Crypto exchange Binance has integrated Bitcoin ARC-20 atomical assets into its native Web3 wallet through its Inscriptions Marketplace. 

“ARC-20 is a token standard that makes it possible to create fungible tokens that can be held and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain,” Binance wrote on May 2. “To celebrate this new integration, we’re offering zero-fee trading on ARC-20 tokens until June 2, 2024.”

Invented in January, the Atomicals protocol, mirrored after Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard, allows for the minting, transferring and updating of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Even if an Atomical is updated or exchanges hands 10,000 times – that amounts to only about 2.5 MB of data (250 bytes x 10,000),” Atomicals explained. “Any client, wallet, marketplace, game, and service can rapidly verify the Atomical by processing the history according to the very simple rules.”

Outside of NFTs, the current uses for Bitcoin Atomicals include web hosting, file storage, atomic swaps, real-world asset tokenization, decentralized social media and others. Aside from Atomicals, Binance Wallet’s May 2 update also includes support for BEVM, a decentralized Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible Bitcoin layer 2 based on Taproot that uses Bitcoin (BTC) as gas fees to execute smart contracts. 

The move follows the adoption of ARC-20 assets by other exchanges. 

In February, crypto exchange Bitget announced the support of Bitcoin Atomicals through its native self-custody wallet. Similarly, crypto exchange OKX has an entire marketplace dedicated to Bitcoin Atomical assets. 

Despite worries about becoming technologically obsolete with the rise of smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, Bitcoin is rapidly closing the technological gap with the advent of innovations such as Ordinals, Inscriptions, Runes and Atomicals, all within the past year. 

Last quarter, Orders Exchange completed integration with the Bitcoin Runes protocol to allow the issuance of fungible tokens on the native network and constructed a Bitcoin asset bridge with MicroVisionChain that enables BRC-20 token swaps. 

Meanwhile, omnichain yield-generating protocol SolvBTC has accumulated a total value locked of $700 million from its yield-bearing Bitcoin minted on Arbitrum, Merlin and BNB Smart Chain. The protocol estimates the mechanism can generate annual returns of 5% to 10% on users’ BTC deposits. 

Related: Kraken exchange rolls out self-custody crypto wallet, following other CEXs