NFTs in the Bitcoin blockchain - Ordinal Theory

[Wind_FURY]

It has come back a bit recently but I think the worst of it is over. That's the thing about degens: they get bored quickly and move on from one things to the next. After Ordinals/BRC-20, it was Doginals/DRC-20, then Ethscriptions (bring it full circle, writing NFTs in ETH tx data rather than via smart contracts, lol).

my apologies to everyone if I didn't make this point sufficiently clear upthread...


...but I'm gonna make it here again.

this whole phenomenon is based on the NEWNEWNEW scam, most "altcoin" stuff is, and we all know it already. in fact, most people trading newly issued stuff are actually engaging in a scammy blinking contest: probably most players in the market activity know they're playing the "hold my bag" game

and then it all starts again next week with the "new" NEWNEWNEW: same game, "!!new and exciting tech!!" **yawn**


and the major irony for me is the same as it was with most of these Bitcoin protocol/relay policy/ecosystem debates; it's possible to make the whole thing worse than it really is, simply by talking about it more than it deserves

No one could censor them because that would be against Bitcoin's ethos and they are not breaking any rules, so the best way to deal with it is - not talking about it? Hahaha. It's like the ostrich's head in the sand.

What's ironic is there's actually no solution. We merely need to accept that they're using Bitcoin in ways that we don't like. We can call it spam, an attack, or an exploit, but it will just be a matter of personal opinion.

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[Carlton Banks]

so the best way to deal with it is - not talking about it? Hahaha. It's like the ostrich's head in the sand.

but that's what ostriches do when they're scared right?

a few people upthread were panicky. maybe talking about it actually made you all a little scared, and me, well, not so much?

What's ironic is there's actually no solution.

well, yes

[WillyAp]

What do NFTs do, right, giving Bitcoin a bad name.

[philipma1957]

If everybody held their BTC

Everybody don't hold bitcoin. That's what matters. What would happen if everyone did, is another story.

I realize that. What I was trying to get across was the "another story" aspect, which is the logical result of everybody holding their bitcoin, which is the mentality that some bitcoiners like to insist upon... that it should just be held indefinitely.

The fact is, if you're living off the basic income, need cash and you're out of liquidity, you're going to sell your bitcoin. People who don't run out of liquidity (i.e., rich), with the same mindset and reasoning, will probably hold it for longer.

This is if you treat it purely as an investment, which its not. It was meant to be a digital currency or "electronic cash" first and foremost.

but it is kind of a 'fail' as a currency.

It's more like a $10,000 t-note made for large transfers of value.

scrypt algo with LTC/Doge is far better suited for smaller transactions.

Not that btc is not good to move large wealth or expensive artwork "NFTS" it is great for that but is has not yet fully developed a network for small change movements. Maybe LN will do the trick down the road.

[DooMAD]

Maybe LN will do the trick down the road.

Not much further down the road, though.  We're already pretty close by the looks of it.  If this stuff has to exist, it should arguably do so in the most optimised way.  That's what this protocol appears to offer.  The silly-picture-selling crowd just need to utilise it.

[Carlton Banks]

Not much further down the road, though.  We're already pretty close by the looks of it.  If this stuff has to exist, it should arguably do so in the most optimised way.  That's what this protocol appears to offer.  The silly-picture-selling crowd just need to utilise it.

the one exception might be that a (significant minority of) miners could just continue to use the UTXO set to do this, and try to keep their heads above water by refunding each others tx fees in a free transaction

that's pretty far-fetched though, stupid ideas are doomed to die. Ordinals only really worked in the first place because scammy people *believed* that *marks* would be stupid enough to believe in it; as I say, it's more likely that ~95% of people trading ordinals knew it was the latest greater-fool scam

[larry_vw_1955]

that's pretty far-fetched though, stupid ideas are doomed to die. Ordinals only really worked in the first place because scammy people *believed* that *marks* would be stupid enough to believe in it; as I say, it's more likely that ~95% of people trading ordinals knew it was the latest greater-fool scam

and yet:
Bitcoin Ordinals appear to be alive and kicking, with nearly 85% of Bitcoin network activity dominated by inscriptions and BRC-20 minting on Aug. 21.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-inscription-still-making-majority-btc-transactions

hard to believe that if it is really true. but i guess it is.

[nutildah]

and yet:
Bitcoin Ordinals appear to be alive and kicking, with nearly 85% of Bitcoin network activity dominated by inscriptions and BRC-20 minting on Aug. 21.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-inscription-still-making-majority-btc-transactions

hard to believe that if it is really true. but i guess it is.

Wow, just about everything in this article is incorrect, which isn't surprising seeing as how Cointelegraph is known to push things that their editors / management have a vested interest in.

So first of all, the main tweet that this article is centered around was written by a known NFT con artist, Leonidas. In his tweet he says, "you can't make this stuff up," but in reality he makes nearly everything up. He's really good at rallying a select group of suckers from pump to pump -- that's what he does. He's not an "ordinals developer" as Cointelegraph claims.

