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NFTs and Bitcoin? That doesn't mix well for a lot of people

With the Ordinals protocol debut, NFTs are coming to the Bitcoin blockchain.

By Luc Vesters
• 2 min read
NFTs and Bitcoin? That doesn't mix well for a lot of people

With the introduction of the Ordinals protocol, NFTs are coming to the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Ordinals founder Casey Rodarmor, his protocol lets users assign "arbitrary content, such as text or images, to specific Satoshis" and create "digital artworks".

The new protocol has a an age-old debate sparked about whether Bitcoin should be used for non-financial purposes. As early as 2010, the pseudonymous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto stated that such a "proof-of-work system is not scalable". View post on X argues that the project could overfill Bitcoin blocks and push up transaction costs.

Rodarmor disagrees. He told Coindesk, "Bitcoin's fee mechanism is based on how valuable the transaction is for them to execute".

Whether Ordinals will be successful remains to be seen. However, interested users are already using the protocol to attach digital inscriptions to transactions. The mainnet scales extremely slowly at only seven transactions per second. NFTs, smart contracts, and DeFi applications are therefore hardly usable. Recently Internet Computer (ICP) announced the implementation on Bitcoin as a Layer 2 blockchain.

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