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Elon Musk slams NFTs but ends up arguing the case for Bitcoin Ordinals

November 2, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Elon Musk argued that NFT projects “should at least encode the JPEG in the blockchain,” to the delight of many Bitcoiners.

While publicly mocking non-fungible token (NFTs) during a podcast, Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk appears to have inadvertently highlighted the case for Bitcoin Ordinals, also known as Bitcoin NFTs.

“The funny thing is the NFT is not even on the blockchain — it’s just a URL to the JPEG,” said Musk in an Oct. 31 released interview on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Musk said NFT projects should at least encode the JPEG on-chain:

“You should at least encode the JPEG in the blockchain. If the company housing the image goes out of business, you don’t have the image anymore.”

On social media, Bitcoiners argued Musk’s comments actually summed up the use case for Bitcoin Ordinals. Bitcoin’s version of NFTs launched in January by developer Casey Rodarmor, which was made possible by the Taproot soft fork in November 2021.

Cryptocurrency analyst Will Clemente was among those that praised Musk’s comments, noting there are 38 million and counting Ordinals inscriptions that will forever exist on Bitcoin’s blockchain.

.@elonmusk you just laid out the case for Bitcoin ordinals - image/text inscriptions directly on the most secure open source monetary network on the planet. There are currently 38 million of these inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. pic.twitter.com/WASj1qpkz8
— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) November 1, 2023

“This is why Ordinals will continue to grow,” said Rohun “Frank” Vora, the creator of NFT projects DeGods and y00ts. “It's the most elegant solution to one of the most universal criticisms of NFTs.”

Ordinals developer known as “Leonidas” liked Musk’s comments so much that they inscribed the 19-second video into Bitcoin’s blockchain at block 814,773:

*Video of Elon Musk inscribed on Bitcoin’s blockchain via the Ordinals protocol. Source:* *Ord.io*

The criticisms from Musk toward NFTs aren’t new. In December 2021, he mocked NFTs as a sign of mental illness in a meme showing a patient lying on a therapist’s couch.

pic.twitter.com/Wv6iJDuTge
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2021

Musk’s comments however don’t stand true for all NFT projects on Ethereum.

For example, Larva Labs moved its Cryptopunks NFTs on-chain in August 2021 after they lived off-chain for the first four years.

“Storing them on-chain in this way would further cement the long-term survival of the Cryptopunks images and attributes, and ensure that they can be fully accessed by anyone with only an Ethereum client,” Larva Labs in the statement.

.@elonmusk is correct that having NFT merely provide an http link to someone's domain is silly.

However, with rare exceptions, it's also silly to insist NFT content be on chain,

IPFS links, with the content backed by whoever owns the NFT is the natural solution.
— Arthur B. (@ArthurB) November 1, 2023

Metagood, the team behind the Ethereum-native OnChainMonkeys, announced in September that it would migrate its NFTs to Bitcoin.

While the firm’s CEO Danny Yang didn’t directly address the JPEG dilemma, he explained that NFTs “will win on Bitcoin” because it is a more secure network to work from:

“The Bitcoin Ordinal protocol is better designed for decentralization and security than the Ethereum NFT protocol. High-value NFTs will win on Bitcoin.”

However, Ethereum still remains home to 84% of all NFT trading volumes, according to CoinGecko, sourcing data from June. Bitcoin and ImmutableX came in second and third with market shares of 11% and 2.5% respectively.

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Watch out Ordinals, 30,000 ‘Ethscriptions’ land on Ethereum

June 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

bitcoin ordinals

Inspired by Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions, Ethscriptions offer a new way to mint NFTs on Ethereum.

Ethereum users have been given another way to create nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other digital assets on the blockchain with the launch of a new protocol.

Launched on June 17 the protocol, dubbed “Ethscriptions,” is a nod to the Bitcoin (BTC) Ordinals protocol — where assets are known as “inscriptions.”

Ethscriptions was developed by music website Genius.com co-founder Tom Lehman, who uses the pseudonym Middlemarch on Twitter. Lehman declared the project a “huge success” in a series of tweets on June 17 and noted nearly 30,000 Ethscriptions had been created within the first 18 hours of the protocol going live.

