Wait, Litecoin Has Ordinals Too?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few months in crypto have been all about BTC Ordinals. Ordinals are“digital immutable cave paintings” of images or text inscribed directly onto Satoshi’s, which are the smallest units of measurement in a BTC. It has taken this space by storm in the same way that DeFi did in the summer of 2020 or NFTs did in 2021. At this point everything from the iconic CryptoPunks to the Bored Ape Yacht Club has already been inscribed, along with photos of people's pets and little random GIFs and text messages, to say nothing of newer projects like BitCoin Shrooms and Taproot Wizards, but did you know that BTC’s younger sibling Litecoin also has Ordinals?

screenshot of Decrypt Article

According to the article, a bounty of 5 LTC was offered to the first person who could port Casey Rodarmor’s Ord client to the Litecoin blockchain, and a few days later a dev named Anthony Guerrera successfully did it, and the race to start inscribing was on, and by Feb 19th he had inscribed a copy of the famous Mimblewimble Whitepaper as the first Ordinal on LTC. Mimblewimble is a privacy feature that LTC has had for some time now, but that topic is for another day.

screenshot of Tweet

And it was off to the races, as a few projects popped up along with many hobbyists such as myself trying to set up a full Litecoin node with the Ord client to start doing our own digital cave paintings, only on a blockchain that was faster, cheaper and lesser known than its older brother.

The first project I came across was Litecoin Punks, which had already spun up a Discord Server and a Twitter account as early as Feb 20th, barely a day after the whole inscription frenzy had started. Somehow I managed to grind in the server and win a Litecoin Punk on auction, a huge thing for me considering Litecoin Punks all sit at under the first 1000 inscriptions on the chain, and only number 100, making them potentially highly valuable in the future.

image from LTC Punks Discord

Litecoin Punks is not the only project that has popped up since Ordinals on the chain became a thing just over a month ago, but other projects are harder to find than they are on BTC because the infrastructure is not there yet as far as user-friendly wallets, markets, and storage solutions go, but you can find a few Litecoin Ordinals on OpenSea wrapped in Emblem Vaults, and a handful of Litecoin Punks are wrapped and for sale on the now famous Ordinals.Market, with a current floor price of 1.69 ETH. Not a bad ROI considering Discord OG’s were able to buy for 2–2.5 LTC and the average auction price at the time for everyone else was around 5.5 LTC.

So, where else can you find Litecoin Ordinals, and what other projects are there?

Another super early project is Litecoin Glitch Ordinals.

screenshot of Lite Coin Glitch Ordinals

These were pioneering early projects, and most of the sales were done through giveaways and for early members of the server as well as auctions on OpenSea. They are another very small collection, and number only 50. As of this write-up none are listed.

LiteOrdex Market, a really old-school almost mid 90’s style website and marketplace has the other projects I was able to find, and it functions similarly to the also old school OpenOrdex Market for BTC. Both are in the spirit of the crypto spaces' early days, and kind of glitchy, technical, and not as user-friendly, but fun for that “wild west” “bleeding edge” vibe.

screenshot of LiteOrdex

One of the other projects I found interesting was Lite Punks, which are byte perfect Crypto Punks, but on Litecoin.

screenshot of Lite Punks Homepage

It was another spontaneous project that brought people together to make it happen, and while all are inscribed and most are not really listed for sale on any marketplace as of this writing people are selling OTC in the Discord, and a few, like the coveted CryptoPunk 6529, are available vaulted on OpenSea along with an Alien and an Ape. You can also find them on Twitter.

screenshot of OpenSea

screenshot of OpenSea

The most exciting of all these to me is to see the first 10 inscriptions on LTC. This is where it all started. Good luck being able to buy any of these pieces of art just yet though, because none are for sale. Still, just to be staring at history unfolding is quite cool, especially for an old-school crypto geek like me.

screenshot of LIteOrdex

Why haven’t these caught on yet? I think it is a combination of things:

It has been overshadowed by BTC Ordinals

Right now the only way to reliably store your LTC native Ordinals is to be running a LTC node and have the Ord client and wallet set up, or maybe Electrum if you know what you are doing, unless you buy something vaulted.

The good news is from what I have heard through the grapevine, Unisat.io is working on a browser based LTC Ordinals wallet similar to the one they have set up for BTC, so when and if that becomes a reality I think LTC Ordinals will get their day in the sun.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this for you.

You can reach on Twitter. I welcome any comments or questions.