What You Need to Know:

• Cardano is enhancing its role in the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem by allowing a transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.
• The transaction was presented by the creator of Cardano, Input Output (IO), at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
• IO aims for a complete integration between Bitcoin and Cardano, facilitating DeFi offerings for Bitcoin users and unlocking significant liquidity from Bitcoin’s value.

Cardano has continued to solidify its status as a player in Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi) by enabling the transfer of Ordinals to its mainnet.

The on-chain transaction linking Bitcoin with Cardano was made possible by BitVMX, an interoperability protocol developed using the BitVM programming language.

The transaction was revealed by Input Output (IO) during the Bitcoin 2025 conference on Tuesday.

According to IO, this bridge serves as a “preview of future developments.” Their ultimate goal involves a full integration of Bitcoin and Cardano, providing DeFi capabilities for Bitcoin holders and unlocking vast liquidity tied up in Bitcoin assets.

To achieve this, IO has created the Cardinal protocol, a fusion of Cardano and Ordinals, which utilizes BitVMX to align Bitcoin-native assets with Cardano addresses.

The Ordinals protocol, introduced in early 2023, allows data to be inscribed onto individual satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin), making them unique and trackable. This essentially creates a Bitcoin version of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

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