Ordinals, nodes and fees, oh my! How Inscriptions could alter Bitcoin

Ordinal hype shows little signs of slowing down. While so-called “Bitcoin monetarists”equate Ordinal Inscriptions with toxic spam, threatening the very state of the network, NFT enjoyers herald Ordinals as Bitcoin’s saving grace that might even return the orange coin to the forefront of cryptocurrency adoption.
 

Ordinal inscriptions have changed the state of mainnet fees and node operational considerations, arguably for the better.  
 

An inscription lives in a transaction's witness field, where up to 4 MB of data can be stored. If every transaction's witness field were filled, Bitcoin's blockchain would grow by approximately 1TB every four years. Node operators must therefore upgrade their hardware more frequently to run a full node, particularly those with older hardware or economic constraints.

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By the numbers: Marathon Digital and Riot Blockchain’s 2022

If anything has been learnt by the Bitcoin mining industry in the last 12 months, it's that having a strong balance sheet is important for financial stability. It attracts investors and lenders at potentially lower rates, thereby providing flexibility and enhancing reputation. A company with a strong balance sheet will effectively have enough assets to cover its liabilities, which ensures it can continue to operate even during the financial challenges.
 

Two such miners include Marathon Digital (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), both well known due to their early listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. They have utilized this advantage to become two of the largest publicly listed Bitcoin miners in North America regularly trading 50 million shares per day.

Even still, Marathon and Riot, the two largest publicly traded North American Bitcoin miners, recently issued Form 10-Ks show significant losses for the full year at $687 million and $510 million , respectively. Below, we’ll break down those losses to better understand the strategies of both miners.

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CoinDesk / Jack Dorsey's Block Tumbles 17% After Short Seller Hindenburg's Report

Reuters / Bitcoin mining booms in Texas

The Block / Bitcoin rally is 'pure gravy' for miners finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel

Today we discuss Marathon Digital’s playbook including its relationship with Applied Digital after the Compute North bankruptcy, movement into the UAE, S19 XP purchases and increasing mining efficiency under its hosted model. 

Today on the show we are joined by Erick Hersman, co-founder of Gridless, a Bitcoin mining company building mini-mines on stranded energy sites in Africa. We dig into micro-grid economics, mining operations in East Africa and financing continued expansion.

Source: TheMinerMag

*As of Thursday, March 23