Father Casey, the creator of Ordinals, said, "Only use a small position for 'gambling', and use the rest to buy Bitcoin."

Interview: DUDU (PukeCastCN), Jasmine (Runes Chinese Community)

Compiled by: Jaleel, BlockBeats

As an editor: As a programmer and Bitcoin developer, Casey Rodarmor (@rodarmor) created the Ordinals protocol and the Runes protocol in two years. By developing the Ordinals protocol, Casey has provided a new way to directly store and transmit non-monetary data (such as digital artwork) on the Bitcoin blockchain, which can be said to be essential to the Bitcoin ecosystem without Casey.

Casey shared at the Ordinals Asia event in Hong Kong

Before the launch of Runes, Casey joked that if the market cap of the Runes ecosystem did not reach 1 billion USD within a month of its launch, he would commit harakiri. Although the target was briefly achieved in the middle, the market cap did not meet the standard after a month. How did Casey respond to this joke? The Bitcoin ecosystem summit two weeks ago in Hong Kong was very lively. What were Casey's feelings in Hong Kong? Jasmine, one of the creators of the Runes Chinese community, and DUDU from PukeCastCN had a chat with Casey in a Space session yesterday.

BlockBeats will now compile the interview content as follows, with some parts deleted.

DUDU: Two weeks ago, the Bitcoin week in Hong Kong was very lively. What are your thoughts on this? I heard that many people got sick because they played too much.

Casey: Yes, I took a break for a week and a half, but I'm much better now. The Bitcoin market in Hong Kong is really crazy. Players from the West and the East are very different. Chinese people really like gambling and are very enthusiastic about runes and junk coins. I think this is much better than many Western junk coin fans, who always pretend to be pursuing some future finance, even talking about African banking. The market here is purer, more honest, and everyone is talking about how to make a lot of money.

DUDU: The Rune protocol has been launched for a month. How do you feel about the first month? Any special surprises or things you want to mention?

Casey: No surprises, which is lucky. My main concern is the bug in the protocol. If there is a protocol-level bug that disrupts the balance of runes or affects minting or transfers, that would be bad. But so far, everything is going smoothly, without any protocol-level bugs. There was a small bug in ord (a reference implementation of runes), which is unfortunate, but it's not a major issue, and I'm glad the bug was fixed in time.

I think it is foreseeable that, shortly after Runes is launched, many people will be disappointed because it is being hyped up so much, with everyone saying things like "these things are going to the moon." But the reality is not so. When a technology is just launched, it is in its worst state. The ecosystem has the worst support, the tools are incomplete, and the trading platforms are also incomplete. I think it is quite natural to have some disappointment.

I don't know how the price and popularity of inscriptions will turn out, I don't make predictions. The only investment that makes me money is Bitcoin. As an investor, my wisdom is very limited. I really don't know what will happen. What's pleasant is that those who integrate inscriptions tell me that it's much easier than integrating BRC-20, and that makes sense. The protocol is simpler, especially when you do anything with BRC-20, make an inscription and then possibly transfer it. Transferring a BRC-20 requires three transactions, which is quite a lot. Transferring an inscription only requires one transaction.

I believe that the technical advantages of runes in terms of simplicity and efficiency have already been demonstrated. It has always been simple and efficient, and those who integrate runes say so too, which is great. I don't know what the future holds for runes, it's hard to say. On Ethereum, there are decentralized trading platforms where people can conduct various transactions on-chain, such as trading runes or BRC-20. Bitcoin does not have these. Solana has zero-second transaction time, while Bitcoin does not. I think the future market positioning of runes remains to be seen. Personally, the first month has been great, everything has gone according to plan.

Source: Ordinals summit 2023

Jasmine: You have always emphasized that Runes is born for Memecoin, it is not about technology, but more about social, gambling, and entertainment, in order to attract more people from other ecosystems to follow Bitcoin ecology and ultimately use Bitcoin. Runes has indeed attracted a lot of attention and participation from many other ecosystems. As of now, there are already over 70,000 Rune tokens, basically all of which are Memecoin. So, where do you think the next breakthrough in the Runes ecosystem might occur? What should builders pay more attention to? For example, building some applications to make the interstellar casino more interesting? Or something else?

