(Bitcoin) Rune protocol (Ordinals) - opportunities?

[johnarb]

I finally got around to start looking into Ordinals and Rune, yesterday, with all the buzz and ngu happenings, (ngu always the best marketer)

I'm very late to this party, but I might just be in time for the Rune protocol activation

First of all, NOT FINANCIAL ADVISE, as it is, I've already put in an irresponsible amount (over $40k and may add more)

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I'm trying to relate it to the simpler ideas as it can be too much info (even for me, so I could say something incorrect)

I think back to the fork wars of 2017, when we got a bunch of other crypto assets FOR FREE just by holding bitcoins

This is similar but much easier, when the Rune protocol gets activated in a few days, there will be Rune tokens that will be distributed

Another way I look at it is how Ethereum got started and released, there were premine Eth tokens (70% of the supply) allocated for the pre-release investors

There are Bitcoin Ordinals NFT's/inscriptions that are out now and will distribute Rune tokens to the holders

• Look into Rune Pups and RSIC MetaProtocol NFT's for examples

These NFT's were airdropped (free) or publicly minted for minimal costs to wallets that are active in the space and now they are worth thousands of $ and even over 10 thousand $

People like me that are late to the party are paying the prices, lol, but the volume is crazy high on market places like Magic Eden

• Hello NFT degens of ET

Thread discussion for anyone interested, good time before the Rune protocol gets activated on the Bitcoin halving block

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[NoahA]

Watching the first video was very enjoyable. He has such a nice voice and the editing was awesome. But this is where my positive vibe ends.

I am honestly thinking that bitcoin isn't the hardest form of money ever created anymore. It is the first iteration, but going forward, I think something else needs to come along. From what I have seen, these spam transactions bloat the UTXO set which will become a problem for older machines. Bitcoin Mechanic makes an excellent point that we shouldn't want our nodes holding 4mb of useless data like a video or music file. The whole idea for the upgrades was for people to be able to consolidate their UTXO set at a cheaper price, but look at what it did instead. I would be happy to roll back this upgrade and ossify the protocol to be honest.

When people say they are valid transactions, its like they are saying its valid for Blackstone to buy up all the houses and rent it back to suckers at inflated prices. This is what happens when something like housing gets turned into a financial asset. The utility is lost. Remember the stones used as money on that island Yap I think it was? Imagine if someone came along and thought "hmmm.. I can use this stone to grind wheat" and rolled it away. The best form of money has no other use. This is actually makes makes fiat superior. The bills have no other use. Maybe once they got so devalued people could burn them as fuel, or stuff them in a pillow case and use them as insulation. But the hardest form of money, since its just a ledger, should have no value outside of this utility. If bitcoin is a decentralized file storage protocol, its not the hardest form of money.

With everyone trying to get bitcoin to do more stuff, I fear it will break bitcoin, or cause people to go elsewhere.

Now as for what he said about NFTs on Etherium, if the URL doesn't work anymore, there goes your JPEG, which was interesting to learn. With this Rune stuff, it made me think that the only way to assign value to it is by having to use that other wallet he suggested. What if we assign value to the last satoshi in the block? Since 8 is a good Asian number, maybe a sat with the most 8's, or that starts with an 8, can also be valuable. All of this value is outside of bitcoin and can only be accessed via a wallet. This to me means that it can go poof in an instant.

I would be willing to say let the degens do their thing with this stupid app, but these transactions are really bloating the mempool. I do think at some point, they will be priced out when bitcoin climbs high enough, and hopefully that 500 sat UTXO is worth more in terms of sats than whatever the numbering is, but I fear that before we get there, enough damage might have been done.

The last war over the soft forks I think came down to what the miners wanted vs. what the individual user nodes wanted. The miners of course love this shit, but why my node needs to store all this shit I don't know. Its bad enough that we worry about how do people become self sovereign if they can never own a UTXO, but now we have to worry about all these wasted UTXO's for garbage. Just the fact that bitcoin allows for this means that its broken if you ask me. Maybe there is no way to actually say a bitcoin transactions isn't valid if its just a small UTXO, but all the data that goes into the witness part of a transaction which is cheaper, and is just data for a jpeg or video file, is an abuse of the protocol, and the protocol is broken since it doesn't catch this.

 

[johnarb]

I am honestly thinking that bitcoin isn't the hardest form of money ever created anymore. It is the first iteration, but going forward, I think something else needs to come along. From what I have seen, these spam transactions bloat the UTXO set which will become a problem for older machines. Bitcoin Mechanic makes an excellent point that we shouldn't want our nodes holding 4mb of useless data like a video or music file

I think your post is very important to this Bitcoin NFT's, Runes BRC-20 discussion, but please do not lose get lost in the weeds

• Bitcoin is the hardest money in the history of mankind, full stop

Hard money means exactly what the words mean

How difficult is it for you to acquire through mining (not buying using soft money fiat) an ounce of gold? how about an ounce of silver?

