Bitcoin Magazine Owner Backs First Ordinals Fund, Which Bought $85K Rock

A new fund backed by the owner of Bitcoin Magazine plans to raise $5 million to activity trade Ordinals and inscriptions – at the core of the NFTs-on-Bitcoin mania that created buzz and congestion earlier this year on the oldest and largest blockchain.

The fund, Unbroken Chain, will be led by Asher Corson, portfolio manager at Consolidated Trading, according to a press release. General partners include UXTO Management, the fund arm of Bitcoin Magazine owner BTC Inc., and Isabel Foxen Duke, the former communications director of Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor.

The new fund claims to be “the first managed funds to actively trade Ordinals and inscriptions,” including BRC-20 tokens, a category whose name flicks at the ubiquitous ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. Anonymous BRC-20 creator “Domo” is also backing the Unbroken Chain fund.

Unbroken Chain has already started investing early contributions of $1.5 million, with initial assets including a Bitcoin Rock – from the first contiguous collection of inscribed Ordinals – purchased on Sept. 20 for 3 BTC (roughly $85,000), according to the statement.

Ordinals is a protocol that allows non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, through embedding data, known as “inscriptions,” into smaller BTC transactions.

While Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens could bring greater utility to Bitcoin, they are controversial among some developers who believe that they are clogging up the network and raising fees and that they “pollute” the blockchain with data that has nothing to do with Satoshi Nakamoto’s mission of a peer-to-peer system of money transfer.

“We’re thrilled to be leading the charge of institutional investment directly into Ordinals assets,” UTXO Management investor and Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey said in the release.