Oddbean new post about login | logout High fees at this stage are GOOD for bitcoin. Ordinals are fee payers (or maybe better stated as mempool fillers) of last resort. Just like bitcoin mining is energy consumers of last resort. Ordinals fill the mempool that might otherwise be partially empty. Without high fees and full blocks, the long term economic viability of mining is questionable. Oridnals are pushing fees up and creating a floor price and pushing layer 2 innovation and adoption. It's spurring conversations and debate around Lightning, fedimints, liquid, etc. A high fee environment is a proving ground that mining/hashing can remain economically viable even without block rewards. This is critical as hashrate secures the network.
I refuse to believe that Satoshi's plan bypassed the control of worldwide governments, yet failed to consider too many people wanting to post pictures. nostr:nevent1qqs00z85emp6yh635ntxpnk0pmghuun4elxhfsyj7hy7kwj8caj4vqcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygywyllmtjdm3nwszvddumh6f82k6sqm2sjdnl0e5clqwn2j0vr3tspsgqqqqqqsuw27hp
Do you think ordinals/BRC20 will be around in 2032 when the block reward is less than 1 bitcoin? I'd say lightning channels & conjoins are the buyers of last resort. Ordinal/BRC20 will buy at ANY price, and have a high time preference (which is why it is spiking currently)
I don't claim to see the future but I doubt it because I don't think they're economically viable. When I say ordinals are buyers of last resort, I really just mean that in the current environment. I definitely don't think they will always be the ones pushing up fees. The way I see it, regardless of the "how", the important part is the "what". What's happening are high fees. And high fees are proving (or battle hardening if you will) the network. Probably could have worded it better and just called it mempool fillers of last resort, not fee payers of last resort. If not ordinals, something else will come along. Whether that is institutional level money transfers on the base layer or something else.