BREAKDOWN: A Primer on the Debate Around Ordinal Inscriptions, aka Bitcoin NFTs

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4.8 • 689 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are on-chain Bitcoin NFTs an interesting innovation or a censorable misallocation of resources?

For the last week, the Bitcoin community has been locked in fierce debate around Ordinal Inscriptions, a type of Bitcoin-native NFT that allows people to associate data like JPEGs with individual sats. Some find it an interesting, novel experiment. Others – including at least one core dev – think they should be censored as an illegitimate usage of the Bitcoin blockchain. NLW breaks down the debate(s).

Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 at Consensus 2023, happening April 26–28 in Austin, Texas. Come and immerse yourself in all that Web3, crypto, blockchain and the metaverse have to offer. Use code BREAKDOWN to get 15% off your pass. Visit consensus.coindesk.com.

“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsor today is “Swoon” by Falls. Image credit: Takoyaki Tech/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I think that there's a Cambrian explosion of Bitcoin building right now. More engineers and developers
0:04.4	than I've ever seen since I've been in this space are flowing back into Bitcoin. There are going to be
0:09.0	more companies and projects and people building around the edges. And that will inevitably
0:13.5	bring up debates around exactly these sorts of questions. How much design space in Bitcoin can be
0:18.3	opened up without threatening the core. I think those debates
0:21.2	are important to have, and it is, unfortunately, in some ways, but inevitably in others, a debate that
0:25.6	needs to be constantly relitigated. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily
0:34.3	podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:39.5	The breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.
0:44.7	What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, February 1st, and today we are talking ordinals and all the debates that surround these Bitcoin NFTs.
0:54.2	A quick note before we dive in, there are two ways to listen to the breakdown. and all the debates that surround these Bitcoin NFTs.
0:58.1	A quick note before we dive in, there are two ways to listen to the breakdown.
1:02.4	You can hear us on the Coin Desk podcast network, which comes out every afternoon alongside other great Coin desk shows, or you can listen on the breakdown-only feed, which comes
1:06.2	out a few hours later in the evening.
1:08.3	Wherever you're listening, I would so appreciate it if you would take the time to leave a rating or a review. It makes a huge difference. All right, guys, so for the last
1:16.2	week or so, the Bitcoin world has been totally wrapped up in a debate around ordinal
1:21.2	inscriptions. It's a sort of NFT native to Bitcoin that is bringing up a huge number of
1:26.8	questions and debates. Some of those
1:29.1	questions relate to technical aspects of Bitcoin stemming from Taproot and Segwit updates.
1:34.0	Some of those questions are about security in the fee market. Some of those questions are
1:38.1	about decentralization and the viability of running nodes. Some of those questions are cultural
1:42.5	questions of legitimate versus illegitimate uses of the blockchain. It is, in short, extremely interesting. And what I'm
	...

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