Bitcoin Ordinals project NodeMonkes has briefly flipped the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in market capitalization on Monday. According to cross-chain NFT marketplace Magic Eden, NodeMonkes' market cap temporarily surpassed BAYC’s market cap. However, at the time of writing, NodeMonkes traded back below to a market cap of 6,500 BTC, or around $419 million, while BAYC's market cap is 135,000 ETH, or around $453 million.
Launched in December, NodeMonkes is a collection of 10,000 8-bit monkey-themed digital collectibles. The market cap for an NFT project is the floor price multiplied by the number of assets in the collection.
The surge in NodeMonkes' value is part of a broader trend of rising demand for Bitcoin Ordinals projects. Ordinals are digital artifacts that can be inscribed onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Over the last week, Ordinals projects have racked up $135 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam, while Ethereum NFTs have tallied $110 million in sales volume.
Another prominent Ordinals project, Runestone, has also seen a surge in value. Following an airdrop on March 14, the collection of 112,383 tokens on Bitcoin skyrocketed into the top three most-traded NFT projects, with $5.3 million in daily trading volume. The Runestone airdrop was a significant milestone for the collection, and the main event will occur after the Bitcoin halving in April when the Rune token protocol by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor comes online.