Why Bitcoin's 'Monetary Maximalists' Oppose 'JPEG Enjoyers' (and Why They're Wrong)

Those who want to prevent Ordinals, inscriptions and soon Runes from living on-chain are misguided. Bitcoin is about economic incentives only, not altruism, SunnySide Digital CEO Taras Kulyk argues.
In the nether realms of crypto-Twitter/X, there is a brewing civil war between the “monetary maximalists” and “JPEG enjoyers.” While the Bitcoin network is limited in its storage capacity, the threshold for confirming transactions of any kind whether monetary or any arbitrary data from things like Ordinals inscriptions and meme coins is actually quite limited within each block.
The mempool can become congested relatively quickly and drive up fees for all users.
This op-ed is part of CoinDesk’s “Future of Bitcoin” package published to coincide with the fourth Bitcoin “halving” in April 2024.
Taras Kulyk is the founder and CEO of SunnySide Digital, Inc.
Herein lies the conflict: is Bitcoin open to anyone for any purpose? Or did Satoshi Nakamoto have an intended purpose for his creation, which should be accounted for when deciding who can use Bitcoin and how?
It turns out there are heavy consequences and tradeoffs for both paths. As the saying goes, “Bitcoin is for enemies,” and we are finding out just how true that is. Here is why the Battle over Block Space is worth fighting, and why the question remains who will ultimately obtain the spoils of war.
The monetary maximalist perspective.
To begin, the title of the white paper is “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash system,” allowing for “online payments” to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. It makes no mention of file storage. On the surface, this might feel like enough precedent to legitimate monetary transactions only (some treat it as scripture). However, Satoshi himself made an inscription on the Genesis block with the famous headline from The Times in 2009 that read “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
The takeaway here is that invoking WWSD (What Would Satoshi Do?) or reapplying what he has done or said in the past via email is a losing battle. Putting aside some of the apparent contradictions between what Satoshi himself sometimes did and said, the core argument for Monetary Maximalism is that Ordinals inscriptions and BRC20 tokens spam the blockchain and abuse the current rule set. They could be considered a kind of DDOS attack. Or worse, a grift.
See also: What Bitcoiners Are Saying About the Halving
In short, why focus on meaningless, fun-for-some pet JPEGS (often with VC ties) on Bitcoin when the real aim is revolutionizing global money, value storage and peer-to-peer payments. Using Bitcoin as file storage, which is predominately done in wealthy nations, is pricing those out in developing countries that rely on bitcoin for day-to-day transactions. It might even push out new entrants that notice how high fees are, forcing them to explore cheaper options as new users typically won't understand L2s like the Lightning Network — this might be their one shot at giving bitcoin a try.
What’s more, given the block size limitations on the Bitcoin blockchain, data / file storage doesn’t scale on the protocol. The only way to scale file storage is to make the system more centralized (which is arguably why Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake) and that is obviously a fast track to obsoletion.
And yet, there are very real...
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2024/04/17/why-bitcoins-monetary-maximalists-oppose-jpeg-enjoyers-and-why-theyre-wrong/
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