Bitwise Asset Management became the first among ten spot Bitcoin ETF issuers to publicly share its Bitcoin wallet address on January 24. Following the disclosure, the wallet address received numerous tips and donations, including Bitcoin Ordinals tokens and rare artifacts.
The wallet now holds over $6,083 in Inscriptions donations and contains more than 16,000 Inscriptions. Among these assets are two RSICs, a Bitcoin Punk, a Bitcoin Burials, a Quadkey, and other Bitcoin Ordinals assets. The account also includes thousands of BRC-20 tokens but does not have an active BRC-20 balance.
Ordinals introduce a way to encode images, videos, and other data onto individual satoshis within the core Bitcoin blockchain, effectively creating Bitcoin NFTs. A satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, with 100 million satoshis equaling one Bitcoin. Introduced last year, Ordinals have gained popularity within crypto communities.
The rise of Ordinals and Inscriptions has divided opinions, with some believing they make the Bitcoin network more adaptable and versatile, while others argue that Ordinal assets often consume excessive block space and congest the network.
While most of the crypto community praises Bitwise for making the ETF assets’ address public, some criticize the asset manager for not sending a test transaction to verify the address, highlighting a single transaction that moved 12,000 Bitcoins. Others question the security of using a single-key wallet instead of a multisig wallet, which requires multiple private keys to operate and adds an extra layer of security, akin to a bank’s vault.