Reporters: Jaleel, Cookie, BlockBeats
Written by: Jaleel, BlcoBeats
Last week, the largest Bitcoin conference held in Hong Kong just ended. What did everyone talk about at the conference?
Last April, also in Hong Kong, the Bitcoin Ordinals community held its first gathering, and according to random interviews by BlockBeats reporters at the main event, Web3 Festival, only a few attendees were familiar with the Ordinals protocol or Bitcoin NFTs. For more information, see: This may be the first gathering of the Bitcoin Ordinals community.
In just one year, many important things have happened to Bitcoin, including the rise of the Ordinals protocol, the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF, the flourishing Bitcoin ecosystem, and the fourth Bitcoin halving. Compared with last year, this year's Bitcoin ecosystem gathering is obviously more lively. During these four days, BlockBeats reporters have been attending the gatherings and shared their personal experiences and observations in this article.
The story behind Casey's creation of a "virtual casino"
Casey Rodarmor, founder of the Ordinals protocol, was undoubtedly the busiest person during the entire conference, and the scene was comparable to a fan meeting. There was always a large group of people surrounding him at the venue, three layers inside and three layers outside, and everyone wanted to squeeze in and chat with him. This situation reminded people of the scene when Vitalik was surrounded at the Ethereum conference in the past.
When Casey participated in roundtable discussions and sharing sessions, the audience seats were always full. Many friends in the community wanted to take photos with him, and he always readily agreed, very down-to-earth, and seemed to have learned a few standard photo poses to match everyone. Compared to Vitalik's restraint in social occasions, Casey seemed more at ease, and he looked people in the eye when talking to them.
Casey gives a speech
Previously, Casey joked that if "the market value of Runes ecosystem does not reach 1 billion US dollars within one month of its launch, he will commit suicide." Although the market value has not yet reached the target, there are still a few days before Runes officially launches, so it is not yet time for Casey to "fulfill" his joke promise, but I have not heard any community members ask Casey about this yet.
At the Ordinals Asia conference, Casey gave a very interesting presentation as the closing remarks, during which he mentioned the podcast program "Hell Money" that he and Aaron started about two years ago, the Chinese name of which is "冥券".
When Casey released this picture, the Chinese people present were all happy.
At the same time, it sounds like Casey does understand some of the dissatisfaction of the Chinese community with him, such as the lack of innovation in the Runes protocol. Therefore, he also mentioned that compared to complex technologies such as Taproot Assets and RGB, he certainly respects these technologies and projects, but he is more willing to make something simple for everyone, so there is the Runes protocol.
"Simple things are easy to succeed, complex things are hard to succeed", Casey said this is an important revelation for him. For more information, please see: "Ordinals founder's speech in Hong Kong: StarWorld Casino, why not?"
At the last night’s Grand Wizard Party, BlockBeats reporters finally got to Casey’s side. Although he was reluctant to accept official interviews from the media, he was obviously happy to communicate with community members.
Left: Casey; Right: BlockBeats reporter Jaleel
I asked Casey if he knew that many friends in the Chinese community now call him C God, just like the Chinese community used to call Vitalik V God. Casey looked me in the eye and said he knew, but he emphasized that he was just an ordinary guy like everyone else.
Domo is obviously more chill after taking off his mask
Compared to Casey, Brc 20 founder Domo is less talkative. There are also fewer people around Domo, largely because no one knows what he really looks like.
Because Domo has always maintained a high degree of anonymity, in previous public events, he always wore a hat, sunglasses and a mask. Because his facial features could not be seen, Domo was once mistaken for a Chinese.
Domo's previous conference photos are "fully armed"
At this conference, although Domo was reluctant to take photos, he no longer wore a mask or sunglasses.
According to Bitcoin ecosystem observer and player 0x Sea who revealed to BlockBeats, on the first day of the Bitcoin Asia conference, Domo walked around the venue casually, almost no one recognized him, and he was chiller than ever.
Domo's photo at the conference (sixth from left), source: Jack Kong
When communicating with friends in the community, a topic that is often mentioned is: "After the emergence of Runes, will BRC 20 still have a market?" or "Will BRC 20 disappear?" There are big differences of opinion on this issue.
First, most people don’t seem to understand the specific differences between Ordinals, Runes, and BRC 20. This suggests that there is still a lot of education and popularization work to be done in the market.
