Since January 2023 it’s possible to inscribe text and images directly to the bitcoin blockchain.
Trust Machines gives a great definition: *“Ordinals are a numbering scheme for the smallest units on the BTC blockchain. Numbering the smallest units — called satoshis — helps keep track of the order they have been mined. This means that even if a satoshi (sat, for short) is moved to a different wallet, the ordinal number affixed to it remains the same.
Assigning numbers to satoshis is called ordinal theory, and numbering sats opens up the technology to a whole new host of use cases.
A big reason people have been talking about Ordinals, after all, is ordinal inscriptions.
Essentially, you can inscribe a file (be it a photo, music file, video, or more) onto a Bitcoin block.”*
Now, a few months later there are marketplaces, wallets and other applications for ordinals.
I already inscribed my name, registered waltermulder.sats and bought Bitcoin Frog
In three months’ time almost half a million ordinals have been inscribed and it’s just getting started!