The inscription is one of the hottest topics in the currency circle in 2023, and there are still many opportunities in this field. The community is moving towards the goal of becoming the largest Chinese inscription community. In the future, we will arrange interesting and potential project parties to interact and communicate with everyone in this community. Currently, I will also be stationed in the community to learn and understand the latest inscription ecosystem together with everyone.
Although this field is very active, it is necessary to remind everyone that the investment risk of encrypted assets is very high. If you are not familiar with it, please do not try it at will. Be cautious, the purpose of this community is to help everyone understand more projects, not to encourage everyone to invest. This AMA is not financial advice, just content sharing.
The highlight is here! Introducing today’s guest, Jack Kong. Jack has led the listing of “the first stock of the blockchain industry” Jia Nan Technology and “the first stock of Web3 Metaverse” Nano Labs on Nasdaq. He is currently the founder and CEO of Nano Labs and a member of the third-generation Internet development special group of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Looking at such achievements, it is really a big shot coming!
1.
We are all very familiar with Btok. First, let LuLu introduce Btok.
Hello everyone, I am LuLu, the Asia-Pacific market leader of Btok.
Btok is a leading global blockchain social network, covering tens of millions of users worldwide. Btok focuses on the blockchain world, and is a new generation of blockchain social APP that integrates community, social, wallet, aggregated trading, red envelope airdrop, and information. Btok will continue to deepen the blockchain social field, connect various parties in the blockchain world, and provide comprehensive solutions for users and project owners. At the same time, Btok will also be committed to creating an open, truly decentralized social network, focusing on value sharing and truly sharing the benefits with users, creating the world’s largest WEB3.0 social network, and opening a new era of blockchain social experience.
We are all very familiar with me. The theme of this AMA is about inscriptions. Please listen more to the sharing of the guests.
2. Jack ~ Your X often posts such articles recently: “One question about inscriptions every day, which inscription do you like today?” There are many hot spots in the currency circle, why do you pay special attention to inscriptions?
There are many reasons for paying attention to inscriptions, from the perspective of value, compliance, technology, etc., inscriptions are very good investment targets.
First of all, from the perspective of value, inscriptions are a new type of encrypted asset, which is the third type of encrypted asset after homogeneous tokens and non-homogeneous tokens. The characteristics of inscriptions, such as fair launch, have attracted a large number of newcomers from outside the circle, giving new people the opportunity without having to take over the high market value projects of the old ones. Traffic is a very important part of the industry. For web3, continuous injection of fresh blood is an indispensable part of the healthy development of the industry.
Secondly, from the compliance perspective, many inscriptions are ownerless, and even if they are deployed by themselves, they may not have chips in their hands. There is no issue of securities issuance here, and there is no compliance risk compared to assets issued by some smart contracts. Inscriptions are often a bottom-up community behavior, with no risk of project parties and no risk of centralized evil. There will be no problems such as withdrawing pools in DeFi.
Furthermore, from a technical perspective, inscriptions are actually a technological innovation. The inscriptions on Bitcoin use innovative protocols to enable Bitcoin to develop its own ecosystem, and will extend to second-layer networks, etc. The inscriptions on other public chains such as Ethereum have built a storage-index second-layer blockchain structure, forming a parallel consensus with smart contracts, and at the same time can achieve functions such as reducing gas. Many enterprise blockchains have also done this.
Overall, inscriptions are the most important asset class in this round of bull market and will open a wave of bull market with the entry of compliant funds after the ETF is passed.
3.
Many people often joke that when inscriptions fall today, someone will say that inscriptions are dead. The next day when inscriptions rise, they will be excited to encourage everyone to rush into inscriptions. Do you think we should look at inscriptions from the perspective of “embracing the bubble” or do they actually have practical uses?
First of all, in the early stages, any asset looks like it has a bubble component. Like the ICO in 2017, and the NFT issuance boom in 2021, there are a lot of air coins. Some died as the market cooled, and some are still doing well through the bull and bear markets.
Inscriptions have only been around for a little over a year, and at this early stage, speculation and expectations are the main factors. With the passage of time, inscriptions will gradually have more practical uses.
Inscriptions have many uses. For example, unisat uses sats as the platform currency, which is similar to BNB in traditional tokens. For example, the Kong community has its own treasury, which can be compared to nouns in NFT or grayscale in FT. For example, AIBS, which has built an AI application market and inscription payment gateway, so other inscriptions can be used as a payment currency for AI products, giving inscriptions a payment scenario. These various ways of empowering inscriptions are developing rapidly. We will soon see that inscriptions will have more and more practical uses in the digital world.
4.
Many inscriptions that have not yet been listed on exchanges have poor liquidity. Is their wealth effect still there? Or is it only the first batch of ORDIs and SATS that benefit?
There is actually liquidity, and in addition to Ordi, sats, inscriptions such as rats, mmss, kong, AINN all have good liquidity.
From the perspective of exchanges, it will also help with liquidity. Inscriptions have a community and traffic, and major exchanges are vying for this. Including exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, all are launching their own web3 wallets, and high-quality inscription projects will also be listed on CEX, providing potential liquidity.
