Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced it will soon shut down its Bitcoin NFT marketplace less than a year after opening the trading venue for the blockchain network’s digital collectables.
Binance Withdraws From Ordinal Positions
In a blog post published Thursday, Binance stated it will “cease support for trades and deposits of Bitcoin NFTs” starting April 18th at 6:00 UTC. The decision to cut Bitcoin NFTs is part of the exchange’s “ongoing efforts to streamline product offerings on the Binance NFT Marketplace.”
From April 18th onward, users can no longer buy, deposit, bid on, or list non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Binance’s marketplace using the Bitcoin network. The exchange will automatically cancel any existing listing orders for Bitcoin NFTs.
Binance also noted that its support for “any further airdrops, benefits, or utilities” related to Bitcoin NFTs will wrap up on April 10th. The exchange advised users to withdraw their Bitcoin NFTs from the marketplace via the Bitcoin network before May 18th to ensure they don’t miss out on claiming digital assets.
The crypto exchange first added support for Bitcoin NFTs in May 2023, shortly after the Ordinals protocol enabled the creation and trading of NFTs on Bitcoin’s blockchain. The emergence of Ordinals briefly caused Bitcoin network fees to skyrocket to record highs in November 2023 due to fluctuating waves of demand.
According to data from Cryptoslam, Bitcoin has become the second most popular blockchain network for NFT trading over the past 30 days, rivalling Ethereum’s total trading volume for digital collectables.
However, NFT trading volumes across the industry have plummeted to multi-year lows in 2024. Data from Statista shows that daily NFT sales peaked at around 117,000 transactions on August 15th, 2021, but had fallen to just 2,400 sales across Ethereum, Ronin, and Flow blockchains as of March 15th, 2024.
Despite the downturn, investment firm Franklin Templeton released a report this week praising Bitcoin Ordinals for driving “positive momentum in innovations” on the world’s largest blockchain over the past year.
NFTs For Runestone On Binance
Binance also provided an update regarding the high-profile Runestone NFT airdrop. It stated that qualified platform users should have received their airdropped Runestone NFTs by Thursday, April 6th. The exchange recommended withdrawing these NFTs before April 10th to claim any associated tokens, utilities, and benefits.
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