🐻 Could NFTs make Bitcoin less boring?

GM friends, wherever you are. Welcome back to another issue of Web3 Seems Legit where we kickstart your week with a quick 5-min recap of the hottest crypto stories you may have missed. Last week was a good week for the market as investors eased up upon the Federal Reserve’s push on disinflation. Is it just me or are you feeling deja vu to 2007?

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In this issue:

📣The big story of the week. Could NFTs make Bitcoin less boring?

🚀The good. Millionaires are still bullish on crypto and market sentiment continues to improve.

🐻The big, bad FUD. 2023 could be the worst year of layoffs in crypto and VCs are basically controlled decentralized protocols.

📣The big story of the week

Could NFTs make Bitcoin less boring?

A majority of you guys probably had your first exposure to crypto through Bitcoin. Maybe you read Satoshi’s Bitcoin whitepaper and believed in the fundamentals. Or maybe you FOMO’ed in because everyone around you was talking about this hot new cryptocurrency.

Either way, Bitcoin has popularly been seen as the “untouchable” digital asset that will eventually replace the gold and fiat standards. Satoshi has made it clear that his intention in creating Bitcoin is to fix the issues within the traditional banking system 💪.

We’re all for it, but we also have to admit that other than talking about Bitcoin’s price action, there often isn’t any interesting news or updates on this currency 🤷. Meanwhile, the rest of the crypto community is often livelier and more engaging.

So when the Ordinals NFT project launched on the Bitcoin blockchain, the response was divided. Finally, something is happening with Bitcoin, but the maxis are arguing that Bitcoin should stay purely for financial transactions and not dip into other use cases.

What is Ordinals?

So what is Ordinals and why are people up in arms about it 👀?

Created by Casey Rodarmor, software dev and former Bitcoin contributor, Ordinals basically gives a serial number to a Satoshi to enable the tracking and transferring of sats. Through the Ordinals protocol, users can send and receive Satoshis that have content inscribed into them, like videos and images.

Linking NFTs to the Bitcoin blockchain isn’t actually new. In fact, it’s been going on for a decade now with projects like Counterparty and Stacks that created alternative solutions to turn Bitcoin into an NFT chain. It never really took off though while other chains like Ethereum and Solana thrived in the NFT space.

If you want to dive even deeper, here is the best thread we found on how Ordinals and inscriptions work 👇

So what’s the issue? NFTs has brought a lot of fun and color to the industry. Expanding Bitcoin’s use case can help build a stronger community and bring some much needed vibes to the chain 💪.

So why are the maxis mad?

Naturally, not everyone agrees with the launch of Ordinals. To the Bitcoin maxis, it’s an attack on the core principles of Bitcoin. Not only do they believe that this digital asset should remain pure, but there is also an argument that it will increase transaction fees and clog up the speed.

While there has been a surge in transaction fees since the launch of Ordinals, it’s only been during certain times of the day, so the overall daily average is lower than you may think.

But the debate doesn’t stop there. Another argument against Ordinals is that it encourages spam. Without a spam filter, miners will continue to process garbage blocks and raise the transaction fee. There are also concerns about what malicious actors could do with Ordinals 🤔.

At the end of the day, Bitcoin is a permissionless and free market. It’s not a simple debate and will likely continue to create a divide in the community until better solutions are built 💪.

What do you think?

🚀The good

Despite the bear market, 82% of surveyed millionaires said that they sought financial advice to add crypto to their portfolio 👀.

Crypto market sentiment is continuing to increase. WAGMI 💪.

🐻The big, bad FUD

New CoinGecko report shows that nearly 3,000 jobs were cut in crypto last month with 84% of it accounting for centralized exchanges. So we’re all switching to work in DeFi now, right 👀?

A16Z as one of the top VC firms that has also made a heavy mark in the web3 space. As the largest token holder of UNI (Uniswap), people are not happy that the firm has the power to control the protocol.

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