Demand for Stacks, a blockchain that combines Bitcoin with smart contracts, is growing. The price of the STX token has risen 32% in the last 24 hours to $2.14.
The notable price action of STX has caused the cryptocurrency to rise twelve places in the global market cap rankings. With a market cap of $2.9 billion, it is currently the 56th largest cryptocurrency in the world, according to crypto data provider Nomics.
Stacks’ latest move has been Bitcoin NFTs. Since Bitcoin does not support smart contracts, most of the NFT market naturally runs on Ethereum, which supports smart contracts.
The Stacks blockchain supports smart contracts, but all transactions are aggregated in this chain and placed in Bitcoin. Stacks founder Muneeb Ali described it as “Layer 1.5” in a statement last month, distinguishing it from Ethereum Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum or Polygon.
Although Stacks’ NFT market is fairly new, Bitcoin NFTs have been around for years. Before Ethereum came into existence, some of the first tokenized digital assets were created and sold on Counterparty, a third-party Bitcoin protocol, as early as 2012.
Besides these, there are signs that Stacks’ NFT market is on the rise. On Monday, 12-year-old Abraham Finley sold his hand-drawn pixelated Bitcoin bird NFT collection for nearly $8,000 on the Stacks market in less than an hour. On Thursday, Bitcoin Birds became the most traded NFT collection on Stacks, trading 16,651 STX (around $21,000) worth of tokens in 24 hours.
Stacks Pops, Punks, Monks and many more new NFTs have joined the network. Stacks also announced that it has partnered with Orbit Chain.
But it’s worth noting that Stacks’ NFT launches are very modest compared to the daily NFT trading on Ethereum. Ethereum-based game Axie Infinity has traded over $20 million in tokens in the last 24 hours, according to NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam. Other smart contract blockchains such as Solana, Flow, and Ethereum scaling solution Polygon have also had their share of the NFT boom.
Still, STX investors are excited about the possibility of more Bitcoin NFT and Bitcoin-powered decentralized finance products.
Disclaimer: What is written here is not investment advice. Cryptocurrency investments are high-risk investments. Every investment decision is under the individual’s own responsibility. Finally, Koinfinans and the author of this content cannot be held responsible for personal investment decisions.