Do Ordinals Make Bitcoin Better or Worse Money? With Rob Hamilton

 
 

Where to find the show

Download Episode MP3 File
The file will open in a new window. Click down arrow to download the file.

“Bitcoin exists. Any sort of moralistic lens of perspectives of what it should be doing is a conversation, but Bitcoin works as this anarchic system where there’s no one in control, and everyone gets to use it however they want; and if people can’t do that the project fails.”
— Rob Hamilton

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Rob Hamilton is a co-founder and the CEO of AnchorWatch. In this interview, we discuss ordinals and ordinal inscriptions: what they are, how they work, what risks and benefits do they present to Bitcoin, how would we mitigate negative impacts, and how the rest of the ecosystem is responding.

- - - -

Bitcoin’s use cases grow every year. A new version of money. An international payments rail. A tool to build out stranded energy, mitigate methane emissions and stabilise energy grids. And now, a decentralized immutable repository for images, audio, video and code. Ordinal inscriptions have been popularised as Bitcoin’s answer to NFTs, but that framing significantly underplays the opportunities and threats of this burgeoning functionality.

Ordinal inscriptions have been made possible via a series of Bitcoin upgrades going back to SegWit, and additional software, the Ordinal protocol, developed by Bitcoiner Casey Rodarmor. Rodarmor’s motivation was to make Bitcoin fun. But it has sparked a fierce debate about the nature and purpose of Bitcoin. In short, if Bitcoin is the new version of money, should all other uses that impact this primary use case be excised?

Philosophically, can a decentralized anarchic system without a fixed mission statement have rules of use beyond what is technically possible? Or, does the hard-won trajectory for Bitcoin that emerged from the blocksize wars set a clear enough ideology of what Bitcoin is and isn’t? Whilst technically, what can actually be done to counter the ordinal impact? Will this require another fork, or are there softer mitigations? And what will be the cost to the network of such changes?

The flip side to this debate is the positive impact ordinal inscriptions are having on Bitcoin transactions. Miners are at last seeing a use case that is, at last, bringing value to transaction verification. Whilst it is leading to questions about the blockchain being bloated is this actually a good thing in that it accelerates the market determination of true transaction value on the base layer?

Whatever the outcome will be, such discourse is a natural consequence of having a decentralized network without any rulers. Vigorous and healthy debates have galvanised and strengthened the Bitcoin protocol since its inception. Long may it continue.

TIMESTAMPS

00:03:01: Introductions
00:05:20: Twitter toxicity
00:10:02: Explaining the Ordinal Project
00:24:47: Collecting ordinals, and the ordinal debate
00:34:26: Can ordinals be undone?
00:39:39: The ethics of the Bitcoin consensus code
00:44:17: Transaction fees, and scaling solutions
00:49:05: Bloating the blockchain
00:55:06: Ordinal inscriptions, and changing the Bitcoin narrative
01:06:56: Bitcoin's security budget
01:10:33: Pruning
01:13:48: Can we have fun on Bitcoin?
01:20:03: Value of ordinals
01:23:36: ETH response to ordinals
01:28:50: How Bitcoin is handling ordinals
01:36:04: Final comments

 

SUPPORT THE SHOW

If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:

If you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.

SPONSORS

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Rob:

Mentioned in the interview:

Other Relevant WBD Podcasts:

PodcastPeter McCormack