Greetings, and GM!
Living in Miami is a cheat code most of the time, and this weekend was one of those opportunities to skip levels and bank some extra lives.
The Bitcoin 2023 Conference was held this past week + weekend at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and the city hosted dozens of satellite events, meetups, and parties for attendees.
The newsletter will be delivered in part 1 and part 2. Today is part 1, with part 2 to come later this week.
For those unable to attend, here is a link to Bitcoin Magazine’s streaming video archive of the event’s presentations and panels. Link here, or the image below:
TL;DR
Part 1 (today)
Why Bitcoin Conference for ImmutableType?
Ordinals Inscriptions emergence is the real story WSJ has the opportunity to sell
Part 2 (later this week)
Bitcoin branding is a feature AND a bug
Decentralizing journalism may be a perilous journey
Links from the show worth sharing widely
Secret Shopify store for Immutabletype.com
Wen Ordinals drop from ImmutableType??
Why Bitcoin Conference for ImmutableType?
My journey with Bitcoin began in 2012, and I have always found its appeal to be the ideal of sovereignty for the individual.
The ideal does cut both ways in my opinion, since, a planet full of self-interested individuals could result in a population at odds with the benefits of increasing community identity and our individual empathy for our neighbors. It’s a tricky balance.
If we’re able to realize the mission of ImmutableType, we will bring people together and increase community identity. I do not believe that community success will be at the expense of the individual’s opportunity to seek self sovereignty. An individual who is safe and secure should be able to afford themselves the opportunity to listen and collaborate within their communities.
(So.) We are knowingly traveling between these ideals to bring people together.
Say More…
There are great tactical reasons for us to attend Bitcoin Conference.
Bitcoin is the largest network of crypto-payment solutions for the Web3 population, and this community of developers has made outstanding strides toward creating technologies which meet the expectations of the larger web2 world. We will provide Bitcoin as a payment option for members and readers.
The emergence of Ordinals in 2023 is ground breaking.
Protecting journalists will require cryptographers. The Bitcoin blockchain developer community is where we’ll find them.
I was able to connect with angels directly and knock out conversations over coladas and pastelitos.
Ordinals Inscriptions was the Real Story
The Wall Street Journal is one of my favorite American media brands, and the journalists knocked out some stories for their editors and advertisers.
Disclosure: I did meet two of the journalists briefly during an event Wednesday evening. They were very courteous and listened politely as I described ImmutableType and my plans for the project. This was a casual conversation in a public space.
The WSJ stories were not without some local controversy, as the rumors I heard were that they were hit pieces. The event was quite strong, and I was a bit offended that a hit piece would be published about the event and the city I now consider to be my home, Miami.
The stories in question are linked below, and two of them require subscriptions to WSJ.com. $2 per month for the first year is a great value if we’re being honest. Note the language in small print is $38.99 per month after the first year:
I had the opportunity to read the below stories myself. I feel they are perfectly fair and not factually inaccurate.
The show was smaller and more constrained on budgets for branding events, but that’s not a story, nor really actionable information.
It wasn’t a hit, and it wasn’t flattering, but it missed the biggest story of the entire week: Ordinals Inscriptions emerging is a big f’ing deal.
Here are some of the WSJ.com links to the articles by the journalists who covered the conference:
https://www.wsj.com/story/bitcoin-believers-tone-down-the-miami-party-c83cfc81
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-bitcoin-conference-no-bears-allowed-46295ad1
The Ordinals Conference (the big story)
The most important crypto event in years was held Thursday at the Hilton Cabana Hotel on Collins Avenue.
The Ordinals Conference 2023 advertised 35 speakers and limited seating for 175 attendees.
Here is the room prior to the beginning of the event, as well as a picture of the pamphlet agenda. I captured this photo as an empty room out of respect for the attendees’ privacy.
Cultures at Odds, Incredible Utility
Bitcoin narratives have been dominated for years by HODLers, Maxis, and those who seek hyperbitcoinization of monetary systems.
