Digital images of pixelated comic monkeys on the Bitcoin blockchain have become the top-selling collection on Ordinals in the last 24 hours. The sales volume of the collection named NodeMonkes exceeded $11 million, reaching a record high on Monday. The project was launched in December 2023 at an initial price of nearly $9,000.

The collection claims to be the first set of profile images consisting of 10,000 pieces on the Ordinals platform, providing the opportunity to embed text, data, and images onto individual fragments of Bitcoin.

Although NodeMonkes was launched in December 2023, the actual artwork was minted on Bitcoin in February of the previous year, before the emergence of other early collections such as Bitcoin Frogs and Space Pepes. This aspect gives the collection a sense of exclusivity and rarity in the eyes of investors.

Earlier on Monday, one such "monkey" was sold for BTC for over $1 million. The minimum price—or the price of a specific item—stands at no less than $52,000, while owners of rarer "monkeys" have set a listing price of up to $65 million.

Thus, Bitcoin-based collections have traded in the highest volumes in the last 24 hours—$35 million compared to the usual leader, Ethereum ($22 million), indicating a surge in demand for Bitcoin-based assets.