Jointly organized by Followin, Bing Ventures, and BingX, the space event "The Future of Bitcoin: Sustainable Growth & New Opportunities" was held on the X platform on November 16th.
Followin CMO Tracy Zhang talked with UniSat CEO @Lorenzonical , Bioniq CEO & Ordinals Builder @BobBodily, TheOrdinalShow Host @LeonidasNFT, and Bing Ventures Investment Manager @LaylaHe_ to analyze the sustainability and new opportunities of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Space Link: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YqKDgMyaVOxV
Here is a recap of the event.
Tracy: What is UniSat working on currently?
Lorenzonical: The current status of what we are doing is we are focusing on improving the BRC20 swap. We are also trying to help others build more modules, utilizing existing mechanisms and our specifications as well as the reference code from the swap. And considering the community voting, we want to provide access to more BRC20 assets.
Beyond the swap, we have an open game framework to support users to utilize ordinals and BRC20 to experience on-chain games. Though Bitcoin doesn't have a native smart contract system, we can still have a mimic system inscribing contracts into inscriptions and allowing the indexers to execute them. So it's a consensus of indexes, not like Ethereum which is a consensus of nodes. It’s a weaker one, but it's workable.
Tracy: Recently, ORDI went online on Binance, further igniting the speculation enthusiasm of BRC20. Some people think that this brings traffic and heat to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Others think that it is writing garbage on the chain. What do you think?
BobBodily: We're definitely seeing a renaissance on Bitcoin this year. Ordinals has ushered in what could be termed the meta protocol era on Bitcoin. With additional capabilities of building on Bitcoin, we’ve seen more VC money, collectors, builders, and entrepreneurs come into Bitcoin. We are essentially seeing a new economy developing and growing, bringing increased hash rate and greater decentralization.
LeonidasNFT: I think the real legacy of what's happening with Ordinals here is Casey (Founder of Ordinals Protocol) comes along and brings this sort of magical, fun, and whimsical aspect, encouraging experimentation on Bitcoin. Bitcoin enters a new period of life cycle where people no longer think Bitcoin is just a single asset that no one will do anything on it. Builders are getting out of the mentality of stagnation and trying to do more experiments and innovation on Bitcoin. In a short time, we have fungible tokens on Bitcoin and BTC NFTs. I am very excited to see this entirely different culture.
LaylaHe_: The recent price raise of bitcoin mainly results from the narrative of BTC spot ETF. When we look at the current popular tokens like RATS and BEAR in the Bitcoin ecosystem, they are a kind of meme tokens that do not have intrinsic value at this moment. There are indeed some protocols doing new things to build for the ecosystem but what they are doing is more like building for the future rather than the current boom. Thus, I want to remain a neutral stance.
Also, I believe support from centralized exchanges including BingX is important. BingX has listed a lot of BRC20 tokens like ORDI, RATS, and SATS, and focuses on BTC ecosystem from the early stage.
Lorenzonical: BRC20 Tokens will not be just meme tokens. We will come back with utilities like what we did on Swap for SATS. We want to help other developers build more including automatic trading tools for the Swap and other scripts by providing more APIs and documentation.
Tracy: Now on the market, in addition to the original Ordinals protocol and BRC20, there are also Atomical, BRC100, BRC420, RUNES, and so on. Do you think which direction of exploration may be more valuable or have more heat in the bull market?
BobBodily: Obviously, BRC 20 has the most adoption and the most traction. But BRC20 may be the most annoying fungible token standard of all time because of the way the standard works. In some cases, it's kind of inefficient. However, one the of BRC 20 strengths is being able to have a consistent, unchanging standard for months and months. That means it's easier to get adoption and build integrations.
Atomical has a really interesting proof-of-work-based token minting setup. Nostr assets like TREAT and TRICK on the Lightning Network, RUNES protocol, and Pipe protocol are all really interesting.
I currently view all these fungible token standards as a huge positive for Bitcoin defi.
LeonidasNFT: I think the really key point here is that there are multiple competing protocols. 6 months ago, bitcoin was just very like a desert wasteland. Now we have many different protocols and I could name 15 of them probably. Competition comes to Bitcoin and it is very healthy.
It doesn’t really matter which protocol wins. What matters is that Bitcoin does have a fungible token protocol to lay his point. Speculation comes back to Bitcoin, which is how Bitcoin gained initial adoption itself. It is driving people to build more serious use cases. I could imagine that we will have stablecoins, governance tokens, or more utility tokens.
LaylaHe_: Personally I'm most optimistic about the Lightning Network because it can play an important role in payment, especially in some developing countries and undeveloped regions.
Lorenzonical: Atomical is really more decentralized in many ways as it actually doesn't need indexers to function. BRC20 has its own merit since it is much simpler. It is easier to enter different systems.
Tracy: With the market expectations that ETF may pass, superimposed on next year's bull market halving, the overall mood began to be optimistic again. Which protocols are more likely to benefit from this? Are there specific trends or innovations that you believe will shape its future?
BobBodily: I think everybody wins on Bitcoin, all the Bitcoin builders. However, If you are a layer on Bitcoin, user experience is king. The best developer experience at the bitcoin layer level and user experience at the application level will be the biggest winner.
LeonidasNFT: We start to denominate in BTC when we are buying or selling. The Ordinals space has achieved it. I think people should pay attention to the psychology of BTC as a currency.
