Bitcoin and altcoin addresses
Sometimes someone creates a Bitcoin transaction that pays to an address not created in the Bitcoin network but which is an address that looks like a Bitcoin address. The recipient would not have a Bitcoin wallet containing the corresponding private keys and would be unable to see the received money and would be unable to spend it.
If the non-Bitcoin address was created by an altcoin that uses the same scripting system and address-construction rules as Bitcoin, it might be possible for the recipient to construct a Bitcoin private key from the altcoin private key and import that private key into their Bitcoin wallet.
For some altcoins, this is difficult. Sometimes this is not possible at all. In that case the Bitcoin money sits at a Bitcoin address no-one controls and the received money can never be spent.
Ordinals, Inscriptions and BRC-20
This is a question and answer website specifically for Bitcoin. This means Ordinals, Inscriptions and BRC-20 etc are off-topic. Nevertheless I'll describe how I believe the Bitcoin network treats those things.
Ordinals are not an altcoin. Ordinals is a set of rules for assigning a number to a unit of money in a Bitcoin transaction. The rules specify how the Ordinal number is transferred from the inputs of a Bitcoin transaction to the outputs of a Bitcoin transaction. This is completely external to the Bitcoin network.
Ordinals Inscriptions build on the foundations of Ordinal numbering and hide some non-Bitcoin data inside a Bitcoin transaction in a place where normal Bitcoin nodes don't look†. The inscribed data is recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain but is not recognised in any significant way by normal Bitcoin nodes. Obviously Bitcoin nodes see it in the overall size of the transaction and therefore it affects Bitcoin fee rates for inscribed Bitcoin transactions and is affected by rules over Bitcoin transaction sizes. The data hidden in an Ordinals Inscription was initially mostly pixel art images.
BRC-20 builds on Ordinals Inscriptions in that the hidden non-Bitcoin data is not an image but text, in javascript object notation (JSON) that describes some event affecting a BRC-20 token. Ordinary Bitcoin nodes take no notice of the contents of Inscriptions so they take no notice of BRC-20.
Footnotes
† Inside an if false { ... }
statement inside the Segwit equivalent of an unlocking script for a specific type of input - one that spends a P2TR output.
Related