The Ordinals-Focused Infighting Is Bad for Bitcoin

This is an opinion editorial by content creator and small business owner Robert Hall.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a disheartening trend that has split the bitcoin community into two warring factions. On the one hand, “Bitcoin Transaction Maximalists” believe that Bitcoin Layer 1 should be used purely for processing transactions. On the other side of the spectrum, “general enjoyers” want to use layer 1 of bitcoin to tokenize arbitrary data and generally want to experiment with the base layer.

I personally don’t have a dog in this fight. I think both sides make compelling arguments for their use cases. The purpose of this article is not to say that one side is right and the other side is wrong, it is to warn about what will happen if infighting continues and how it may hinder the movement.

Sympathy for bitcoin trading extremists

The existing schism in the bitcoin community appeared to be correct when the Ordinals showed up on the scene. January 2023, The Ordinals Protocol essentially allows for NFTs on bitcoin. Until then, NFTs had generally been left to the Ethereum crowd and their ilk. Ordinals changed that dynamic and brought creators who were mining NFTs for bitcoin onto Ethereum, and this new influx brought new developers and of course higher transaction fees.

As we all know, the bitcoin blockchain is not optimized for speed. This is why we have the Lightning Network and other Layer 2 solutions. The main chain of bitcoin aims to be a highly secure and consistent transfer of value. bitcoin network Has an uptime of 99.98%Which is a remarkable achievement. This is what we want in base money that can be trusted: not debatable over time.

When new participants come into the bitcoin ecosystem and want to transact on the network, inevitably transaction fees are going to increase. It comes down to the simple issue of supply and demand. With each block, there is only a limited amount of block space, so users have to compete to get their transactions into the next block.

This allows users to bid more and have their transaction commits to the mempool or eliminate the cost of sending the transaction in the first place.

As someone who is lucky enough to live in the western world, this is not a big deal to me as I can wait for the transaction fees to come back. Many users in the global south do not have that luxury.

They are using bitcoin as a monetary network to conduct day to day business, so layer 1 fee spikes are detrimental to their daily survival. This is where I sympathize with the argument that bitcoin should primarily be used for transactions.

Sympathy for Bitcoin Ordinary Enjoyers

But rules are rules, and ordinances follow the parameters of bitcoin. Since Ordinal launched, there has undoubtedly been an explosion of activity on the bitcoin network. Before the Ordinances, transactions for money could be sent, but after the Ordinances, Fees increase to $19.20 in May 2023. This represents a 560% increase.

Obviously, this is a huge increase in fees, but on the other hand, it has shown the bitcoin community that fees can replace block subsidies in time. For example, with block 788,695 there was 6.7 BTC in fees.Versus the permanent block subsidy of 6.25 BTC.

Ultimately this is what we want to happen, but I can guess that bitcoin transaction extremists didn’t want this to happen so early in the bitcoin adoption cycle. Given how early we are, I can see why they would be bothered by simple enjoyers.

Many of these extremists think that the enjoyers of the Ordinal are nothing but degenerate altcoiners, who bring their garbage onto the bitcoin network and top it off with monkey pictures and dick butts. Fair point, some of this is going on. But nothing can be done about it.

Bitcoin is for everyone, isn’t it? It’s permissionless, and as long as it doesn’t break the rules, people can do whatever they want with bitcoin.

But right now this tension in bitcoin is creating two distinct camps in bitcoin, which is sad to see because we should be united in the mission to bring the world to the bitcoin standard.

We are the ambassadors of bitcoin

The divide between pro-ordinal and anti-ordinal camps existed mainly on Bitcoin Twitter, but it certainly came to the fore at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami.

If you watched the “Great Ordinals Debate,” you saw tension from the get go. Both camps, represented by speakers on stage, came out swinging against each other, accusing each other of harming bitcoin and bitcoin adoption:

The debate was childish, and the debate over the BRC-20 token was little more than a farce. This scholarship was a facade that was presented for the world to see, four people debating something that the general public could not understand. Perception is everything right now, and if the goal is to get billions of people around the world onboard, debating wizard pictures and obscure protocols is not the way to go.

In my view, this debate has just highlighted the struggle for bitcoin’s soul. What does it mean to be a bitcoiner? How to use the network? Can bitcoiners tell other bitcoiners how to use the network?

These are questions that will probably continue to arise as long as bitcoin exists and other use cases are created for bitcoin.

I don’t like intruding on bitcoin twitter or conferences because it makes the bitcoin industry look bad and like it’s not ready for the big leagues. How can bitcoin become the world’s reserve currency when we don’t have our own at home? Guys, don’t go where you eat. We are the messengers of bitcoin, and we must always be vigilant about how bitcoin is presented to the world.

Bitcoin’s mission is to offer a better alternative to the world and to take away the power from those who corrupt society with fiat currency. The powers that be won’t take bitcoin seriously until we get a large number of people adopting it. Community needs to stay focused and presentable to the wider public if we want to change the world. Remove the wizard hat, and close the laser eyes. We are all on the same team and working towards the same goal. Let us not forget what brought us to bitcoin.

This is a guest post by Robert Hall. The opinions expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.