Bitcoin thought leaders weigh the pros and cons of Ordinals

Ordinals are here to stay. Ordinals, or the ability to permanently ink the Bitcoin BTC $22,036 blockchain with data, typically in the format of a picture or jpeg, are a controversial topic among some members of the Bitcoin and wider crypto community. Not so for the builders and the CEOs of Bitcoin-focused companies who were present at the Bitcoin conference, Advancing Bitcoin in London.

Cointelegraph asked several CEOs, builders and key opinion leaders for their views on ordinals throughout the conference. The overarching sentiment was that of curiosity, indifference or deference.

Alex Leishman, CEO of River, told Cointelegraph that he doesn’t have a stance on ordinals just yet, but has recently been gifted an ordinal.

“In the abstract, the idea of having this sort of like meta-layer on top of Bitcoin that tracks Sats; that has a separate state or mapping onto the blockchain is really fascinating and could potentially be interesting for other things.”

For example, Leishman recently played the vintage computer game Doom on an ordinal. “Someone had embedded doom in JavaScript and in a small web page in an ordinal,” which Leishman loaded up from the blockchain.

Eric Sirion, cofounder and advisor to Fedi, and maintainer of the open source protocol Fedimint told Cointelegraph that he’s also “pretty neutral” on Ordinals.

“Essentially, we cannot do anything about it in a way that is morally consistent. Like if we try to fight it, what gives us the right to do that? And also, we cannot effectively fight it. […] So yeah, why get worked up about it?”