Cardano has further solidified its position as a hub for Bitcoin DeFi, successfully facilitating the transfer of Bitcoin Ordinals to its mainnet. This breakthrough on-chain transaction between Bitcoin and Cardano was made possible by BitVMX, a pioneering interoperability protocol built on the BitVM computing paradigm. The transaction was announced by Input | Output, the driving force behind Cardano's layer 1, at the prestigious Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas. According to Input | Output, this achievement serves as a preview of the comprehensive integration between Bitcoin and Cardano, aimed at providing DeFi services to BTC users and unlocking substantial liquidity from the value stored in bitcoin.
To achieve this vision, Input | Output has developed the 'Cardinal' protocol, which leverages BitVMX to assign Bitcoin-native assets to Cardano addresses. Introduced in early 2023, the Ordinals protocol allows for the inscription of data onto individual satoshis, effectively creating a Bitcoin equivalent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by making them unique and traceable.