Cardano has continued to advance its credentials as a venue for Bitcoin Defi (BTCFi), facilitating a transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.
The on-chain transaction between Bitcoin and Cardano was facilitated by BitVMX, an interoperability protocol built using the BitVM programming language.
The transaction was unveiled by Input | Output (IO), the creator of the layer 1 Cardano, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The bridge represents a “preview of what is to come,” IO said in an emailed announcement. Its ultimate aim is a full integration between Bitcoin and Cardano, providing DeFi services for BTC users and unlocking huge amounts of liquidity from the value stored in bitcoin.
To this end, IO has developed the “Cardinal” protocol, a portmanteau of Cardano and Ordinals, which harnesses BitVMX to assign Bitcoin-native assets to addresses on Cardano.
The Ordinals protocol was introduced at the start of 2023, enabling the inscription of data onto individual satoshis (the smallest BTC denomination, equivalent to one 100 millionth of a bitcoin), this making them unique and traceable. In effect, this created a Bitcoin equivalent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
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