Neither Leonidas, Udi Werthimer or Cointelegraph mention that most of the "inscriptions" are actually BRC-20 mints, which are people paying an inscription service to mint useless pump n dump tokens on their behalf.



They're not even doing anything with the BRC-20 tokens, they're just minting them because somebody like Leonidas told them to. The only real winner here is the service, and those who have a stake in the success of the service.

Much like the jpeg inscriptions, this is 100% hype driven and will not last.

[Wind_FURY]

and yet:
Bitcoin Ordinals appear to be alive and kicking, with nearly 85% of Bitcoin network activity dominated by inscriptions and BRC-20 minting on Aug. 21.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-inscription-still-making-majority-btc-transactions

hard to believe that if it is really true. but i guess it is.

Neither Leonidas, [b)Udi Werthimer[/b] or Cointelegraph mention that most of the "inscriptions" are actually BRC-20 mints, which are people paying an inscription service to mint useless pump n dump tokens on their behalf.

What happened to Udi Werthimer? Why does he look as though he "hates" Bitcoin?

Maybe LN will do the trick down the road.

Not much further down the road, though.  We're already pretty close by the looks of it.  If this stuff has to exist, it should arguably do so in the most optimised way.  That's what this protocol appears to offer. The silly-picture-selling crowd just need to utilise it.

But the silly-picture-selling crowd doesn't want to store their pictures in a offchain layer. They want them in a highly secure bank-vault, which the Bitcoin blockchain provides. That's probably what will give them their "value".

[DooMAD]

But the silly-picture-selling crowd doesn't want to store their pictures in a offchain layer. They want them in a highly secure bank-vault, which the Bitcoin blockchain provides. That's probably what will give them their "value".

True enough.  They're also not going to waste time to try and genuinely optimise their infrastructure if the primary goal is simply to offload the memes to the next sap and move on to a new swindle (that looks and sounds like all their old swindles, but bundled in a shiny new wrapper with the latest jargon and buzzwords).  Pump shit -> Dump shit -> Move on -> Repeat.

[larry_vw_1955]

They're not even doing anything with the BRC-20 tokens, they're just minting them because somebody like Leonidas told them to. The only real winner here is the service, and those who have a stake in the success of the service.

Much like the jpeg inscriptions, this is 100% hype driven and will not last.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-nft-trading-volume-tanks-98-since-may-dappradar

would you agree with that article? it seems about right what i would have expected. but the entire nft market is in a slump. these things don't just go up forever. there have to be corrections. but for people to try and sue because they were stupid enough to buy a jpeg image for millions of dollars i hope they don't get anything.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/buyers-of-bored-ape-nfts-sue-after-digital-apes-turn-out-to-be-bad-investment/

[nutildah]

What happened to Udi Werthimer? Why does he look as though he "hates" Bitcoin?

Good question... For as long as I've been on Twitter he's just been trolling maximalists and core devs. It seems some of the major podcasters really upset him, for what reason I'm not entirely sure... but its all pretty ridiculous & inconsequential influencer-ing.

They're not even doing anything with the BRC-20 tokens, they're just minting them because somebody like Leonidas told them to. The only real winner here is the service, and those who have a stake in the success of the service.

Much like the jpeg inscriptions, this is 100% hype driven and will not last.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-nft-trading-volume-tanks-98-since-may-dappradar

would you agree with that article? it seems about right what i would have expected.

It seems to contradict the previous article you posted, which was written almost a week later, but it is more in line with the reality of how things are playing out (IMO). Turns out having an image "on-chain" doesn't really mean a whole lot to NFT collectors.

but the entire nft market is in a slump. these things don't just go up forever. there have to be corrections.

Very true, and the majority of NFTs will trend toward zero indefinitely, regardless of market conditions. There's simply too many out there & too many new ones being created every day for all of them to retain value.

[Wind_FURY]

But the silly-picture-selling crowd doesn't want to store their pictures in a offchain layer. They want them in a highly secure bank-vault, which the Bitcoin blockchain provides. That's probably what will give them their "value".

True enough.  They're also not going to waste time to try and genuinely optimise their infrastructure if the primary goal is simply to offload the memes to the next sap and move on to a new swindle (that looks and sounds like all their old swindles, but bundled in a shiny new wrapper with the latest jargon and buzzwords).  Pump shit -> Dump shit -> Move on -> Repeat.

But from the point of view of those more technically intelligent collectors, there would probably be more value in NFTs inscribed in the most secure Blockchain in the world than those merely minted in an off-chain layer. I might be the stupid one, but if I wanted to collect dick pics, I would only want them inscribed on-chain, in the Bitcoin blockchain.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[stompix]

They're not even doing anything with the BRC-20 tokens, they're just minting them because somebody like Leonidas told them to. The only real winner here is the service, and those who have a stake in the success of the service.

Much like the jpeg inscriptions, this is 100% hype driven and will not last.

would you agree with that article? it seems about right what i would have expected. but the entire nft market is in a slump.

