Exploring Bitcoin-Secured NFTs

In the last year, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become the most prominent buzzword in the crypto space. By the end of 2021, the cumulative trading volume of NFTs was more than $21 billion. This figure was 200 times more than the $120 million recorded before that year. The number of people trading NFTs also increased significantly, growing from less than 1.3 million before 2021 to nearly 65 million by the end of that year. By the second half of 2021, many big-name brands, such as Disney, Budweiser, Adidas, and Nike, were getting in on the NFT action. And as 2022 has progressed, it seems like more brands and companies will follow suit. NFTs on Bitcoin? For the longest time, the NFT market has almost exclusively been on Ethereum (ETH). Recently, other networks such as Solana, Polygon, and Flow have also grabbed portions of the NFT market for themselves. But what about Bitcoin? Bitcoin (BTC) is considered the best, most decentralized digital currency layer. And slightly more than 1% of all BTC in circulation is issued as wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), an ERC20 token representing Bitcoin on the Ethereum network. This means that there is a demand for using BTC in smart contracts. Smart contracts are the principal means of creating and managing tokens on a blockchain. However, unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin does not have smart contract capabilities. Therefore, it is impossible to natively run the codes needed to power NFTs on the network. But a...