The support of the government-backed ordinal group from El Salvador shows a misunderstanding of what Bitcoin really is.
This is an op-ed by Jaime García, a Salvadoran-Canadian bitcoiner and co-host of Global Bitcoin Fest.
The hype around Bitcoin NFTs is undeniable, made possible by etchings that use the ordinal protocol. Trader and art trader Stephen Hay has suggested that the government of El Salvador issue an official art collection in order to potentially raise money to fund a proposed Bitcoin City or otherwise accelerate Bitcoin adoption.
Unfortunately, this suggestion seems to lack a Salvadoran perspective on the ground and, in my opinion, is a blatant attack on Bitcoin targets in El Salvador.
El Salvador has turned to Bitcoin because of the qualities that make it sovereign money, money that is not owned by foreign powers or organizations. While two of the main value propositions of using Bitcoin in El Salvador are to attract private and foreign investment and stimulate tourism, the promise of non-franchiseable, uncensored, and tamper-proof hard money is why El Salvador has made a legal tender for Bitcoin.
However, The Ordinals does not offer any of the hard money benefits of Bitcoin.
NFTs on Bitcoin are just as bad as NFTs elsewhere
The Bitcoin community has recently seen vivid examples showing that NFTs are bad investments.
For example, the Malaysian investor who bought Jack Dorsey’s first NFT tweet For $2.5 million He struggled to find bids when he later tried to sell them. Even the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele He seems to acknowledge the lack of real value in NFTs He also auctioned He tweeted to announce the approval of the country’s Bitcoin law in its legislature – The NFT was never sold and Bukele has not pursued this endeavor any further.
several extremists And Salvadorans They were discouraging Bitcoin NFTs because they believed that people who were pulled off the rug could suffer significant financial damage. For many of these critics, defending the Bitcoin social class and calling out potential scams is essential to keeping the Bitcoin network safe.
There are several key elements constantly brought up by critics that can prove that Bitcoin NFTs in the ordinal protocol are anomalies and are no different from NFTs in other protocols. These are as follows:
- The hype around NFTs arbitrarily assigns inflated values to things that are not inherently rare.
- the The ordinal protocol cannot actually track individual Satoshi like Demanded by the creators and promoters of the protocol.
- The Bitcoin protocol is not aware of patterns or ordinal, so none of them can be verified by the network.
- There are debatable concerns about the impact of patterning activity on the storage resources of node runners.
- NFT scams are a huge distraction from the safety of Bitcoin’s primary purpose.
- Finally, the intellectual dupes that The Ordinals markets as an “art investment” will only increase in value over time.
With the above elements in mind, a buyer of El Salvador Ordinals runs the risk of purchasing an expensive, low-quality, repeatable, and potentially devalued image. While there is a valid argument that the market will decide if it wants such a digital product, critics point out that people should be aware of the inherent enormity of the NFT space and the similarities to Ordinals promotions.
To rework the builder calendarAnd TCwho has spoken on this topic in several Twitter Spaces conversations I’ve heard, “The blockchain makes for a really bad database. It only works in Bitcoin because it only verifies the reality of Bitcoin transactions.”
another Bitcoiner, MaguIn similar Twitter spaces, adding engineering complexity to the Bitcoin Timechain or any software corresponds to an increase in potential attack vectors. These attack vectors can appear not only in the network itself but also in the social class. As such, ordinal has the potential to show attack vectors in each of these layers. It encouraged people to focus their energy on an activity for which Bitcoin was not designed or optimized.
Ordinal order conflicts with proof of work
While the CEO of BTC Inc (which runs Bitcoin Magazine), David Baileyargue that Bitcoin NFTs on the Ordinals protocol comply with the Nakamoto consensusthey are in conflict with Bitcoin because its marketing suggests that it will increase in value, which violates the concept of proof-of-work.
In the same vein, Hay suggested that the governmental ordinal set would be all benefit and no risk, implying that it is easy money—but the principles behind proof-of-work required that it not be easy to generate money through natural law.
Saifuddin Ammous He writes about this topic in several sections of his book “The Bitcoin Standard,” emphasizing that creating hard money requires effort to provide value and interest to the market and society. Ordinal is a preferential long-term activity based on easy money and speculation; Therefore, encouraging accelerated Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador through the issuance of the Ordinals group is a peak fiat mentality.
Salvadorans do not need to rank
El Salvador has a rich pool of artistic talent, including musicians, actors, filmmakers, dancers, folklorists, writers, architects, and visual artists. Those eager to help the country adopt it would do well to support the existing artist community by promoting them and paying for their crafts with Bitcoin.
As a starting point, Bitcoiners can go to National Artisan Market, where people could find paintings, indigo-dyed clothing, hammocks and sculptures. Bitcoiners can also provide contract opportunities for digital artists, such as graphic designers, to work on web, app, and print projects, and they can support digital content creators by offering valuable advice in exchange for their published work.
After all, the Salvadorans are More concerned about improving their daily situation From collecting JPEG files on mobile phones. Ordinary Salvadorans demand their government focus on security, infrastructure, public transportation, traffic, health, and education. Therefore, issuing an NFT collection is far from valuable to Salvadorans.
Given that El Salvador has had relatively positive success with its adoption of bitcoin, it’s easy to forget that its current government had a rocky start and faced a lot of criticism with its official launch of bitcoin.
Many have criticized the government’s release of the Chivo wallet due to the lack of accompanying education and technical challenges faced by some users. The primary recipient of much of this negative comment has not been the government itself, but Bitcoin as a whole, which has hindered Bitcoin adoption.
As the second anniversary of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador approaches, some of the negative perceptions that have been created about Bitcoin are finally starting to fade. But if the government were to release a Bitcoin NFT pool, that would only roll back the progress.
The government should not promote the two arrangements or NFTs, as many consider them to be scams. El Salvador needs to generate confidence and reassurance, and when it qualifies, Like the NFT projects in the past, inevitable, and El Salvador can not be associated with them. Unfortunately, any negative perception of the Ordinals is bound to damage the country’s reputation, which is exactly where the attacks on Bitcoin adoption continue.
Bitcoin’s mission is clear
The Ordinals lobby has installed a comprehensive psyops interface, especially since specific altcoin groups claim to be Make Bitcoin “fun again”. In addition, some are trying Gain influence and buy influence By donating proceeds to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) non-governmental organizations such as the Human Rights Foundation, which has been Criticize El Salvador.
Despite being drowned out by all the ordinal noise, it’s refreshing to see people like South Africa Bitcoin Ecaci Working for the Bitcoin mission with absolute clarity. In a recent tweet, the Bitcoin Ekasi team said that it is Not here to have fun but to change the world. There is a real chance of failure for groups like Bitcoin Ekasi because of these deviations from the core mission of embracing the world’s hardest money. And with the same level of clarity, El Salvador must remain undeterred from these attacks.
This is another guest from before Jimmy Garcia. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.