☢️ Use a VPN and read this ☢️ You've been thinking about Ordinals completely wrong 👇 The very FIRST block mined by Satoshi was the origin of Bitcoin being used as a data layer. Satoshi included “data” in the first block not related to a Bitcoin financial transaction (bailout message) – the genesis of bitcoin and the start of the blockchain hosting arbitrary data. The same reasons you love Bitcoin as a network/blockchain are the same reasons it's a superior data storage medium. Currently, “data" storage (just think of the your photos on your phone for example) is handled by large corporations, expensive, stored on centralized private servers, prone to deletion, hacks/exploits, censorship, and state intervention. Bitcoin has the potential to fix this in some areas, plus Inscriptions are essentially offering perpetual hosting for a one-time fee, on the most secure network ever created. - Bitcoin Blockspace is severely under-priced and misunderstood... Ordinal Theory and Inscriptions unlock Bitcoin's role as an immutable, decentralized data layer. The synergy of Bitcoin as the most secure/decentralized network known in history combined with Inscriptions being truly immutable creates a new “type” of data that cannot be destroyed. What else can humans create that cannot be destroyed ? Everything existing purely in the physical state (paintings, books, photographs etc) are prone to normal forces of the universe and will eventually degrade or cease to exist on a long enough timeline. Laws of nature do not discriminate - even cave drawings and physical landmarks/artifacts that played critical roles in history will eventually erode. Every single book that exist purely in the physical from can be 🔥burned🔥, confiscated, destroyed, or lost. Other than on-chain info/inscriptions – what else can “never” be destroyed ? Now comparing “existing” from the physical state above to thinking about existing on the digital side - No private server or any network has the potential to store data with the same security as the Bitcoin network - protected by raw computing power and math. The most critical "data" should be preserved using the most robust network, Bitcoin. The bitcoin blockchain is more likely to survive vs any other form of digital data. Similar to the financial motives of bitcoin related to the separation of the state and money, inscriptions have the power to decentralize data and separate it away from centralized servers. NFTs could be considered the first type of "data" to receive adoption on-chain outside of strictly financial use cases. Unfortunately most standards of NFTs, allow for a form of mutability or update authority – which makes them WAY less secure than Inscriptions while also on a less secure, shorter POS blockchain. Inscriptions being truly immutable and permission-less provide the building blocks for a bitcoin internet. However, unlike the world wide web this internet could be a censorship-resistant global platform for free speech and data safe-keeping. Additionally, Ordinals and Inscriptions are actually tools that could help fortify/protect Bitcoin and make it harder to change. A quick extreme hypothetical to demonstrate the point: - lets say everyone gets nuked and Aliens find two Bitcoin nodes 10,000 years from now. They successfully sync the nodes and start exploring the Blockchain... Scenario A: The Aliens like Bitcoin but engage in a galaxy-destroying war over block size. 💀 Scenario B: The Aliens appreciate Bitcoin, access a catalog of inscribed Bitcoin talk posts and educational videos, and learn from Bitcoin's history, ensuring its legacy.... ✅ Not using bitcoin's ledger to preserve bitcoin's history and critical discourse could be detrimental to future bitcoiners in some cases? Inscriptions may be the true digital artifacts preserving our civilization's history and Bitcoin's discourse. Crucially, as the internet and news platforms become increasingly restrictive and censored, Bitcoin's time to exhibit it's true censorship resistance and decentralization is approaching. Ordinals are less than a year old. Obviously all types of data are not suitable and/or don't make sense to be inscribed due to cost, currently. However, with recursive inscriptions, batch inscriptions, HTML mark-down, zk tech, metadata, and file compression techniques etc advancing many constraints we thought once existed just only a few months ago, no longer do. Ordinal theory and Inscriptions provide the tools to protect data with the ~identical security as the Bitcoin network. Inscriptions have the potential to evolve Bitcoin toward new applications that could attract millions of users, including those not necessarily enticed by the "sound money" argument. Just my 2 sats... ✍️🧑‍🍳☢️🫡 (partial snippets/summary from Bitcoin Amsterdam) - "On Chain Evolution: Bitcoin as a Data Layer"