Bitcoin Ordinals project NodeMonkes flipped Bored Ape Yacht Club earlier Monday with a market capitalization of 7,300 BTC, around $490 million, according to cross-chain NFT marketplace Magic Eden. By comparison, Bored Ape Yacht Club’s market capitalization at the time was 136,500 ETH, or around $483 million, according to the NFT analytics site NFT Price Floor.

The Ethereum-based Apes are back on top, as of this writing, but the collections remain close—there's less than $30 million worth of crypto between their respective market caps, as of this writing.

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.

In February, NodeMonkes #2769 sold for 17 BTC, around $1.08 million at the time, on Magic Eden. The NodeMonkes floor shot up from 0.53 BTC to 0.83 BTC on Sunday over the span of just 12 hours, though it has calmed since to 0.67 BTC.

Bitcoin Ordinals projects have seen rising demand in recent months as the price of Bitcoin itself sets new all-time highs. Over the last week, Ordinals projects have racked up $135 million worth of trading volume, per data from CryptoSlam, while Ethereum NFTs have tallied $113 million in sales volume.

Also surging in value lately is Runestone, another prominent Ordinals project. Following an airdrop on March 14, the collection of 112,383 tokens on Bitcoin skyrocketed into the top three most-traded NFT projects per data from DappRadar, with $5.3 million in trading volume in 24 hours.

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Check Your Wallets: Bitcoin Ordinals Runestones Are Being Airdropped

It’s raining Runestone. The highly anticipated Runestones airdrop took place late Thursday, sending Ordinal inscriptions to over 112,000 Bitcoin wallets. “Something is happening!” NFT historian and Runestone spokesperson Leonidas said on Twitter. “112,383 Runestones are approaching Earth’s atmosphere. Brace yourselves for impact.” According to the Inscription marketplace Ordi, collectors hoping to receive a Runestone in the airdrop must go to its Bitcoin Ordinals platform and enter their wallet...

While the Runestone airdrop was a significant milestone for the collection, the main event will occur after the Bitcoin halving in April when the Rune token protocol by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor comes online.

“Runestone is a pre-Runes project where the Runestone inscription people receive in the airdrop will convert into a Rune token on Casey's Rune protocol when it comes out in 8 weeks,” NFT historian and Runestone spokesperson Leonidas previously told Decrypt.

Before last week's airdrop, anticipation for the Runestone airdrop was so high that a single Runestone inscription, 63,140,674, sold for 8 BTC, around $533,956, at auction.

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Bitcoin Runes Launch at the Halving: Here's Everything You Need to Know

Bitcoin is front and center again, and orange coin lovers everywhere have plenty to be excited about: new all-time high prices, the upcoming halving, rising demand for Ordinals—and soon, something totally new called Runes. And while Runes won’t hit Bitcoin until the halving—currently set for April 19 as of this writing—when the supply of newly minted BTC is once again cut in half by slashing miner rewards, the project is already getting a lot of hype and attention. Here’s what you need to know....

Not wanting to be left out of the initial surge of interest in Ordinals last year, Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs launched its own collection of Ordinal inscriptions called TwelveFold, a series of 300 generative NFT art pieces.

“We’re excited about Ordinal inscriptions and what the future holds for digital artifacts on Bitcoin,” Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano said at the time.

Edited by Andrew Hayward