Unstoppable Bitcoin Inscriptions Split BTC Community During Network Congestion

• Bitcoin's (BTC) Current Market Activity Sparks Debate on Ordinal Inscriptions
• Concerns over Exploitation of Bitcoin Core
• Reactions to Ordinals and Inscriptions
• Opinions of Industry Partners
• Last Year's Cryptocurrency Winter and its Impact on Miners

Bitcoin's (BTC) Current Market Activity Sparks Debate on Ordinal Inscriptions

With Bitcoin$42,260 -0.64% (BTC) reaching close to $45,000 and the number of unconfirmed transactions on the rise, there is renewed debate about the issue of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions.

Concerns over Exploitation of Bitcoin Core

Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer, raised concerns on a Wednesday post about the exploitation of a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core by 'Inscriptions' to spam the blockchain. Dashjr may have been referring to the number of transactions generated by an ordinal.

On-chain data indicates that there are more than 260,000 unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, leading to a spike in the transaction completion price. Additionally, memory usage has surpassed the allocated 300mb due to the larger size of inscription transactions compared to regular transactions.

Reactions to Ordinals and Inscriptions

Dashjr further explained that, since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to place a limit on the extra data size in their relayed or mined transactions (`-datacarriersize`). However, by disguising their data as program code, Inscriptions manage to bypass this limit.

Ordinals gained popularity in May and led to a temporary suspension of Bitcoin withdrawals by Binance after a surge in unconfirmed transactions to 400,000 overwhelmed the network. While some criticize Ordinals like Dashjr, others consider them a natural evolution of Bitcoin's blockchain.

Opinions of Industry Partners

Jason Fang, managing partner and co-founder of Bitcoin-centric Sora Ventures, disputes this view, arguing that Bitcoin retains its original consensus with innovations built on the premise of Satoshi's open-source approach that fosters experimentation. He asserts, Inscriptions are unstoppable. This gives miners more fees and higher profits.

Last Year's Cryptocurrency Winter and its Impact on Miners

In the midst of last year's 'crypto winter', many miners required financial rescue due to a combination of low Bitcoin prices and increasing difficulty. Both private and publicly listed miners faced margin calls and defaults, grappling with debts up to $4 billion. These funds were used for the construction of large facilities in North America, as reported by CoinDesk last year.

Fang suggests that part of the opposition to inscriptions stems from the attention and profits obtained by Ordinals and other BRC-20 investments, which some critics believe they missed out on.

Edited by Jonathan Stoker