With almost 30k Ethscriptions in
Thank you for seeing the massive potential here!

I am on Ethscriptions 24/7, but I need your help!

DM @proroketh to join our protocol Twitter chat. Ideas, bug reports, NO alpha, NO trading, NERDS ONLY! pic.twitter.com/udKdsVT0L8
— Middlemarch (@dumbnamenumbers) June 17, 2023

According to Lehamn, Ethscriptions assets utilize Ethereum “calldata” — the data within a smart contract — to allow for a “cheaper” and “more decentralized” minting process when compared with conventional smart contract-based methods.

Users are currently limited to image-only inscriptions but Lehamn says the protocol will allow for different file types to be uploaded in the future. Currently, users are able to “ethscribe” any image as long as it's less than 96 kilobytes in size.

Lehman’s debut project on the Ethscriptions protocol, dubbed “Ethereum Punks” witnessed a considerably positive response from the community, with all 10,000 assets being claimed near-instantaneously.

Introducing Ethscriptions: a new way of creating and sharing digital artifacts on Ethereum using transaction calldata.https://t.co/XfQ7RdtblD

ALSO: Introducing Ethereum Punks. Because why should all non-contract Punk collecting happen on Bitcoin?https://t.co/d3Ycwbdc2Z…
— Middlemarch (@dumbnamenumbers) June 16, 2023

Lehman added the project’s launch garnered so much user activity that the API interface for the official Ethscriptions website temporarily crashed.

Due to pre-existing infrastructure that allows for the creation of NFTs and other digital assets on the Ethereum network, it’s unclear if Ethscriptions will witness the same level of popularity as Bitcoin Ordinals has.

In less than six months, the total number of Ordinals inscribed on Bitcoin surged from zero to ten million. The enormous surge in activity was driven in large part by users embracing the novelty of being able to mint assets, which later included entirely new tokens — by way of the BRC-20 token standard — on the Bitcoin network.

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Ordinals sends LTC and DOGE network activity surging for 3 straight weeks

May 22, 2023 Coin Telegraph

bitcoin ordinals

Move over Bitcoin, Ordinals on Litecoin and Dogecoin have unleashed a frenzy of transactions.

What began with developer Casey Rodarmor creating the Ordinals protocol to “inscribe” text and imagery on the Bitcoin (BTC) network has now made its way to Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE), sending transaction volume on thosechains surging for the better part of a month.

*Recent network activity on Litecoin and Dogecoin networks. Source: BitInfoCharts*

On May 18, Dogecoin reached a new transaction volume record, with 1.2 million transactions in a single 24-hour period, according to data from BitInfoCharts. Similarly, on May 10, Litecoin reached its highest ever daily transaction volume with 584,000 transactions.

Ordinals first arrived on Litecoin after pseudonymous Twitter user Indigo Nakamoto offered 5 LTC — worth approximately $500 at the time — to anyone who could “port” the Ordinals protocol to the Litecoin network.

5 $LTC to whoever ports this to #Litecoin #Bitcoin #Ordinals https://t.co/7X4JfMzq97
— Indigo Nakamoto (@indigo_nakamoto) February 11, 2023

Some eight days later, on Feb. 19, software engineer Anthony Guerrera succeeded and launched the Litecoin Ordinals protocol. In a similar way, DOGE enthusiasts copied the Ordinals protocol to create the same functionality on Dogecoin, choosing to name the new protocol “Doginals”.

However, what really drove network activity on Litecoin and Dogecoin to new heights was the later introduction of the respective LRC-20 and DRC-20 token standards in early May, which allowed users to create and issue entirely new memecoins on the two networks.

The monumental influx of activity on LTC and DOGE came around the same time that the Ordinals inscription on the Bitcoin network went into overdrive, with a record 400,000 daily inscriptions on May 10.

*Ordinals inscriptions on Bitcoin since December 2022. Source:* *Dune Analytics*

The uptick in Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions can be directly attributed to the introduction of the BRC-20 token standard, which — according to data from Ordinals scanner brc-20.io — has seen more than 24,000 new tokens minted on the Bitcoin blockchain.

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ordinals inscriptions