‘There is no such thing as spam’ – OKX exec on Bitcoin Ordinals

While some see the Ordinals protocol as a disservice to Bitcoin, others are doubling down on their bets on the place of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

On December 18, the OKX NFT marketplace's daily trading volume surpassed its competitors as traders became more interested in Bitcoin-based NFTs. Doubling down on the move to support Bitcoin NFTs, the company announced on January 29 that it will add Atomic and Runes to its marketplace. In addition, it supports Dogecoin's Doginals by supporting Ordinals in other chains.

In addition to the marketplace, OKX has announced that it will support token tiers from Atomics, Stamps, Runes, and Doginals on Web3 Pocket.

Guess which #Bitcoin NFT collections are in the gallery ________________╱| ______________ ╱|| || || |️| || || ||╱ ￣ ￣￣￣ ￣ |╱￣

— OKX (@okx) December 18, 2023

While OKX openly supports Ordinals and other Bitcoin protocols, other members of the Bitcoin ecosystem have expressed their distaste for Bitcoin Ordinals, with some even referring to Ordinals as digital spam. However, Jason Lau, chief innovation officer at crypto exchange OKX, disagrees.

“There is no such thing as spam” in an open, permissionless network like Bitcoin, Lau said in a statement to Cointelegraph. The Executive believes that all transactions are valid as long as fees are paid and the rules of mutual understanding are followed. He added:

“Historically, OKX has been a strong supporter of the Bitcoin ecosystem, being one of the first to support innovations such as SegWit, Taproot and Lightning, and Ordinals is no exception.”

The executive argued that ordinals and texts can open up new use cases for users and provide a new design space for developers. “Inscriptions have the potential to be powerful digital collectors as they store data and art on-chain and allow new types of NFTs to be created.”

Related: 90s FPS game Doom runs on Dogecoin via Ordinals

On December 19, half a dozen blocks, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Cronos, zkSync, and The Open Network, experienced full or partial shutdowns. This is due to the frenzy of trading activity driven by people creating articles like Bitcoin Ordinals on other networks.

“Growing pains,” Lau said when asked if the script has the potential to block blockchains. According to the executive, these are inevitable in the early stages of adoption. Lau said it was “normal” to deal with such cases, but they would be resolved over time.

“While this is still the early stages of the inscription ecosystem, we see a unique opportunity for inscriptions to grow as we expand our support beyond BRC-20 to include emerging standards such as Atomicals, Stamps, Runes and Doginals.

Magazine: Turns Bitcoin into a Worse Version of Ethereum: Can We Fix It?