{"id":4034,"date":"2023-07-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02c4c2e11000259e"},"modified":"2023-07-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T12:00:00","slug":"bitcoin-ordinal-users-are-challenging-the-bitcoin-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoin-ordinal-users-are-challenging-the-bitcoin-religion","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin\u2019s Martin Luthers: How Ordinal Wizards Challenge The Religion Of Maximalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an opinion editorial by Nathan Cryder, the COO of a renewable energy company and the founder of a bitcoin-focused holding company.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that Bitcoin\u2019s mysterious, pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto<\/a>, knew just how many similarities Bitcoin would one day share with the world\u2019s great religions when they first released their code to the public. <\/p>\n

That \u201cgenesis block\u201d was mined on one of Nakamoto\u2019s computers on January 3, 2009, a day now celebrated annually as one of the many Bitcoin \u201cholidays\u201d to commemorate the heritage of the world\u2019s first cryptocurrency and blockchain. For some, January 3 has become \u201cProof Of Keys Day\u201d<\/a> to promote the importance of holding one\u2019s own private keys, as opposed to trusting them with a cryptocurrency exchange or other third party. Other Bitcoin holidays commemorate the first bitcoin transaction (\u201cBitcoin Pizza Day\u201d<\/a>), the sovereignty of community consensus and the resolution to the \u201cBlocksize Wars\u201d (\u201cBitcoin \u201cIndependence Day\u201d<\/a>) and the day Nakamoto publicly released the white paper conceptualizing Bitcoin (\u201cBitcoin White Paper Day\u201d<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Coincidentally, this last one falls on the same day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in Germany<\/a>, ultimately upending many of the Catholic Church\u2019s most cherished traditions, which had barely changed in 1,500 years. <\/p>\n

Bizarre as it may sound, if a group of self-proclaimed wizards get their way, the Bitcoin \u201creligion\u201d will soon recognize another holiday to mark another day of significance in the history of Bitcoin, at least in their eyes. In a Twitter Spaces, I have heard Udi Wertheimer<\/a> and Eric Wall<\/a>, two proponents of Bitcoin Ordinals who refer to themselves as \u201cTaproot wizards,\u201d discuss promoting January 24 as Bitcoin \u201cJPEG Day\u201d to commemorate the day on which a user on the Bitcoin Talk<\/a> forum, who went by the name of \u201cSabunir,\u201d attempted to sell a JPEG in 2010 with technical support from none other than Nakamoto themself<\/a> (nearly five months before the infamous pizza purchase<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It might not be a stretch to view Wertheimer and Wall \u2014 along with Casey Rodarmor<\/a>, who developed Ordinas, and someone who goes by the pseudonym Domo<\/a>, who developed the BRC-20 token standard<\/a> \u2014 as the Bitcoin community\u2019s equivalent to Martin Luther. These four \u201cheretics\u201d managed to make the Bitcoin network an environment for transacting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), resulting in many hardcore Bitcoiners (often dubbed \u201cmaximalists\u201d or \u201cmaxis\u201d for short) blowing a gasket on Twitter. <\/p>\n

The Religion Of Bitcoin<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m certainly not the first person to analogize Bitcoin\u2019s most fervent enthusiasts with religious evangelists. Michael Lewis<\/a>, the author of books such as \u201cLiar’s Poker,\u201d \u201cMoneyball\u201d and \u201cThe Big Short\u201d used this comparison on stage at Bitcoin 2023<\/a>. Describing the process of interviewing Bitcoin enthusiasts for his upcoming book about FTX\u2019s disgraced founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried, Lewis said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe feeling I have is that you can say something wrong. When I was (writing) \u201cThe Blind Side,\u201d my main characters were evangelical Christians, but they were suspicious of me because they sensed I didn\u2019t share their belief structure\u2026 It isn\u2019t that I\u2019m in or out when it comes to Bitcoin, it\u2019s just that I haven\u2019t thought much about it, honestly. I\u2019ve interviewed \u2014 I don\u2019t know \u2014 200 people, and quite a few of them were like, \u2018What are you gonna say about Bitcoin?\u2019\u2026 It\u2019s interesting, it\u2019s like a religious thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This \u201creligious thing\u201d has always irked me, and here\u2019s why: the maximalists who collectively created their own bizarre Bitcoin religion have anointed themselves guardians of it and continuously attempt to apply litmus tests to other Bitcoin enthusiasts for no particularly good reason other than to bolster their \u201cstreet cred\u201d as more hardcore and extremist than the next guy (I would say \u201cguy or gal,\u201d but maxis are overwhelmingly male). <\/p>\n

On Twitter, you\u2019ll recognize them from their \u201claser-eyed\u201d avatars in which they\u2019ve digitally replaced their own eyes with fluorescent, red ones to clearly and proudly mark themselves as a part of the religion. Maxis are a disproportionately-loud vocal minority on \u201cBitcoin Twitter\u201d that seems to enjoy, above all else, trolling and ridiculing anyone they deem as inadequately faithful to their conspiratorial rhetoric on subjects ranging from vaccinations and sunscreen to seed oils, anti-gun legislation and corporate ESG mandates. You see, in the upside-down world of the laser-eyed, being toxic is a virtue. Being toxic is somehow, for them, the way to win over hearts and minds. <\/p>\n

To be fair, maxis aren\u2019t a homogenous group, but they tend to share a common view that Bitcoin is the solution to many of the world\u2019s problems and tend to subscribe to political doctrines of Libertarianism and Austrian economics, and tend to hate what they view as hopelessly- corrupted institutions like the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum. This part, I kind of like. On the shared-beliefs continuum with Bitcoiners, I generally lean their way. I, too, subscribe to most Austrian economic principles, have many Libertarian leanings, and am increasingly skeptical of the mainstream media. And, most importantly, I believe Bitcoin has the potential to be the soundest money ever created. <\/p>\n

