Recently, many beginners have been asking what inscriptions are. Instead of rambling on, I’ll lay it out clearly for you.

Put simply, inscriptions are information engraved onto the smallest unit of Bitcoin—sats—using the Ordinals protocol. It can be text, images, or videos, essentially like creating a digital imprint on Bitcoin. Some people compare it to gold jewelry: Bitcoin is digital gold, and inscriptions are gold accessories—same essence, different form.

In the community, making inscriptions is called “inscribing,” derived from the English word “inscribe.” On Ethereum, it’s called “mint.” When someone asks what you’re inscribing today, they’re asking what inscription you’re going to create.

So what is the value of inscriptions? In the market, what makes the most money is actually the initial minting stage. Just look at ORDI—you could previously mint 100,000 units from $3,000, and it later surged as high as $4.5 per piece; now the price is $2.40. This round of gains really is astonishing, but the problem is that it’s extremely hard to go mainstream.

Right now, 85% of inscriptions on the market are BRC-20. They’re decentralized, have no private placement, and everyone can participate—sounds very democratic. But what’s the reality? Most projects only have the quantity; they don’t have other empowerment. In essence, it’s just speculators rolling the dice over and over, hoping to replicate ORDI’s success. Information differences lead to an unfair market—besides a small number of star projects, most purchases rely on recommendations and luck.

According to the latest trading data, SATS has a 24-hour trading volume of $206,000, with more than 54,000 holding addresses; RATS has a volume of $1.384 million, with more than 17,000 holding addresses; CATS has a volume of $229,000. These figures look lively, but what happens after the hype? Funds flow out and the projects go to zero—just like those animal coins in 2021.

Another key issue is transaction congestion. Bitcoin blocks are mined every 10 minutes, while Ethereum is every 12 seconds. Inscriptions technology is still very early-stage, the infrastructure isn’t solid, onboarding newcomers is difficult, and gas fees are also expensive. That’s why ERC-20 came later: it solved the problems of BRC-20, improved speed, and lowered costs. So, BRC-20 proposed the concept, but ERC-20 is the real solution. Nowadays, all kinds of projects are flooding in to ride the wave, but in terms of real practical value, it’s really these two.

What are inscriptions? Fundamentally, it’s still a game of information disparity and luck. Opportunities do exist, but the risks are just as huge. Before participating, rational analysis and thorough research are indispensable. Don’t let get-rich-quick stories blow your head up—invest cautiously. After all, we’re all standing at this fork in the road, and no one can guarantee which project will truly go mainstream.