Among the more memorable displays at Bitcoin 2023 is a real-life toilet with the logos of various non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies. It’s an ad for a booth selling “buttwipes” that are “moistened with the tears of no-coiners.” The marketing message is clear: Bitcoin is the real thing — everything else is a shitcoin that belongs in the toilet.
But only a few steps away is another booth selling trading solutions for BRC-20 tokens, which some have labeled shitcoins for Bitcoin. Across the walkway are more booths slinging NFT minting software — also on Bitcoin. The conference even hosts a Bitcoin NFT art gallery.
As Miami hosts the largest Bitcoin conference for the third year in a row in May, the air feels markedly different. Though there are only 15,000 attendees compared to last year’s 35,000, the atmosphere has an energy and freshness that’s a world away from the gloom and bear-market blues that one might expect after the massive drops from the 2021 highs.
Bitcoin is the real thing — everything else belongs in the toilet (Elias Ahonen)
What’s changed this year is the ordinal renaissance, brought on by the recent reality of not only NFTs but tokens being issued on the Bitcoin blockchain. There are certainly haters — with some calling for a fork to undo the Taproot updates that made “spam” possible on the chain.
But despite the Bitcoin community’s traditional hatred for NFTs, tokens and DeFi, however, things are surprisingly quiet. Despite the blowback online, almost no one Magazine encounters at Bitcoin 2023 has anything particularly bad to say about Ordinals — and some did not even realize they are related to Bitcoin.
Among old-school Bitcoiners — in circles where the cryptocurrency that starts with “E” can barely be mentioned without drawing comments of derision regarding “monkey pictures” and scam coins — the Ordinal NFT phenomenon is decisively met with a quiet acceptance or shrug. Most old-timers aren’t interested but appear to…
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