Bitcoin Launches Its First Latin American NFT Marketplace

The Bitcoin network has welcomed its first Latin American NFT marketplace ‘Carnaval’, highlighting artworks of artists from the said region.

The announcement of Carnaval is a milestone for the community for two reasons. Firstly, Carnaval is the first NFT marketplace dedicated to the Latin American art community. Secondly, the NFTs are minted on the Bitcoin network through Rootstock (RSK).

The collective also revealed that it will be launching Bitcoin Genesis Drop, a collection of 210 unique artworks minted as NFTs. According to information obtained by CoinQuora, Carnaval will sell these NFTs from April 6 to 9 at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, FL.

Aside from securing the backend help of Rootstock’s Infrastructure Framework (RIF), Carnaval has also solicited the support of art museums and galleries. These art institutions will assist in validating the authenticity of the artworks being sold as NFTs and enable the artists to reach a wider audience.

Theoretically, Bitcoin’s blockchain was created to pioneer a highly secure and decentralized financial system. It does not enable the creation of NFTs or even smart contracts on its base blockchain layer. However, the creation of Carnaval’s NFT marketplace is possible due to Rootstock’s open-source platform for smart contracts and NFTs.

Late in 2021, Bitcoin rolled out its Taproot upgrade, unlocking the functionality of smart contracts on the main protocol layer as well as the Lightning Network. However, Bitcoin’s main network has yet to showcase this feature on a scale similar to prominent blockchain ecosystems like Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC).