Do you believe in magic? Because this week’s Metaversal Badge could pull a rabbit out of a hat for you. It could send you to new worlds, make something appear in your wallet, or wave its magic wand over your wardrobe.

DYOR 🔬

Last week at Bitcoin Miami, one of the strangest sights Bitcoiners have ever seen went down. During a panel discussion hosted by Bitcoin Magazine entitled “The Great Ordinal Debate,” Taproot Wizards founders Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall came out on stage dressed as wizards, flossed badly, and enraged Bitcoin maxis all in a matter of minutes.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, Ben Armstrong (AKA Bitboy) threw wizard hats out into the crowd, many of whom were already decked out in them, having come to support Wertheimer and Wall, who’ve received plenty of hate from Bitcoiners who argue the network should be used for transactions exclusively, and not for Ordinals or other potentially network-clogging diversions.

So enraged was hedge fund manager turned energy company executive, Greg Foss, he went on an expletive-laden tirade on a Twitter Spaces, lambasting Bitcoin Magazine for giving the Wizards a platform at all. Foss has since reigned himself in and voiced support for Ordinals.

As Wall has argued, it was these same Bitcoin maxis who pushed for the Taproot upgrade to the network that enabled Ordinals… but those maxis were unable to find a use for it.

We’d argue that the innovation we’re seeing with Ordinals is to be welcomed and encouraged. It’s exactly this sort of demand for new use cases and on-chain activities that led to the creation of Ethereum and the other smart contract-powered chains that followed. The number of Ordinals inscriptions reached and breached 9 million yesterday. They’re not going away.

But Ordinals are just stage one of building on Bitcoin. There are no smart contracts yet. Think about Uniswap on Ethereum, for example. Or of memecoins and utility coins. None of those things exist on Bitcoin yet, but Ordinals opens the door for them. And they’re orange-pilling people at a rate of knots.

Ordinals brings culture to Bitcoin, and it’s led to the next step in Bitcoin’s evolution: the ability to create memecoins (using BRC-20). It’s only a matter of time before builders start adding new functionality like swapping, smart contracts, and other rollups. We think that’s incredibly exciting.

There’s something poetic about these new use cases coming to the OG blockchain. Previously there wasn’t the demand to justify building on Bitcoin, but now, Ordinals has brought the talent, the capital, and the incentive to the chain that started it all. It’s a brave new world, and we’re here to witness its creation in real time.

To the moon 🌙

• In other Ordinals news, a project called CTRL found a Rare Satoshi — one of only 392 out there — and inscribed it.

• Adobe released a beta version of Generative Fill for Photoshop, its new AI-powered fill tool (powered by Adobe Firefly) that can magically and smartly add or subtract content from images in Photoshop using prompts.

• Web3 personality and educator Zeneca has partnered with Curious Addys to launch HeyMint, a free-to-use NFT creation platform aimed at making NFTs more accessible and encouraging experimentation:

• Hardware maker Ledger had a trying week, and CEO and chairman Pascal Gauthier had to issue a lengthy mea culpa after it announced an optional feature called Ledger Recover that made it sound like the company had built a backdoor into its firmware that could compromise users’ seed phrases.

• NFT marketplace OpenSea trolled digital artists everywhere:

• Move-to-earn app StepN integrated Apple Pay into its service, which has, until now, required users to transact using Solana.

• Shaquille O-Neal was finally served legal papers for a pair of lawsuits around his Astrals NFT project and paid endorsements he provided for now-defunct exchange FTX. Shaq has allegedly avoided being served for months, but process server caught up with him at a basketball game in Miami where the former star was broadcasting.

• Solana-focused marketplace Magic Eden is trying to shore up its dominant position and fend off rivals by, among other things, temporarily offering to pay sellers who use its platform a 0.25% fee for doing so:

• “Checks” creator Jack Butcher auctioned three pieces from his “Checks Elements” series at Christie’s. The series, based around the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, consists of 152 pieces and unlocks new pieces for existing Checks collectors.

• Operator — AKA artists Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti — released a series of 400 generative artworks entitled “Human Unreadable” on Art Blocks using choreographed dance to shape each piece. The collection sold out in short order:

Goats Only 🐐

Whether you love Ordinals or think they’re a travesty sullying the purity of Bitcoin, you should be watching or listening to Goats and the Metaverse.

In each episode, collectibles OG and entrepreneur Stan “The Goat” Meytin and Metaversal co-founder and CEO Yossi Hasson talk about digital art, NFTs, and the week’s news worth knowing.

In recent episodes, they’ve unpacked xNFTs and Mad Lads, outlined what BRC-20 tokens are and why they matter, and dived headlong into the world of memecoins. Check out the latest episode right here:

Aside from providing invaluable insights into digital art and collectibles, Stan and Yossi have assembled a collection of NFTs dubbed “The Goat Vault.”

When the show hits 5,000 subscribers on YouTube — and they’re only 100 subs away from that! — one of those lucky subscribers who holds a #GoatBadge will win the contents of the vault, which at last count is valued at more than 4.5 ETH (~$8,200)!

Prefer listening? Check out Goats and the Metaverse on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Connect for more 🔌

You can find Metaversal on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.

Metaversal’s content director, Craig Wilson, compiled this week’s edition.

Kathryn McCawley designed this week’s wonderfully wizardly Badge.

Until next time, see you in the metaverse!

IYKYK 🍽️

Do you believe in magic? Because this week’s Metaversal Badge could pull a rabbit out of a hat for you. It could send you to new worlds, make something appear in your wallet, or wave its magic wand over your wardrobe.