Secondly, after communicating with some project founders who are developing Bitcoin DeFi protocols, BlockBeats found that some of them believe that BRC 20 is more suitable for DeFi assets because BRC 20 has been developed for a longer time than Runes. Although the emergence of Runes has had a greater impact on the BRC 20 Meme, it is expected that more Bitcoin DeFi projects and tokens with real value will appear in the future.
However, a considerable number of community members and projects have directly stated that BRC 20 will soon be eliminated because Runes has been optimized based on BRC-20 and also saves a lot of gas fees.
Capital also favors Bitcoin
There were also many VC investors participating in the Hong Kong conference, including some from traditional VCs and family offices, who were also extremely interested in investment opportunities in the blockchain industry, especially Bitcoin.
The event of Waterdrop Capital was undoubtedly the most lively VC event. Before the party started, there were already 20 to 30 friends waiting to enter the venue. As the venue had a strict limit on the number of people, even Casey had to queue downstairs for a long time before going upstairs.
According to incomplete statistics, most of the projects invested by Waterdrop Capital in the Bitcoin ecosystem are very well-known, including Merlin, Bevm, B 2, Bison Labs, CKB, DLC.link, OmniBOLT, Map Protocol, NostrAssets, UXUY, Unisat, Lumoz, Nubit, Ordz Games, BitSmiley, Satoshi Protocol, etc. It can be said that Waterdrop Capital is currently the most active domestic VC in investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
In fact, last year, when BlockBeats interviewed Waterdrip Capital co-founder and managing partner Dashan, Dashan said that he was very optimistic about the Crypto market in 2024, so they launched two digital asset funds in cooperation with China Pacific Insurance Investment Management (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. Related reading: "Dialogue with Waterdrip Capital CEO: Hong Kong compliance is very attractive"
Ordinals NFT community is the favorite place for foreigners
If Bitcoin Asia is more like a good place for business cooperation, then Ordinals Asia is definitely a good place to make friends and have fun.
At this Bitcoin party, the most degen was the Ordinals NFT community, especially Pizza Ninjas, Taproot Wizards, and Blob.
More relevant readings about the three NFT communities are as follows: "Pizza Ninjas: A potential new Bitcoin NFT blue chip with consensus from China and abroad", "4 MB graffiti raised $7.5 million, why does capital fancy Bitcoin's "wizard culture"? ", "Interpretation of the recent hot Blob Army: BTC NFT full of artistic attributes"
Pizza Ninjas founder TO's thick beard earned him the nickname "The Bearded Man", and many of his friends even think he looks a little similar to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Left: BlockBeats reporter Cookie; Right: Pizza Ninjas founder TO
TO was wearing a bright orange Ninja Pizza-themed outfit on the yacht, which was particularly eye-catching. Some people in the community jokingly called him the "Da Ji" of the Ordinals circle. The Ninja Pizza community chartered a yacht, and more than 40 holders participated. The reason why more holders could not participate was that the yacht could not accommodate them, so TO held a dinner for the remaining more than 20 holders on the second night.
The event party hosted by the great wizard Taproot Wizards was held on the last night of Ordinals Asia. People dressed in wizard costumes filled the venue, and there was a swimming pool for everyone to take a bath.
Taproot Wizards Team Member Tyler Whittle
Although BlockBeats reporters found after communicating with some English Ordinals players that they also felt that the method of taking a bath to get a white ticket was a bit PUA, it seems that we Chinese are not the only ones who cannot appreciate the charm of taking a bath.
At the conference, BlockBeats reporters also "caught" Tyler Whittle, a member of the Taproot Wizards team. When faced with this question, he said that the team actually knows that there is a gap between Chinese and foreign cultures, so they will find ways to strengthen communication with the Chinese community.
Left: Taproot Wizards team member Tyler Whittle; Right: BlockBeats reporter Jaleel
Experiencing it in person at the Wizarding World event, I was truly able to deeply feel the cohesion of the Wizarding World community. It was quite shocking. The proportion of foreign community members from all over the world was unusually high. Artists, developers and other people of all kinds also came. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed themselves.
As for the Blob holders' party, it was also crowded, and the food provided at the venue was the most special of the whole event, all of which were authentic Hong Kong local food.