How difficult is it for you to acquire 1 bitcoin through mining?

As an ex bitcoin-miner from 2013-2014, it blows my mind how incredibly difficult, how incredibly costly, how incredibly time consuming it would be for me to mine 1 bitcoin today

That's what we mean when we say Bitcoin is the hardest money in the history of mankind

I urge anyone here, begging all of you, to try mining 1 bitcoin today so you can understand what I mean


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Everything that you said is why there's a controversy, but Bitcoin is a permissionless, censorship-resistant open-source monetary network project

Bitcoin DOES NOT BREAK (that is a BIG LIE) EVEN IF 8 BILLION PEOPLE want to play around with NFT's or inscriptions or Rune tokens


There are currently 66 blocks unconfirmed on Bitcoin mempool, nothing is broken, if someone wants to be on the next block, they have to pay the ongoing rate of 50 sats/vB

IT'S A FREE MARKET. If 8 billion people want to be on the next block, or on the next few blocks, pay up the increasing fees

Very simple. Tick Tock, next block, Bitcoin does not care

The miners do care of the high fees, it's part of their payment for securing the network and the higher the miner incentives, the more secure Bitcoin monetary network gets, THE HARDER THE BITCOIN MONEY GETS

The people making transactions on the Bitcoin mainnet monetary network care, so obviously 8 billion people cannot afford $1M worth of fees to make a transaction, so THEY WILL NOT DO SO

FREE MARKET dictates how many transactions will be put on the Bitcoin blockchain. FREE MARKET dictates maybe some should wait when the fees and the network is not as busy. FREE MARKET says use a Layer 2 like Lightning Network or Liquid should be used to buy a cup of coffee using bitcoin

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER BITCOIN, this is it, the best and hardest money in the history of mankind. This is the escape out of the fiat debt-based slavery monetary system

In 30 years, people will wonder why the people of today missed out on the greatest financial revolution in the history of the world

Please, I beg of you, Noah, do not be swayed by emotions because of short term price volatility of bitcoin

The wars that you see now, all the mad max breakdown of society, is because of a financial crisis. The ww3 and everything else are distractions

They will use them to print more money like in the Covid times. China economy is crashing, all their businesses, restaurants, malls, are empty, Japan hitting all time lows against the US $, now letting their interest rate go up

War is very good for printing and spending trillions upon trillions of fiat currencies, but unlike Covid, this time it will be in the 10's of trillions

Be safe. Stay humble. Stack sats

 

[NoahA]

Just watched the rest of the videos. Man oh man... its a sad day for Bitcoin. How on earth can a person be a rep of Blackrock and go up on stage in front of hundreds of financial advisers to pitch them the IBIT ETF while at the same time knowing that this new form of money that will revolutionize the monetary system is filled with useless transactions that bloat up the UTXO set and prevent actual monetary transactions from going through? If the miners are hurting and need the income, they shouldn't have scaled up so quickly. Let some miners fail. Creating multiple use cases for bitcoin just to keep transaction fees high for miners is short term thinking. And this is the only angle I can understand to be honest.

Imagine if an emergency department also took appointments to do eye lash extensions and hair removal in order to ensure brisk business. Sure, it means that every bed is full with a patient, but when that gunshot victim comes in, or the heart attack victim, the front desk will have to tell them that there are no beds available. Maybe for a higher price they can bump the next appointment, but its a hair removal client that is willing to pay $500, so this poor guy having a heart attack has to offer to pay more in order to be seen. ER departments are for emergency medical cases. We don't need to find other use cases in order to keep the staff busy every hour.

As you know John, I like that CTOLarsson guy, and he says openly as well that perhaps bitcoin isn't going to be the top dog forever. Because of these bugs in the code, I have to agree. I realize its very difficult to knock down, but if you take all the properties of bitcoin that are good, and build on this, I can see how there could be a more superior form of bitcoin just waiting to be started.

 

[johnarb]

I just paid $3.40 worth of satoshis to send over $12.5k worth of bitcoin

in preparation to buy Bitcoin Puppets nft

The Bitcoin blockchain is doing fine, all the fud surrounding it is unjustified

Just sent ~$20k and got confirmed, paid $3.78 worth of satoshis

 

[NoahA]

How difficult is it for you to acquire 1 bitcoin through mining?

Its of course difficult to mine, but if its difficult to use, its useless. I remember wondering back in 2012 when I thought for 1 second to buy some, if anyone was ever able to get their money back. Sure it was possible to buy bitcoin, but I wondered if people could get fiat back. Of course we have come a long way, but if there weren't so many exchanges these days, bitcoin wouldn't be as far as it is. So if the bitcoin can't be used, it has much less values. Transactions bloating the UTXO set and competing for block space do interfere with the ability to transact.

