Ordinals is a new Bitcoin protocol endeavoring BTC to gain some useful features – for example, sourcing NFT creation – previously being solely offered by such DeFi ecosystems as Ethereum, Solana and Polygon. The total fees paid for Ordinal inscriptions, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard, topped 272 BTC, or around $7.6 million on Tuesday, May 2. Meanwhile, Bitcoin hit a new record of 682,280 daily transactions on May 1, a 255% increase from its ATH of 192,000 on December 14, 2017.

On Monday alone, over 372,000 inscriptions were created on the Bitcoin network — contributing to a daily record 682,281 Bitcoin transactions — with daily network fees hitting 23 BTC, or around $656,000.

However, despite an increase in transaction fees per Bitcoin (BTC) block, that doesn’t seem to be stopping investors from trading using the decentralized finance (DeFi) flagship product, which has seen a dramatic increase in daily transaction volume and hit a record New High (ATH) and broke a record set more than five years ago.

As it happens, the total Bitcoin transaction fees have been steadily increasing since late April, witnessing a stronger upwards momentum since the beginning of May 2023.