**Welcome back to episode 279 of The Block Runner Podcast. As always, we have your host William talking with your cohost I-man as we discuss cryptocurrency developments while we make this new technology relatable to you. You can watch the full episode on YouTube AND stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.
Here are some of the topics they discuss today:**
First up, revisit Bitcoin DeFi through the lens of this cycle’s emerging “industry cook”: digital-asset treasury companies.
Next, Do we really need native Bitcoin primitives, or will off-chain/custodial routes—UTXO time-locks and loan products be enough to make BTC productive?
and Finally, we pressure-test trench metas like Pokémon “phygital” and map where the music could stop.
Alright, let’s listen in!
The L2 and DeFi discussion in relation to Bitcoin are perhaps some of the most important ones when determining the future of Bitcoin. It is clear Bitcoin will not be able to scale into the future, regardless of how much robust innovation we add to it through metaprotocol design.
However, ecosystem contributors such as Sovryn are working diligently to implement some of the cutting edge in Bitcoin scaling technologies to create favorable environments for development. We discuss with a core contributor to Sovryn, Edan Yago, the technical challenges in rolling out this type of infrastructure and break down the comparisons between existing side chains to Bitcoin which do not consider the same trust minimizing components.
The conversation explores many interesting facets to Bitcoin development and considers the reality of Bitcoin entering into a phase shift that renders all other chains redundant as Bitcoin infinite scalability becomes a reality as rollup technology becomes solidified.
We speak with our guest Sandman who is a major contributor to the OXBT community and is now working to organize an up and coming Runes PFP project called Bitdogs. Bitdogs is one of the first Ordinal PFP collections to commit to a Rune token distribution once the protocol goes live. We discuss how this project came to be and the intentions behind tying together this new class of fungible token with their non-fungible collection that will be minting soon.
Since the release of the UNAT addition to the DMT framework about 6 weeks ago, Natcats have taken the NFT space by storm by introducing for the first time a truly unique value proposition to the digital asset space. Ev, founder of Natcats was the first to deploy an art collection that fully utilized the Unique Non-arbitrary Token framework. This enables the digital asset supply existence and the artistic characteristics of the art itself to be solely determined by block data.
Up until now all NFT art collections have had arbitrary supplies, largely in the realm of a 10k supply which was a market narrative set forth by Cryptopunks in the early days of NFTs. Now, due to the introduction of DMT, non-arbitrary digital asset genesis can be produced by the Bitcoin blockchain itself by leveraging existing NAT frameworks and clever utilization of inscription native technologies such as recursion. Since the deployment Natcats has generated more than 500BTC in secondary market volume and is quickly gaining awareness among some of the biggest NFT players who are desperately seeking new innovations in the digital asset space. We break down with Ev his experience since launch and his motivations behind the creation itself, as well as future plans.
We went on a bit of a rant during this podcast episode, getting into many facets of conversation. We discuss the importance of EV’s contributions as a founder in the UNAT ecosystem and the impact he has made toward showcasing ecosystem viability in the DMT space. After this we go into a discussion on our own founder experiences and the exhaustive requirements needed in order to achieve significant goals. Referencing advice from Jensen Huang, the ability to endure suffering and pain during the toughest points of a founder experience is the determining factor for success. We reflect on this message and process all of the ups and downs of our experience in crypto as we celebrate crossing the 20k subscriber mark.
The world of Bitcoin grows more complex by the day and it can become challenging to know what are the true gems among the pack of developments. This is Jason Fang’s specialty as he leads the most notable VC fund in the Ordinals space. This is proven by his investments into Metagood (OnChain Monkey), TAP Protocol, Liquidium, and others. We discuss how to identify the major Ordinal market players that are worthy of investment and how the Layer 2 ecosystems to Bitcoin are massively over hyped despite their ease of acquiring investor interest. We break down the core technology of TAP and why it was chosen to support the Karma ecosystem over other token protocols like BRC20. Also, what are the expectations around Runes come Bitcoin halving.