Casey: There are actually not many plans for future protocol development. There are some minor things. For example, there is a possibility to allow people to create runes, and the creator of the rune is the only person who can mint it. This is part of the future protocol. Protocol development is very tricky. Especially, for example, people want something like a decentralized exchange platform (dexes), like a rune version of Uniswap on Bitcoin.

However, the problem is that, if you design the protocol improperly, you may introduce something called MEV (Miner Extractable Value). Things like Uniswap allow miners or validators on Ethereum to insert their own transactions and reorder transactions to make money from user transactions. For example, if you send a purchase transaction, the miner can purchase before you to ensure that you are buying from the miner. This is not only a problem of miners sacrificing user interests to make money, but also leads to miner centralization, because miners have to invest in this very complex infrastructure to be competitive. This means that miners can no longer simply plug in hardware to start mining, they have to do a lot of other work, which leads to miner centralization. And the core value proposition of Bitcoin is decentralization. I want to improve the protocol, but in any case, I will not add anything that leads to the centralization of Bitcoin miners, which is very tricky.

For those who are building on Runes, my advice is that you must make things interesting. If you don't have a decentralized trading platform like Ethereum or instant transaction confirmation in one second like Solana, you can only focus on making things interesting, which is a very high demand. It's difficult. You have to make your interface interesting. You have to make your community interesting. You have to make any mechanisms you introduce interesting.

But I believe what people should really pay attention to is the fun, think about how to build a good casino as much as possible. Rune is built for meme coins and eyewash coins, but it is a good protocol. There is nothing at the protocol level to prevent people from doing "serious things" with it. I am very skeptical about what serious things can be done, many protocols are just eyewash, they have not done what they said, so don't do that. But if there is enough interest, such as a stablecoin on Rune that supports the US dollar or other currencies one-to-one, I would not be surprised, let's all pray for the development of L2.

99% of Layer 2 protocols are garbage?

DUDU: Do you have confidence in Bitcoin's Layer 2? Why?

Casey: I don't know if I would bet on the second layer. The problem is, as far as I know, no one has developed a truly effective second layer. Many people have ideas. Even if they have a beautiful White Paper, you have to look at it with skepticism. In the past 10 years, thousands of White Papers have been published, but 99.999% of them are garbage, complete garbage. You have to wait until someone builds something effective, and then you can see the characteristics of the system when it exists.

For example, if you look at the Lighting Network, the Lighting Network is great. I like the Lighting Network, but it has some practical drawbacks and operational troubles. Keeping channels open is difficult, and there are various complex attacks to worry about. We have not yet seen the popularization of mobile wallets for the Lighting Network, which can be paired with anyone and open channels with anyone. Currently, the Lighting Network wallets that work on mobile are channels opened with specific Lighting service providers. If you only read the White Paper of the Lighting Network, it's hard to predict all these different difficulties.

My attitude towards the second layer is "seeing is believing". So rather than saying I am optimistic, I am more in a wait-and-see mode. I personally rely on L2 developers. When people create L2 on Bitcoin, they can add anything they want on L2, and if they are careful, they will not cause MEV or centralization on the base layer. This is what I expect and hope for the development of L2. If L2 has such transactions or other functions, people can transfer the runes to L2, perform any operation on L2, and then settle back to the mainchain, which is the future functionality I hope for.

Jasmine: You previously mentioned in a tweet that you would rather invest in some centralized service projects than certain Layer 2 solutions. I'd like to ask about your opinion on decentralization. Is decentralization really that important in all these ecosystems?

Casey: First of all, it should be clear that decentralization is the best, followed by centralized services that can fulfill their promises. If decentralization is not possible, then it is acceptable if centralized services can operate normally. In market competition, good services will survive, and poor services will be eliminated. This is also true even in the competition among centralized services. The worst situation is for those projects that claim to be decentralized but actually are either centralized or simply ineffective. My comments are actually aimed at those who invest in projects that are fundamentally non-functional or just use token issuance as an excuse to sell to others in the name of decentralization. So, I prefer to invest in truly effective decentralized projects, but today I see a lot of investment flowing into decentralized projects that are unlikely to succeed.

