On Monday, the Bitcoin Ordinals collection NodeMonkes briefly exceeded the market capitalization of the с Club (BAYC) according to data from the cross-network NFT trading platform Magic Eden. Although NodeMonkes' market capitalization temporarily surpassed BAYC, by the time of publication, it had fallen back to 6500 BTC (approximately $419 million), while BAYC was valued at 135,000 ETH (about $453 million).

Launched in December, the NodeMonkes collection consists of 10,000 8-bit digital collectible items themed around monkeys. The market capitalization of an NFT project is calculated as the minimum price multiplied by the total number of assets in the collection. The increase in value of NodeMonkes reflects a broader trend of growing demand for Bitcoin Ordinals projects, digital artifacts that can be inscribed onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

According to CryptoSlam, over the last week, the trading volume of Ordinals projects reached $135 million, surpassing the sales volume of Ethereum NFTs, which was $110 million. Another well-known Ordinals project, Runestone, also experienced a significant increase in value. Following an airdrop on March 14, the collection of 112,383 Bitcoin tokens entered the top three most sold NFT projects with a daily trading volume of $5.3 million. The Runestone airdrop was a significant milestone for the collection, and the main event is expected after the upcoming Bitcoin halving in April, when the Rune token protocol by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor will be introduced to the network.