I think there is a tiny difference between minting and transactions and the price those things fetch on the market.
While Bitcoin maxis would have little interest on how much a monkey is valued in some fake auction, what most here are concerned is the amount of "spam" those things do, and if you look at the statistics:

% of BTC Transactions
https://dune.com/queries/2432967/3996835


Number of BRC-20 Inscription Minted
https://dune.com/queries/2433706/3998316


Not that much has changed, one might say it's even worse.

[Wind_FURY]

Not that much has changed, one might say it's even worse.

OK, I have a theory. But it's already very obvious.

- Because Ordinals users have been carving their own niche within the Bitcoin community/organizing their own conferences/having their own "heroes" with Casey Rodarmor and Erin Redwing, I believe that during the next bull cycle some of those BRC-20 tokens and NFTs will DEFINITELY surge MORE than Bitcoin. If I wanted to do some shitcoining, frankly not my first time, which BRC-20 token should I gamble?

[fillippone]

Not that much has changed, one might say it's even worse.

OK, I have a theory. But it's already very obvious.

- Because Ordinals users have been carving their own niche within the Bitcoin community/organizing their own conferences/having their own "heroes" with Casey Rodarmor and Erin Redwing, I believe that during the next bull cycle some of those BRC-20 tokens and NFTs will DEFINITELY surge MORE than Bitcoin. If I wanted to do some shitcoining, frankly not my first time, which BRC-20 token should I gamble?

I have serious doubts about this.
I don’t indulge into shit ornery very much, but after months of this Ordinals saga, I haven’t seen a clear winner in the space. There isn’t a BAYC equivalent for ordinals, and while I understand that minting is different than trading, I doubt this relentless minting activity will be ever be beneficial for prices.

[JayJuanGee]

What happened to Udi Werthimer? Why does he look as though he "hates" Bitcoin?

Good question... For as long as I've been on Twitter he's just been trolling maximalists and core devs. It seems some of the major podcasters really upset him, for what reason I'm not entirely sure... but its all pretty ridiculous & inconsequential influencer-ing.

Sure who wants to follow all of the nitty-gritty drama, but it still seems to me that Udi is not dumb or anything, while at the same time, it seems that his ego has gotten too big.

He can do whatever he wants in his little made-up battles against so called bitcoin maximalists as he defines them, but it seems likely that he is not going to be on the right side of history when he has let himself become so emotional and ego-driven.

[Wind_FURY]

Not that much has changed, one might say it's even worse.

OK, I have a theory. But it's already very obvious.

- Because Ordinals users have been carving their own niche within the Bitcoin community/organizing their own conferences/having their own "heroes" with Casey Rodarmor and Erin Redwing, I believe that during the next bull cycle some of those BRC-20 tokens and NFTs will DEFINITELY surge MORE than Bitcoin. If I wanted to do some shitcoining, frankly not my first time, which BRC-20 token should I gamble?

I have serious doubts about this.
I don’t indulge into shit ornery very much, but after months of this Ordinals saga, I haven’t seen a clear winner in the space. There isn’t a BAYC equivalent for ordinals, and while I understand that minting is different than trading, I doubt this relentless minting activity will be ever be beneficial for prices.

Obviously not, and the Ordinals users/"advocates" themselves wouldn't give a direct answer which NFT/BRC-20 token they suggest you to HODL WITH conviction. Probably Udi will say it's his Onchain Wizards NFT, but we can't truly trust a troll, and a project that might also be built for trolling the Bitcoin community. Perhaps Udi has gone Taleb on us.

But I truly want to know. Ordinals fans, which NFT/BRC-20 token do you honestly believe will have long term success?

[ABCbits]

--snip--

I think there is a tiny difference between minting and transactions and the price those things fetch on the market.
While Bitcoin maxis would have little interest on how much a monkey is valued in some fake auction, what most here are concerned is the amount of "spam" those things do, and if you look at the statistics:

% of BTC Transactions
https://dune.com/queries/2432967/3996835


Number of BRC-20 Inscription Minted
https://dune.com/queries/2433706/3998316


Not that much has changed, one might say it's even worse.

It's also worth to mention pace of UTXO growth remain unchanged since Ordinal-based token become popular[1]. Few months ago i mentioned massive UTXO growth at ~102.5 million UTXO[2], but now we're looking at 119.9 million UTXO[1].

[1] https://statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&refresh=10m&from=now%2Fy&to=now
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5452159.msg62363628#msg62363628

[larry_vw_1955]

Very true, and the majority of NFTs will trend toward zero indefinitely, regardless of market conditions. There's simply too many out there & too many new ones being created every day for all of them to retain value.

i'm not going to disagree with that. i think it's probably true! at least there's an upper limit to how many ordinals could exist. 21 million times 100 million. that's enough for every man, woman and child on the face of the planet to own around a million or at least half a million monkeys 

It's also worth to mention pace of UTXO growth remain unchanged since Ordinal-based token become popular[1]. Few months ago i mentioned massive UTXO growth at ~102.5 million UTXO[2], but now we're looking at 119.9 million UTXO[1].

When someone makes a monkey on bitcoin ordinals, does that increase the size of the utxo set though? I didn't think the monkey got stored in the utxo set...