If people have to choose between a decentralization project that is doomed to fail and a centralized service that can provide useful services, I would prefer people to invest in a centralized service that actually delivers on its promises. For example, in the United States, the best centralized service platform to buy Bitcoin may be River. It's a very simple Bitcoin Financial Service platform where you can buy Bitcoin, transfer money, and much more. I think it would be great if every country had one or two companies like River that provide people with a secure, easy way to get Bitcoin. I'd rather see this than a bunch of L2s that never work. So it's not about centralization vs. Decentralization, it's about centralization vs. pseudo-Decentralization. In this case, I would always go for a functional centralized alternative. I'd like to see some really good Centralized Exchange that only focus on Bitcoin or Runes, listing every single Runes. I think that would be very interesting and would fill a shorter in the ecosystem.

DUDU: BRC-20 has added new features for new tokens. For example, it is possible to increase or decrease new tokens. But there is no such function in Rune. In Bitcoin, stablecoins are a very important feature. For example, there is such a function in Ethereum or Solana. But Rune does not have this function. What do you think of stablecoins in Rune? Have you learned about any projects related to stablecoins in Rune?

Casey: Of course, I would divide stablecoins into three types.

First, I do not agree with the idea of trying to support stablecoins with project utility tokens, which is a bad idea, and these schemes always collapse. Terra's luna is one of these algorithmic stablecoins. Currently, I seem to have seen a similar project called DUCAT, which I do not approve of. I read their White Paper, and the content is very complex. I don't believe at all that everything they are doing will work. We wait and see.

Another stablecoin is to create a synthetic currency. Essentially, for example - I will introduce the simplest stablecoin. The simplest stablecoin is when you buy US dollars. For example, or you get US dollars. You have this token, and people can buy tokens from you at a price of 1 US dollar per token, or they can exchange at a price of 1 US dollar per token. If you give them a token, you will send one dollar to their bank account. This is the simplest and safest stablecoin. Tether and USDC are such stablecoins. I haven't heard of anyone trying to build such stablecoins on the rune. These projects are usually very complex. You need to have banking relationships, etc.

Then there is another stablecoin, where you attempt to create a synthetic stablecoin by trading between two parties. You have people deposit Bitcoin into your bank account, then you go long on Bitcoin, causing the price of Bitcoin to pump. You sell bearish or bullish options on Bitcoin. If the price of Bitcoin goes up, you make money. Then you also short Bitcoin, so if the price of Bitcoin goes down, you also make money. This is somewhat like delta-neutral hedging. Regardless of whether the price goes up or down, your value remains at the same amount in US dollars.

I heard that several projects are trying to establish stable coins based on this model. This is not as crazy as completely synthetic stable coins, because the latter try to create value out of nothing. I don't think either of them has reached a practical state yet, and they haven't made this public yet, just privately saying, "Oh hey, we're looking into this."

DUDU: You have mentioned OP-CAT several times, can you explain in detail why you are optimistic about OP-CAT?

**Casey：**I like OP_CAT. OP_CAT seems to be a very powerful opcode that adds many missing features to Bitcoin. Overall, as long as the opcode is reasonable and not crazy, I am willing to accept it. Personally, I hope to see OP_CAT. I also hope to see OP_CTV, which is a covenant opcode. Even crazier things, like great script recovery, would be cool too.

I am not a researcher and do not have in-depth insights. This is just my impromptu opinion. I think it's too early to say what will ultimately happen. I like OP_CAT, but some people talk about it as if it's an inevitable event. Some unnamed people on Twitter say, "Whether you like it or not, OP_CAT will happen." I think the reality is that it's actually very uncertain until people actually try to activate something, and that hasn't happened yet.

BlockBeats Note: OP_CAT is a possible opcode that could help Bitcoin implement the functionality of smart contracts. For more information, see: "13 lines of code help Bitcoin implement smart contracts? Understand OP_CAT soft fork".

