Wallet Providers Embrace BRC-20 Token Despite Market Decline

BitKeep Supports BRC-20 Tokens

On June 21, BitKeep, a self-custody wallet provider, declared its support for BRC-20 tokens issued on the Bitcoin network. This feature enables users to observe, organize, and transfer BRC-20 tokens and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Furthermore, developers also mentioned that in-wallet swaps of BRC-20 will be available in the upcoming days.

Last month, the OKX Wallet app from cryptocurrency exchange OKX declared its support for BRC-20 assets. In addition, various centralized and decentralized exchanges have also implemented BRC-20 support.

Despite being optimistic about its future, Trust Wallet does not currently offer support for BRC-20 tokens and they cannot be stored on MetaMask either.

Market Capitalization of BRC-20 Tokens

Despite being adopted, the market capitalization of BRC-20 tokens currently stands at $154.5 million, which is a huge drop of 85% from its all-time high in May when the memecoin craze was at its peak. Initially, the surge of investor interest in minting BRC-20 NFTs had helped to drive up the value of the tokens, however, currently the majority of the BRC-20 tokens’ market cap is made up of memecoins such as WZRD, PIZA and PEPE.

According to BitKeep, BRC-20 is a novel token standard that combines Ordinals and Inscriptions to generate novel assets on Bitcoin (BTC). Ordinals allow for the production of exchangeable tokens on top of Bitcoin, while Inscriptions permit users to generate one-of-a-kind digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. These two components together comprise the BRC-20 token standard, granting users the capability to deploy, mint, and move Bitcoin assets.

Unlike the ERC-20 token standard, the BRC-20 token protocol is limited to three features and cannot perform complex functions. Domo, a Twitter user, created the protocol on March 8, 2023 and since then, 34,652 BRC-20 token types have been deployed. In comparison, Ethereum could potentially have up to 400 million ERC-20 tokens. Domo has expressed that the BRC-20 standard is “worthless” and has advised users against “wasting money mass minting” this “fun experiment.”

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