In the Bitcoin Ordinals world, cursed inscriptions are digital artifacts that the original Ord indexer did not count, so they didn’t get a normal inscription number. The label appeared in 2023 to describe these “missed” inscriptions in the Ord software.
Early on, people discovered several inscription patterns that Ord failed to recognize. Common triggers included putting multiple inscriptions in a single transaction, attaching more than one inscription to the same satoshi, inscribing on an input other than the first, or using even-numbered opcodes such as OP_66. These patterns produced valid on-chain data, but the indexer wouldn’t assign them a standard number.
To keep track of them, Ord temporarily gave cursed inscriptions negative numbers, starting at −1 and counting down. A later software update set a future activation height so that new inscriptions that would have been cursed instead receive regular positive numbers, while the already existing cursed ones keep their negative IDs. Ledger notes that from block height 824,544 in January 2024, newly created cases were indexed in the main sequence, and it also reports a total of 472,043 negative-numbered inscriptions, ranging from −1 to −472,043.
Because the original indexer skipped them, cursed inscriptions didn’t appear in wallets and marketplaces at first. After Ord added support and platforms updated, these artifacts became viewable and tradable in the same interfaces people already use for Ordinals.
Some crypto glossaries use “cursed inscriptions” more broadly for transaction scripts that intentionally limit how assets move. In that framing, the idea is about embedding constraints that act like gatekeepers for spending or transferring funds. This meaning is separate from the Bitcoin Ordinals usage above.
Cursed inscriptions have drawn collectors who like the novelty of negative numbering and the early indexing quirks. Still, they remain a niche slice of the Ordinals scene and carry high market risk, so buyers should approach them with care.
Recursive inscriptions. These let an inscription reference data from other inscriptions to save space and enable more complex builds. That capability is different from being “cursed,” which is about indexing history and numbering.
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