The state of Bitcoin and Ordinals – BitTalk #5

In this episode of BitTalk, hosts Akiba, James van Straten, and Nicholas Gregory discussed the state of and NFTs. First, Nicholas brought up the Ordinals debate, causing a buzz in the bitcoin world. He explained that while NFTs have been around for some time, with the introduction of a new protocol called Ordinals, they have become a hot topic. Storing large NFTs on the Ordinals protocol would take up a significant amount of block space, bringing up memories of the block size wars.

NFTs on Bitcoin have sparked debate within the Bitcoin community around block size and the possibility of malicious data being stored on the blockchain. Nicholas pointed out that with the release of SegWit, which added witness data to the one-megabyte blocks, the potential for storing large JPEGs on the blockchain increased. He also mentioned that the potential issue with storing NFTs on the blockchain was that it would increase the price of block space.

Nicholas said,

“I don’t think the whole NFT ecosystem of Ethereum, OpenSea, smart contracts, you name it, is suddenly going to move to the Bitcoin blockchain. That would blow up the block size, that would blow up the price of block space… and it just wouldn’t scale anyway.“

James also shared his thoughts on the state of Bitcoin, stating that the climate in the Bitcoin world was a bit unpredictable, with fluctuations in price, but overall, it had been a good couple of weeks for Bitcoin. Watch the full episode above for a complete insight into James’ Bitcoin Weather segment.

The team acknowledged that NFTs and their potential impact on the Bitcoin blockchain were subjects of much discussion and debate. Although there are potential problems with storing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, the speakers agreed that the system would need to adapt and find solutions to these challenges in the coming weeks.