Bitcoin Ordinals Founder: Market Forces, Not Censorship, Should Shape Future
Bitcoin protocol developer Casey Rodarmor has strongly reiterated his opposition to censoring transactions on the blockchain, including controversial media inscriptions enabled by his own Ordinals project.
In a biting new blog post, Rodarmor excoriated ideological maximalists within the Bitcoin community as hypocrites for supporting censorship while simultaneously professing Bitcoin as “unstoppable” money immune from meddling.
Dear ideological Bitcoin maxis,
I wrote a blog post on how to suck less.
Love,
Caseyhttps://t.co/JhLz54qu0J
— Casey (@rodarmor) December 30, 2023
Rodarmor argued that attempts to censor Bitcoin ordinals could open the door to broader censorship efforts, contending nothing can feasibly stop people from leveraging Bitcoin’s transparency.
He believes maximalists uncomfortably reject reality when attacking functionality beyond payments.
Rodarmor contends the reality is that nothing can feasibly stop people from leveraging the blockchain’s transparency for purposes maximalists deem frivolous or illegitimate, like inscribing arbitrary images and messages.
He believes the maximalist desire to restrict Bitcoin’s use stems from an “uncomfortable contact with a reality” that fails to match their ideological vision. This causes them to reactively attack anything that expands functionality beyond payments.
While indifferent about defending inscriptions themselves, Rodarmor categorically rejects technocratic tinkering to block any valid transactions, no matter how objectionable. For him, maintaining “uncensorable” as a core attribute of Bitcoin overrides other considerations.
Instead, Rodarmor proposes allowing free market dynamics to naturally determine the value of inscriptions and other applications competing for
