Tech
Share this article

Bitcoin Ordinals Can Now Be Bridged to Cardano Through BitVMX

The on-chain transaction between Bitcoin and Cardano was facilitated by BitVMX, an interoperability protocol built using the BitVM computing paradigm

By Jamie Crawley|Edited by Parikshit Mishra
Updated Jun 9, 2025, 1:43 p.m. Published May 28, 2025, 9:48 a.m.
16:9 Bridge (wal_172619/Pixabay)
Bridge (wal_172619/Pixabay)

What to know:

  • Cardano has continued to advance its credentials as a venue for Bitcoin Defi, facilitating a transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.
  • The transaction was unveiled by Cardano creator Input | Output (IO) at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
  • IO's ultimate aim is to enable a full integration between Bitcoin and Cardano.

Cardano has continued to advance its credentials as a venue for Bitcoin Defi (BTCFi), facilitating a transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.

The on-chain transaction between Bitcoin and Cardano was facilitated by BitVMX, an interoperability protocol built using the BitVM computing paradigm.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newsletters
By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy.

The transaction was unveiled by Input | Output (IO), the creator of the layer 1 Cardano, at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

The bridge represents a "preview of what is to come," IO said in an emailed announcement. Its ultimate aim is a full integration between Bitcoin and Cardano, providing DeFi services for BTC users and unlocking huge amounts of liquidity from the value stored in bitcoin.

To this end, IO has developed the "Cardinal" protocol, a portmanteau of Cardano and Ordinals, which harnesses BitVMX to assign Bitcoin-native assets to addresses on Cardano.

The Ordinals protocol was introduced at the start of 2023, enabling the inscription of data onto individual satoshis (the smallest BTC denomination, equivalent to one 100 millionth of a bitcoin), this making them unique and traceable. In effect, this created a Bitcoin equivalent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Read More: Bitlayer Joins Forces With Antpool, F2Pool, and SpiderPool to Supercharge Bitcoin DeFi

Bitcoin NewsOrdinalsCardano

More For You

Citadel Securities backs LayerZero as it unveils ‘Zero’ blockchain for global markets

By Will Canny, AI Boost|Edited by Stephen Alpher
13 hours ago
Stylized network of light focii covering Earth (geralt/Pixabay)

Citadel has made a strategic investment in LayerZero’s ZRO token as the interoperability firm rolls out its high-performance blockchain.

What to know:

  • Citadel Securities invested in LayerZero’s ZRO token and is collaborating on market structure and post-trade use cases.
  • LayerZero unveiled "Zero", a heterogeneous blockchain targeting millions of transactions per second and near-zero fees.
  • DTCC, ICE, Google Cloud and ARK Invest are partnering or investing as institutions explore tokenized markets.
Read full story