisat.io/market
• OKX Marketplace: https://www.okx.com/ web3/marketplace/ordinals/BRC-20
• Magic Eden: https://magiceden.io/ordinals
• Ordinals Wallet: https://ordinalswallet.com/collect
• Gamma: https://gamma.io/ordinals/marketplace

• Atomical Market: https://atomicalmarket.com/marketplace/token
• SatsX: https://www.satsx.io/marketplace/atomicals/ft/sort?page=1

• SatsX: https://satsx.io

• UniSat: https://unisat.io/inscribe
• iDclub: https://idclub.io/BRC-20
• LooksOrdinal: https://looksordinal.com

• Atomical Market: https://atomicalmarket.com/inscribe
• SatsX: https://www.satsx.io/inscribe/atomicals

• Inscrib3: https://inspip.com/mint
• SatsX: https://satsx.io
• ppline: https://mint.ppline.app/

• Ordinals: https://ordinals.com/blocks
• Ordinalsbot: https://ordinalsbot.com/explorer
• NFT Sniper: https://data.nftsniper.club
• Bitpunks: https://bitpunks.io/Explorer/Inscriptions
• Genii Data: https://geniidata.com/ordinals/home
• CryptoCell Labs (Ordinals inscription cost calculator): https: //hub.cryptocell.guru/ordinalsturbo
• Dune (daily minting statistics for BRC-20 tokens): https://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bitcoin-ordinals-analysis

• Atomical Market: https://atomicalmarket.com/explorer
• SatsX: https://www.satsx.io/live-mint/atomicals
• Dune: https://dune.com/0xmatsu0x/bitcoin-atomicals-potocol-analytics

• Mempool (memory, transaction view): https://mempool.space

7. Appendix