The NFT mania that engulfed the cryptocurrency industry earlier this year is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. Interestingly, this NFT sector helped in onboarding hordes of new users to the space. It also led to the growth of several rival blockchains such as Solana that are vying for Ethereum‘s top spot in the NFT games.
During all of this buzz, however, what many seem to forget is the lack of Bitcoin in the industry, according to developer Dennis. Thanks to a long thread on Twitter, the developer expressed his displeasure with the infamous owner of the Silk Road dark web network, Ross Ulbricht, who used Ethereum to release NFTs as a way to fund his release from prison.
Noting that this decision should “trigger deep introspection among Bitcoiners,” Dennis said,
“NFTs were an OG concept in bitcoin. Yet we failed to build out the functionality and instead made garbage dismissals calling them scams or with “right-click copy” nonsense.”
While the Bitcoin network itself lacks smart contract functionality, Layer 2 stacks such as Lightning Network and Stacks allow NFTs to be secured by the Bitcoin blockchain. Dennis believes these developments around Bitcoin are generally ignored due to its perceived value only as digital gold, triggering its use as a “post-apocalyptic bunker asset.” He added,
“The subset of bitcoiners that only accept digital gold as the sole bitcoin use case are a recent anomaly. There weren’t people like this in 2013. There were tons of cool things happening on bitcoin back then.”
Another reason for the lack of such a development in the Bitcoin space is the weak monetary incentive received by developers, compared to those who rely on Ethereum and other such networks.
He further noted that those flipping their BTC for ETH in a bid to participate in this mania don’t realize that Bitcoin’s merits cant be “ported to another chain.” Especially, Ethereum since the “design tradeoffs ETH has made don’t make it a serious contender as a bearer asset.”
Dennis also mentioned the resilience of the Bitcoin network and the fact that building on it doesn’t disrupt the chain in any way.
The replies on the developer’s thread expressed dismay at the idea of Bitcoin being used as anything but a holding asset. It is worth noting here that a number of networks are already experimenting in the space, giving Ethereum a run for its money.
One example is Stacks, which is a decentralized open source network built on Bitcoin, trying to expand the potential of Bitcoin as a programmable base layer. The NFT Stacks marketplace is fairly new, but it already has a multi-million trading volume, with its native STX cryptocurrency gaining new ground thanks to growing demand.
The platform has a number of existing projects such as Sathoshibles and Bitcoin Birds, while many more are in the pipeline. In fact, it should be noted that some of the first tokenized digital assets were minted and sold on Counterparty, a third-party Bitcoin protocol, as early as 2012, way before Ethereum was born.