Please, I beg of you, Noah, do not be swayed by emotions because of short term price volatility of bitcoin

Don't worry there. I am not swayed at all, but I think its important to win this fight.

A week ago or so ago, there was a block mined I think with a 4mb video. That was the only transaction! Its of course expensive to do this, but just the fact that its possible is a huge red flag. What if you line up these to last for hours? I don't know who has the money for this, but just that its possible is the worry.

The other problem right now is the huge centralization of miners. I love what Ocean is doing. The fact that only 7 or 8 pools control most of the hashrate is alarming, and especially because the pool operator makes the template. This pool operator can become compromised.

The wars that you see now, all the mad max breakdown of society, is because of a financial crisis. The ww3 and everything else are distractions

Absolutely. But this is why its important to not market bitcoin as a degen blockchain where you have to pay high fees to get your transaction in because a bunch of kids are using up the blockspace on gambling.

Can you imagine if your bank branch was actually inside a casino? Imagine going in to buy a mortgage, a serious affair, and yet, you first walk through the casino floor in order to get to the mortgage specialist. This is what its like trying to sell bitcoin to people right now and having to explain why fees are spiking. Its like a casino first and monetary use second.

 

[johnarb]

Absolutely. But this is why its important to not market bitcoin as a degen blockchain where you have to pay high fees to get your transaction in because a bunch of kids are using up the blockspace on gambling.

Permissionless and censorship resistant money

It can be used by the Russian hackers, the North Korean hackers, the Iranian terrorists, or the heroin buyers or the Lebanese father or the Argentinian mother, or the family in Africa, or the street vendor in a jungle somewhere in Asia. See above

No one should be using the Bitcoin mainnet for something like a cup of coffee. The Bitcoin blockchain is for high-value transactions or anyone willing to pay the fees

But no one can dictate how Bitcoin is used. It's decentralized

When the time has come that someone can impose their morals such as prohibiting gambling on the Bitcoin blockchain is the time I will no longer be a bitcoiner

 

[NoahA]

Permissionless and censorship resistant money

It can be used by the Russian hackers, the North Korean hackers, the Iranian terrorists, or the heroin buyers or the Lebanese father or the Argentinian mother, or the family in Africa, or the street vendor in a jungle somewhere in Asia. See above

No one should be using the Bitcoin mainnet for something like a cup of coffee. The Bitcoin blockchain is for high-value transactions or anyone willing to pay the fees

But no one can dictate how Bitcoin is used. It's decentralized

When the time has come that someone can impose their morals such as prohibiting gambling on the Bitcoin blockchain is the time I will no longer be a bitcoiner

I agree, but there in nuance.

If the degen world takes over and bloats the chain for months, this will likely open up the door for a new entrant. I for example would love a new bitcoin. Imagine if a new protocol comes along, but somehow rewards all miners equally, not just the ones with the most hash power. Maybe the idea is that each machine is given the same weight. So maybe everyone with a laptop can participate and have equal chance to win a block subsidy. And maybe this new chain is very rigid with the types of transactions that it can accept. Maybe its even limited to a certain size so as not to allow any chance of blockspace abuse.

Since its new, there aren't rich OGs, so this bring lots of people into the space right away. Maybe hashpower goes parabolic in weeks simply because everyone who is already on board with crypto starts to mine. This means that the coins will be even more fairly distributed, which allows poor suckers like me to get my fair share! (don't worry, I fully believe that we all deserve the bitcoin entry price we get) But what I am saying is that its possible to have immaculate conception a second time.

Because of a different mining model, maybe we don't need to worry about mining pools and their constructed templates. And maybe because the incentive relies on a different principal than sheer hashrate, energy usage would actually be less. This is balanced of course because millions of computers are mining, so its even more decentralized. You don't need to spend lots of energy, you just have to participate, and maybe the block subsidy is random. So the idea isn't to corner the market with harhrate, but just to participate.

The idea that you might win a block actual makes so many more people keen to mine, and this brings decentralization so much faster to this new coin. And maybe the incentive to keep mining is through having to prove that you're mining in order to be able to add your transaction. So everyone is kind of forced to participate, but there is incentive and a payout.

Anyway.. don't steal my idea, or maybe you're laughing, I have no clue. But the fact for me remains that although I agree that bitcoin is the future, I don't see it as immaculate, and if someone was to offer a fork that limits transactions in some ways, I would likely be very much down for that. The market would of course have to decide, but the degens I worry are making the job harder of trying to get to hyperbitcoinization.

 

[The_Krakenite]

Can you imagine if your bank branch was actually inside a casino?

Some of the world's leading bank auditors e.g. Terry Smith has basically been saying that's exactly the case.

Shocking, isn't it?

 

[NoahA]

Hey John... Forget the runes stuff... What do you know about these Bitcoin L2 solutions??? I forget the website that Rob always mentions to track these L2 projects, but this is perhaps something to really watch out for.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1780016911650116078