Create a Bitcoin NFT with Ordinals in 3 minutes
Inscribe an NFT onto the Bitcoin blockchain quick and easy using Unisat!
TLDR:
Many Web3 users do not own Bitcoin, firstly you’ll need a browser wallet like Unisat’s wallet and some BTC in that wallet to pay for the inscription.
Unisat’s website can then be used for inscribing on Bitcoin by dragging a file in then signing and paying for the transaction through your wallet.
In just a few steps and at a low cost you can write into the Bitcoin blockchain and store data on-chain with a Bitcoin NFT that will last for generations to come!
Last week I got a recommendation from Zeneca, which has led to an increase in subscribers to the newsletter and is exciting to see - thanks Zen! If you’re not already following Zen’s substack I highly recommend it, I read his newsletter religiously.
I also introduced a new referral program with Substack’s inbuilt referral system. So if you refer my Substack or share a post and someone subscribes then you’ll get rewards! Check the leaderboard for rewards and make sure to share far and wide to keep spreading the word on Web3. =)
With all that said, today I’m going to show you how to create an NFT on Bitcoin by Inscribing with Ordinals. I wrote about Ordinals before explaining what it is and the history of Bitcoin NFTs but this time I want to get more practical and teach you how to genuinely use Ordinals by creating your very own Bitcoin NFT!
Start with a Bitcoin Browser Wallet
There are several options out there to Inscribe an NFT, three of the most popular are Gamma, Ordinals Bot, and Unisat. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, yet all are pretty similar and easy to use.
For this tutorial we’ll use Unisat because I believe it has the most functionality available beyond inscribing.
For Unisat you’ll also need a Bitcoin browser wallet to pay for the inscription with BTC and hold the NFT, the most popular are Xverse and Unisat itself, which are very similar to Metamask but built for Bitcoin. Both are great but perhaps for now its easiest to use Unisat for everything, both inscribing and storing your BTC and NFTs.
So start by downloading the Unisat wallet, then hit “create a new wallet” and save the mnemonic phrase and password somewhere safe. Remember that if you lose or have your passphrase stolen then you’ll lose all your BTC and NFTs!
Get some BTC
Bitcoin is the single most important cryptocurrency in the ecosystem, I liken it to the sun that everything this ecosystem rotates around. However, a lot of people in Web3 may have joined through Ethereum or Solana so they don’t actually own any BTC!
The first step is then to get yourself some BTC so that you can interact with the Bitcoin blockchain.
There’s plenty of options to get BTC with Centralised Exchanges like Binance and Coinbase and even Decentralised Exchanges such as Thorswap! I for example used Thorswap to convert some of my ETH from Metamask and it worked, although it took 1 hour for the transfer to go through so be careful.
Whichever method you prefer, just make sure to get yourself some BTC and transfer it to your new Unisat wallet. Something like $20 to $50 in BTC is more than enough.
Open up Unisat
With a browser wallet full of BTC, open up Unisat and let’s get ready to inscribe!
With Unisat you can inscribe either: files, text, .sats and .unisat domains, or BRC-20s.
Essentially .sat and .unisat domains are similar to .eth domains from ENS on Ethereum, while BRC-20 is a standard created on Ordinals that tries to emulate the basic functionality of Ethereum’s ERC-20 fungible tokens.
For this tutorial we’ll inscribe an image file since its more visual and easy to understand. Let’s go with the image of the most expensive CryptoPunk ever bought, Punk #5822 bought for 8,000 ETH / $23m in February ‘22!
As you can see I’ve shrunk the image quality down so we’re not inscribing too large a file to reduce our cost. This is because Bitcoin block space costs money to write into and the bigger the file the more data you write in hence the larger your cost.
Inscribe your NFT!
Take the image file you want to inscribe and drag it into Unisat’s interface.
You can inscribe several NFTs by dragging several files in, but for now let’s stick with just one. As you scroll down you’ll see that Unisat estimates the total cost of the inscription, for me at the current market price it says approx 2300 satoshis / $7.08.
You have the option of making the transaction go faster yet more expensive with “custom” or slower and less expensive with “economy”, but I’d keep it at “normal” for now. Just make sure you have enough BTC then hit “Submit & Pay Invoice”.
Sign and Pay!
An order will appear giving you about 1 hour to pay for the transaction to go through. Choose “Pay with Wallet” and hit the yellow button that appears.
This will pull up your Unisat wallet and ask you to sign the transaction just as you would be asked when using a wallet like Metamask.
You can see the fee rate, which is equivalent to a gas price on Ethereum. Meanwhile the outputs show where the money is being sent to, in this case some of it goes to Unisat for them to inscribe on your behalf and the rest comes back to yourself as change, which is a quirk of how Bitcoin and its underlying UTXO system works.
Once you’ve hit “Sign and Pay” the transaction will be transferred to the Bitcoin blockchain to be confirmed by miners.
Bitcoin blocks take 10 minutes to mine, so confirmation is much slower than on Ethereum. However, you can already check that its on its way to be confirmed in your Unisat wallet.
Congrats on your new Bitcoin NFT!
Congrats! You have just created an NFT on the Bitcoin blockchain!
What you’ve uploaded will last for as long as the chain itself lasts, which is very likely to be way beyond our lifetimes.
It’s pretty incredible to think that you can save something that will essentially last forever for such a low price, don’t you think?
For bonus points you can list your new NFT up for sale on Magic Eden, for example you can see that I put mine up for sale for 0.1 BTC here.
Finally, if you’re reading this then that means you’re here in the space even in the depths of a bear market, keep going, you’re gonna make it!