In addition, as the recognition of inscriptions by the public increases, more newcomers from outside the circle will enter the market. The current inscription players are probably around 600,000 to 800,000, and during the bull market period, it may reach 30-50 million, and then there will be no liquidity issues.
5.
There are BAYC on the Ethereum chain, and now there is Bitcoin Apes NFT on the Bitcoin chain that looks exactly the same. Which one do you think is truly unique? What do you think of issuing NFTs on the Bitcoin chain?
Uniqueness is mainly reflected in the narrative. For example, the early NFTs of the Ordinals protocol, such as the Bitcoin frog and the node monkey, belong to the early NFTs. The crocodile of the Atomicals protocol belongs to the head of the Arc20 protocol. The NFT head of the Yin and Yang inscriptions is Ordirock. For example, the Src20 protocol, Brc420 protocol all have their own representative NFTs. There is no real uniqueness here, but rather a variety of them. Like the NFTs in the Ethereum era, there are various types of NFTs, each with their own community, culture, and brand integration. The gameplay of NFTs on Ethereum can be replicated in the BTC ecosystem.
The NFTs on the Bitcoin chain currently have a market value that is still far smaller than the NFTs in the Ethereum ecosystem, which means there is a huge room for appreciation. In addition, the NFTs on the Bitcoin chain are actually a new thing, because they are not tokens, but strictly speaking, they are not NFTs, but “non-homogeneous inscriptions,” which is a more accurate expression.
6.
Since anyone can issue inscriptions without any threshold, how do you suggest we explore early high-quality inscription projects? What kind of projects are more likely to be successful?
Early high-quality inscription projects can be monitored through tools such as Genii data, MCT, etc.
Projects that are more likely to be successful: they have a relatively large innovation narrative or technical innovation, support from core members of successful community, and strong community with diverse holding addresses, etc., are more likely to be successful.
7.
The transaction fees on the Bitcoin chain are particularly high, which may be unbearable for retail investors and may not be conducive to mass adoption. What is your opinion?
Second-layer networks can solve this problem. Currently, Bitcoin has many second-layer networks, and with the maturity of cross-chain bridges, lower gas fees can be achieved, which is beneficial for retail investors’ transactions.
In addition, solutions such as veda, which utilize the Ethereum virtual machine, can also solve this problem by calling Ethereum smart contracts on the Bitcoin network, which can achieve a lower gas cost.
Moreover, even if we look at the transaction fees on the Bitcoin main chain, in the case of no congestion, the gas will be within 10u, which is a price that retail investors can generally accept. Even in times of high gas, retail investors can achieve value storage through low-frequency trading behavior.
8.
How do you see the performance of inscriptions in the next bull market?
The performance of inscriptions in the next bull market will be very eye-catching. Inscriptions will have leaders in various sub-sectors, such as AINN in the AI field, Kong in the community inscriptions, depin, games, and social fields, etc., will have corresponding leading inscriptions. Leading inscriptions in sub-sectors will continue to drive sector growth.
9.
What inscriptions are you currently paying attention to?
I have been paying more attention to BRC20 recently. Projects like AINN in the AI sector, Veda in the Bitcoin EVM, are worth long-term attention.
10.
Since we are talking about the bull market, everyone must be very curious about what you think the currency market in 2024 and 2025 might look like?
2024 is the year of compliance in the currency circle. The Bitcoin ETF has been approved, and next, the Ethereum ETF will be approved, and more and more tokens will be able to enter the coverage of mainstream institutions. Compliance is a very important event for the currency circle, which means that mainstream financial institutions will be able to enter in large numbers. Mainstream institutions bring in a huge amount of capital. The total market value of the entire currency circle is currently only $2 trillion, which is negligible compared to the overall volume of traditional finance. The entry of the currency circle into the mainstream means that the total market value will continue to grow.
11.
In addition to inscriptions, please also share some tracks, projects, or currencies that you are optimistic about?
The combination of AI and web3 will be a very promising direction. Web3 and AI naturally complement each other and are both the direction of evolution in the digital world. In addition, the depin track, RWA track, and the gaming and social tracks that have been mentioned before will all produce a series of high-quality projects.
12. Trend of 2024?
Firstly, compliance. With the approval of the Bitcoin ETF and the subsequent approval of the Ethereum ETF, a large amount of compliant funds will enter the market. At the same time, countries and regions around the world will gradually have more relaxed policies on the adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Secondly, inscriptions, AI, and the Bitcoin ecosystem will be the main sectors of the bull market in 2024. Inscriptions are new assets, AI will improve long-term productivity, and the Bitcoin ecosystem will develop from 0 to 1 and then from 1 to 100.
After that, some of the original tracks will welcome more new users due to the maturity of infrastructure. For example, many 3A games that have raised a lot of money have completed high-quality deliveries and attracted more users. And tracks such as RWA, social, etc., will have a lot of growth with the improvement of L2 and the maturity of infrastructure.
Overall, 2024 is the year of compliance, growth, and large-scale adoption of web3.
