Casey Rodarmor on Ordinals, Inscriptions, and Digital Property Rights (EP.399)

Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor joins us to talk ordinals, inscriptions, and digital collectibles on Bitcoin. In this episode:

  • What is an ordinal? Why the name?
  • The history of ordinals and inscriptions
  • How does ordinal theory work exactly?
  • How to participate in ordinals and do you need Ord
  • The interaction between inscriptions and Bitcoin fees
  • Should inscriptions be compressed? How should this happen?
  • Why did Casey not use Counterparty?
  • How Bitcoin is the most premium blockspace for NFTs
  • Inscribed content property rights on Bitcoin versus Ethereum
  • Will Bitcoin state just be pruned?
  • Who will store inscription data?
  • How bitcoin data availability might be improving over time
  • How ordinals affect Bitcoin’s security budget
  • Why NFT traders are looking at Bitcoin for the first time
  • Where the inscription 400kb limit comes from
  • ‘Ripping a 4 megger’
  • Is Casey concerned about out of band transactions
  • Do ordinals actually increase the possible efficiency of operating a full node?
  • The primary bottlenecks in running Bitcoin Core and how inscriptions affect that
  • Will ordinals catalyze more pruning in Bitcoin Core?
  • Might ordinals make rollups more likely on Bitcoin?
  • Do inscriptions dilute Bitcoin’s primary purpose as a monetary system?
  • Transporting other NFTs to Bitcoin with teleburns
  • What Casey is most excited about with ordinals

Further reading: 

Check out this episode!