The historical bitcoin panels have frequently been led by these entrenced personalities, and the traditional panels occasionally seem like pastors rallying their flocks of true believers. If the old saying from Silicon Valley is “strong ideas, loosely held,” then Bitcoin HODLers can be quite rigid with strong ideas, strongly held.
The Ordinals Conference was not of that mindset. It was a conference of new perspectives with new ideas unconstrained by reverence for the old. This was a hopeful and actionable affair with people doing things that the code allowed. If code is law, this group was within the bitcoin law and not heeding the objections as they passed in the left-hand lanes.
Now, I’m stepping on the hornets nest here, because I’m describing a group (HODLers and Maxis) with which I don’t completely align, as I believe currency must flow to increase in value. Trade should be constant, and, until now, the only real trading which was constant was speculation on the price action of BTC, which isn’t exactly the kind of utility which increases adoption toward hyperbitcoinization. Satoshis need to change hands for value to have value beyond being a store of value…
This is where Ordinals Inscriptions come in and quite directly kick the hornets nest. I won’t spend time on technical descriptions here, but Ordinal Inscriptions are similar to NFTs on the bitcoin blockchain. SIMILAR is the key description. Though the bitcoin blockchain has been operational since 2009, the ability to inscribe arbitrary data to a Satoshi was only recently created by Casey Rodarmor in January, 2023. Inscriptions did exist, but they were not possible by normies, until Casey did his thing.
Why does this matter? Because there is a loud objection that this is not why the bitcoin blockchain was created. I’m not going to get into that too deeply at the moment, so the reader will need to do their own research for brevity. The headline is: Some Maxis are mad and loud that Satoshi did not create Bitcoin as an NFT network…but the miners aren’t complaining…
And the Ordinals builders? They, simply, don’t seem to care and appear to feel like the loud negative reaction is coming from a bunch of old men yelling at clouds. The conversations I had at the Ordinals afterparty, while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask as gifted by the Anonymous Bitcoin Club, were that Ordinals are attracting more talent to the bitcoin network (away from Ethereum), increasing money (BTC) is flow, and, moreover, Ordinals are just “fucking fun, man.”
Add to these benefits the fact that miners are now making more money, and it seems clear that the cloud yelling will escalate and grow louder, though it won’t matter. The code allows for Inscriptions, and using the bitcoin blockchain creates more value for the entire network. Ordinals Inscriptions will find their natural level among the conflict.
Finally, a very important utility of Ordinals Inscriptions is immutability, and it may be the killer app. If BTC has been framed as the gold of Internet money, then it would be a store of value designed to replace precious metal and fiat currency with its version of digital hard money. Everyone really liked this framing and felt comfortable describing it this way to non-coiners. However, what if it’s not really Internet gold, but actually Internet Fort Knox? What if the store of value is actually the storage of value?
Inscriptions differ from NFTs in that they are indeed immutable. NFTs rely on decentralized storage of the data which is minted on blockchains, such as Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, Solana, and many others. The decentralized storage of choice is usually IPFS, which is a valuable and effective solution, but the data is still able to be changed while leaving the tokens intact, which means the data is not immutable.
ImmutableType currently uses the Polygon blockchain, Pinata, and IPFS to execute its mints and store that data. While this method is indeed decentralized, these files are not technically immutable, which is an internally known attack vector. We have been aware of this attack vector while building ImmtuableType, and we knew there would be a technical solution at some point in the future. We didn’t know one would emerge, or become more thoroughly understood, so soon. This is good news.
Inscriptions are immutable, because they are stored onchain within a Satoshi and will never be erased. Erasing any single Inscription would require a devastating world event resulting in the destruction of every copy of the bitcoin ledger. This is very different from a standard NFT. We are in the process of researching our opportunities to use Inscriptions within ImmutableType and will keep the community updated. Anyone interested in working on this research should reach out to me directly.
«This ends part 1 of ImmutableType’s Bitcoin Conference newsletter. Subscribe and Share »
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
As always, thank you for reading and sharing. I’m excited for the upcoming drops on Immutable Type.
We’re learning loads each day and hope you enjoy the work as we build.
Cheers,
Founder, Immutable Type