The two founders of Blob: Elocre, the contributor of Ordinals protocol code, and nuror, the Ordinals OG artist, were both on site to paint for everyone, including T-shirts and masks. Nuror was very quiet when he was creating, which was a bit of a contrast.
Blob founder nuror
BlockBeats and the Blob team also discussed many details during the project's advancement, including that the team initially wanted to issue it in the form of Free Mint, but at the suggestion of Dr. Jin Gou, the Blob team finally decided to airdrop directly.
During the airdrop, the team was also participating in the NFTNYC 2024 event, so Elocre and nuror ran around New York, visiting art exhibitions, VIP backstage lounges, Times Square, etc., while turning on their mobile phone hotspots to engrave Blobs and send airdrops to the community.
Left: BlockBeats reporter Jaleel; Right: Blob founder nuror
Bitcoin Layer 2 will still be the main narrative
At the main venue of the Bitcoin Asia Conference, the first thing that caught our eyes upon entering the Bitcoin Asia booth was the booth of Unisat and its invested projects.
In addition, the most common booths are those of Bitcoin Layer 2 projects. Many friends who attended the conference felt that there are really many Bitcoin Layer 2 projects. The current status of Bitcoin ecology is that there are many Layer 2 chains and few applications, which is somewhat opposite to the current status of Ethereum ecology.
It seems that BTC Layer 2 will remain an important narrative for a long time to come. In the short term, the ones that can succeed are those with good "fathers", and in the long term, only those with real user needs can succeed.
When chatting privately with many BTC Layer 2 project teams, they would actually say very frankly, "We are not actually a second layer in the strict sense, it is more out of the need for market promotion." After all, no one in the market can have a definitive and final definition of Bitcoin's second layer.
It took Ethereum seven years to reach its current level of scalability. At present, it is impossible for Bitcoin Layer 2 to achieve similar scalability in just one or two years. There will be a lot of trial and error and failure in the process.
Solana and Bitcoin, 1+1 is greater than 2
Since Runes went live in April, more than a dozen trading platforms, including Unisat and OKX Web3 Wallet, have supported Runes market trading on the first day. Although Magic Eden started a little later, not starting trading until April 22, it quickly surpassed other platforms and became the leader with the best depth in the Runes market.
The rapid growth of Runes is mainly due to the huge liquidity and market base it has established on Solana. In addition, Magic Eden has its own wallet, which can attract users from both Bitcoin and Solana ecosystems and help them achieve seamless transactions between the two platforms.
In addition to Magic Eden, BlockBeats reporters also chatted with several other projects at the venue that promote the interoperability between Solana and Bitcoin, such as Zeus, THORSwap and Cube.Exchange.
At the Bitcoin Devcon conference on May 8, Justin, the founder of the Zeus network, shared his idea of Solana as the second layer network (L2) of Bitcoin in his speech. He criticized some projects for using Bitcoin only as "gas", believing that doing so did not fully tap the true value and potential of Bitcoin.
Justin said that Solana was chosen as Bitcoin's L2 because of its high performance, low cost, and strong user and developer community. He then detailed how the Zeus network uses the "slot" version to connect to the Bitcoin mainnet, forming a 1.5-layer solution, which not only improves the performance of Bitcoin applications, but also broadens its scalability.
Justin, founder of Zeus
As a cross-chain DEX aggregator based on THORChain, THORSwap is able to complete token swaps between multiple chains with minimal slippage. According to THORSwap’s paper, their most recent large transaction record was 114.7545 $WBTC (worth $7.4M) exchanged for 114.0027 BTC, with a slippage of only 0.05%.
Through THORSwap, liquidity between Solana and Bitcoin can also be easily converted on-chain. According to CoinGecko data, THORChain’s RUNE and Stack’s STX have been among the best performing tokens over the past year, often following Bitcoin’s gains.
Bartosz, the founder of Cube.Exchange, had been developing on Solana. After Runes went online, they implemented the function of buying Runes with USDC or selling Runes to get USDC. In his opinion, Bitcoin and Solana are very complementary in terms of account model, communication level and developer community.
Bartosz believes that the collaboration between the two very different communities of Bitcoin and Solana will make the market stronger. Bringing the decentralized spirit of Bitcoin to Solana will undoubtedly be beneficial, and introducing popular products on Solana to the Bitcoin ecosystem will also bring huge synergies.