"Enjoy yourself and buy Bitcoin"

DUDU: Can you share more information about the Fun Collection with us? I see you often post on your social media, do you have any further plans for when to release?

Casey： Fun is a collection of photos taken by my friend Parker Day, with whom I have been collaborating. She started this project two years ago. While she was shooting and doing all the actual work, I was studying ordinals and later became something like an inscription. We weren't exactly sure how we would sell them, but as it turned out, ordinals and inscriptions became popular enough by the time they were finished, so it actually made sense to put them on Bitcoin as inscriptions. So, this is a collection of 1000 photos shot on film. No Photoshop, just makeup and hair, no special effects.

有趣的收藏

Actually, I just finished all the inscriptions today, which took a long time. I had to write a program to wait for low fees before doing the inscriptions. So, I finally engraved all 1000 of them. That's a lot. I think the total size is 100 megabytes. So, this is the inscriptions of 25 complete blocks. Yes, there is currently no specific release plan. We will sell them in some way, but I'm not sure how yet. However, I am very satisfied with this collection. I think it may be the most expensive portfolio because it was all shot on film with models and makeup artists. It may also be the most expensive collection of inscriptions. 97 megabytes of data is not a joke. So, it's a great collection. I don't know if I would recommend others to buy it. I don't provide investment advice, but the art is very good. So, I'm glad it's on-chain.

Although this kind of art is not liked by everyone, this is Parker's style. She launched a series of portraits called "Icons" in 2017, which is her breakthrough work with a similar style. I think it is very suitable for NFT because individual profile picture collections (PFP) are very popular. I think it is closest to the appearance of PFP. What would things like Board Ape Yacht Club or Crypto Punks look like in real life? They are colorful and very strange. I think if it's not strange, it's a bit boring. I don't want to create another collection of 10,000 images made up of numbers. If it's not strange, it's not worth doing. It's not very interesting. I would encourage people to start browsing these images. There are some strange details. Some may not be to their taste. There are some sexy girls in there. Those are not so strange. There are also a few pictures of cats. Take a closer look and see if there's something you like.

Jasmine: You joked that "if the rune protocol doesn't reach $1 billion within a month of its launch market capitalization you'll cut your stomach", would you like to say anything about that joke? Or do you want to set another goal today? **

Casey: Absolutely not, I will never make price predictions again. Given the previous target, we did not achieve it. I remember on May 20th, our market capitalization was 0.999 billion US dollars. It did indeed exceed 1 billion US dollars in the previous month. But the rule is what the price is one month later. One month later, the total market capitalization of Runes is not 1 billion US dollars, so you are now talking to Casey's "soul".

{"sl":"Chinese Simplified","text":"Market Cap data for Runes, image source: GeniiData","tl":"English"}

DUDU: Finally, please share any thoughts you have on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

**Casey：**It's great to be here with a group of dgens in Hong Kong. As for the last thing I want to say, it's to buy Bitcoin. Runes and Ordinals are an interesting form of speculation, but nothing really compares to Bitcoin. It's the hardest money we've ever had.

If you look at the history of fiat currency, the lifespan of fiat currency is at most 100 years. They will all perish, depreciate, and disintegrate. We can see that even the seemingly strong dollar, inflation is happening faster and faster. So I would say buy Bitcoin, just use a small part of your savings to play with Runes and Ordinals gambling. But whatever you want to do, never buy coins dug out by venture capital, there is no reason to buy pre-mined coins. Making coins requires no cost, especially for runes, a coin can be issued with just a click of the mouse.

I don't tolerate the coins dug by venture capitalists, using a small portion of your funds to gamble. But the rest, buy Bitcoin. Like I said, this is the only investment that has made me money. I still have a lot of confidence in it. Before Bitcoin reaches the market capitalization of gold, we have about 10 times the room for growth. I think this could happen. Bitcoin is much better than gold, and you can transfer it to the other side of the earth in 10 minutes.

So this is what I want to say in the end, have fun and buy Bitcoin.

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