bitcoin

A numbering scheme for individual satoshis, published by the developer Casey Rodarmor in January 2023, which allowed images, text and other files to be 'inscribed' onto the Bitcoin chain and treated as collectibles. Within weeks it had produced NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Punks and a four-megabyte wizard, raised fees, and started an argument about what Bitcoin was for. NFTs on the chain that had said it did not want them.

A protocol for fungible tokens on Bitcoin, announced in September 2023 by the creator of Ordinals and switched on at the fourth halving in April 2024. Its first day produced a rush of dog-, wizard- and rune-themed tokens, block fees reported at record highs, and the odd sight of memecoin culture running on the one chain that had spent a decade saying it was above that sort of thing.

The anniversary of a man buying two pizzas for ten thousand bitcoins in 2010, celebrated every May as the most expensive meal in history. The scene's founding myth, and the reason 'pizza' is a unit of regret.

The ten thousand CryptoPunks images inscribed onto Bitcoin in February 2023, in the earliest days of Ordinals, claimed by whoever inscribed each one first, all with inscription numbers below a million. Not the punks, not licensed, and not pretending to be; the value was in being the first copy of the first collection on the oldest chain. The record files it as the Bitcoin chain's founding act of homage and theft.