However, the part I hate is that maxis overwhelmingly subscribe to conspiratorial rhetoric on just about anything you can imagine, many of which are non-monetary in nature and all of which are complete non sequiturs when it comes to Bitcoin. I\u2019m certain that most maxis would argue that all of these things are somehow related to the \u201cfiat system\u201d they wish to overturn in order to set the stage for a new world in which Bitcoin reigns supreme (\u201cThe Bitcoin Standard<\/a>,\u201d as author and laser-eyed saint Saifedean Ammous, describes it). <\/p>\n

I would argue, though, that these are issues that the average person knows little or cares little about and that focusing on them is maddeningly counterproductive in terms of spreading Bitcoin\u2019s adoption. If the world is ever to convert to said bitcoin standard, widespread adoption on orders of magnitude greater than where they stand today is needed \u2014 and stupid litmus tests are a massive turnoff, at worst, and massive distraction, at best, to all but the most extreme among us. <\/p>\n

An Ossified Base Layer<\/h2>\n

The parallels between Bitcoiners and religion go beyond just the dogmatic in-group mentality of maxis. Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cbase layer\u201d code, for example, is akin in many ways to scripture. While many proposals<\/a> have been made over the years to change it, only a relative handful of significant ones have ever been approved. Indeed, The Ten Commandments are only slightly less likely to be altered than the software code that runs the Bitcoin network \u2014 a feature, not a bug, in the view of many Bitcoiners.<\/p>\n

The process adhered to by Bitcoin\u2019s core developers to change the code is cumbersome by design, requiring anyone proposing a change to write a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) that aims to achieve some kind of community consensus to enact the changes. The ossified nature of Bitcoin\u2019s base layer is a testament to Bitcoin\u2019s decentralization in the eyes of most maxis \u2014 something that sets it apart from more centralized blockchains, like Ethereum, which have a much lower threshold for implementing changes. Changes in the functionality of Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cLayer 1\u201d will always be controversial; however, the Taproot<\/a> and SegWit<\/a> upgrades, designed to make the Bitcoin protocol more secure and efficient, were adopted by the Bitcoin community with relative ease and Taproot was activated in November 2021<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Herein lies the irony. Had those who determined the Bitcoin network\u2019s governance known at the time that these upgrades would enable Rodarmor to create Ordinals and inscriptions, it seems unlikely in retrospect that the changes would have been accepted with such relative ease. The church fundamentalists got beat at their own game, and many of them (including Greg Foss<\/a>, a podcaster and Bitcoin Magazine contributor<\/a> with more than 130,000 Twitter followers<\/a>) have been on the warpath ever since. <\/p>\n

The majority of Bitcoin miners love Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, because they have led to increased transaction fees<\/a>, while many maxis are adamantly against them, because they view NFTs as a distraction from what they see as Bitcoin\u2019s core function as a much-improved way of sending, receiving and storing value. The network was designed as a monetary settlement and transaction platform, not for the tokenization of digital art or real-world assets (RWAs<\/a>), the laser-eyed say. JPEG Day, then, might as well be called \u201cScam Day\u201d as far as they\u2019re concerned. <\/p>\n

A Battle For The Soul Of Bitcoin<\/h2>\n

While the story of inscriptions and Ordinals is still being written, the reality that JPEG \u201cart collections\u201d and other ordinal use cases may be here to stay has resulted in another internal culture war reminiscent of Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cBlocksize Wars<\/a>\u201d from 2015 to 2017. Only, rather than \u201csmall-blockers\u201d versus \u201clarge blockers,\u201d the Ordinals have pitted maximalists against NFT creators and enthusiasts. <\/p>\n

The rising tension ultimately came to a head at Bitcoin 2023 <\/em>during a perfectly-timed onstage event dubbed by the conference organizers as \u201cThe Great Ordinals Debate<\/a>.\u201d Dressed as wizards (and \u201cflossing<\/a>\u201d as they arrived on stage), Wertheimer and Wall displayed their mastery as hype artists while debating Matt Corallo<\/a> (notably, an anti-toxic maximalist) of Block and Spiral and someone who concealed his face with sunglasses, a bandana over his nose and mouth and a camouflage UASF<\/a> hat (signaling himself as a \u201csmall-blocker\u201d) who goes by the name Shinobi<\/a>. It was like some kind of quirky, nerd version of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), as if Don King had somehow infiltrated an episode of \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d <\/em>and convinced Sheldon Cooper and Howard Wolowitz to get in the ring. <\/p>\n

I watched from the audience, marveling at the spectacle of the heretic wizards out-trolling the laser-eyes who had been extolling the virtues of toxicity to the detriment of a thing I\u2019d grown to love as they debated Ordinals and battled hilariously for the soul of Bitcoin. <\/p>\n

This is a guest post by Nathan Cryder. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By trolling so-called \u201cBitcoin Maximalists,\u201d proponents of Ordinals raise questions about devotion to Bitcoin culture and its use cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2726,"featured_media":4035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[90,59,336],"class_list":{"0":"post-4034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-bitcoin-maximalism","9":"tag-opinion","10":"tag-ordinals"},"author_data":{"id":2726,"name":"Nathan Cryder","nicename":"nathan-cryder","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/nathan-cryder-headshot-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/international-bitcoiners-pitch-in-on-notre-dame-restoration-effort.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}