Why does capital focus on Bitcoin's "wizard culture" with a $7.5 million financing for 4MB graffiti?

Written by: Sharon, Jaleel, BlockBeats

Edited by: Jack, BlockBeats

Once minimalist enthusiasts of the Bitcoin ecosystem, perhaps with the current surge in the Bitcoin ecosystem, are changing "stale notions" and choosing to embrace a larger Bitcoin ecosystem.

On November 23, Bitcoin developer and former AWS chief engineer Rijndael (@rot13maxi) announced that he would join the Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards as CTO.

Notably, this Bitcoin OG had previously deployed a BRC-20 token sniper bot named "Sophon" and has also given high praise to Taproot Wizards.

Bitcoin OG Chooses to "Stay and Revolutionize"

In a post by Rijndael, he not only detailed his past work experience but also expressed confidence in the future development of the Ordinals ecosystem, believing that Taproot Wizards will be able to create a new future.

For the past 15 years, Rijndael has been engaged in distributed systems, infrastructure, and applied cryptography, later becoming the technical lead for Amazon's NFT project. In recent years, Rijndael has developed a genuine interest in Bitcoin and has worked on self-custody with the wallet Bitkey launched by Block.

Initially, Rijndael believed that the biggest issue to achieve mass adoption of Bitcoin was self-custody. However, everything seemed different after the emergence of Ordinals in the first half of this year.

Transition from Bitcoin Self-Custody to Ordinals

When Ordinals first emerged, Rijndael met the co-founders of Taproot Wizards, Eric Wall (@ercwl) and Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer), and the popularity of Taproot Wizards preceded that of Ordinals.

Rijndael highly recognized their team and technology, firmly believing that "government-controlled currency is a powerful revolution, and Bitcoin is also interesting and unique."

Left: Eric Wall; Right: Udi Wertheimer

He pointed out that when Ordinals appeared, those who had only a temporary interest in Bitcoin or had never used it before flocked to Discord to learn how to set up Bitcoin full nodes. Some even set up Lightning wallets for the first time, learned how Bitcoin works, and read about Bitcoin's origins and stories.

"Ordinals is an ideal place to try new cutting-edge technologies."

At the same time, Rijndael did not shy away from discussing the speculation behind Ordinals, believing that 99% of Bitcoin adoption is achieved through speculation: "This speculation around Ordinals attracted users, developers, and capital to build new tools and services, thereby attracting more users and creating a virtuous cycle."

Thus, Rijndael chose to temporarily "set aside" the issue of Bitcoin self-custody and fully embrace the Ordinals ecosystem, hoping to "experience NgU and stay to revolutionize." He also hopes that less dogmatic Bitcoin holders can truly hold and experience Bitcoin without having to accept a very specific purist value system.

The reason Rijndael chose Taproot Wizards is that he believes it is "the best choice to make this transition happen on both cultural and technical levels."

Previously Deployed BRC-20 Token Sniper Bot "Sophon"

It is noteworthy that before joining Taproot Wizards, Rijndael publicly deployed a BRC-20 token sniper bot named "Sophon" on October 3.

The operational rule of BRC-20 tokens is that whether deploying, minting, or transferring, it follows a first-come, first-served principle. Sophon utilized the "first-come, first-served" and public transaction rules to monitor the mempool.

Thus, whenever a new BRC-20 token deployment was detected, the bot would pay a high gas fee to preemptively deploy a token with the same name and set the supply to 1, making it impossible for others to obtain the newly deployed token, and the token deployed by the bot would only have a supply of 1, preventing it from circulating in the market.

However, Sophon was shut down by Rijndael within a month due to "spending too much gas." Subsequently, Rijndael donated the Bitcoin from the UTXO to opensats and recently open-sourced the Sophon code. During this time, BlockBeats observed that Sophon briefly created a deployment drought for BRC-20 tokens.

According to Dune dashboard data, after Sophon was activated on October 3, the number of text inscriptions plummeted from 49,000 the previous day to 13,700, a decrease of 72%. On October 23, the day after Sophon's funds were exhausted, the number rose from 11,500 to 74,300, an increase of 540%.

The gap represents the Sophon deployment phase. Source: Dune

Ordinals Hub maintainer cbspears (@cbspears) commented on this situation, stating: "Since Sophon was deployed, the number of UTXOs has decreased by over 10 million, and at the moment he shut down Sophon, the number of UTXOs began to increase. Rijndael is actually saving Bitcoin."

Interestingly, Rijndael's answer to "why deploy Sophon" was------"for culture."

Capital Sees "Wizard Culture," but VCs Have No Say

Taproot Wizards, favored by Rijndael, just completed its funding round last week. According to BlockBeats observations, Taproot Wizards is an NFT project created on the Bitcoin chain, initiated by Udi Wertheimer, aimed at commemorating Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade and a classic image of the Bitcoin community------the Bitcoin wizard.

On November 16, Taproot Wizards announced the completion of a $7.5 million funding round, led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Geometry, Collider Ventures, StarkWare, UTXO Management, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Masterkey, and Newman Capital.

Bitcoin Frontier Fund partner @TO shared his previous letter of intent to invest in Taproot Wizards on social media, stating, "This is the list of terms I sent to @udiWertheimer and @ercwl for investing in Taproot Wizards on April 5, 2023. After reading the (Taproot Wizards) promotion, to ensure I got in early, I wrote it in just 5 minutes."

Thus, @TO completed the basic investment letter of intent on a piece of toilet paper.

An abstract "blank check" achieved an actual investment intent.

What further reflects the rebellious art of Taproot Wizards is that @TO stated on social media that he was pleased that the Bitcoin Frontier Fund participated in this round of investment in Taproot Wizards, but his team still did not receive an NFT.

Unlike the voice that traditional VCs have in the crypto circle, Udi Wertheimer did not give him any special treatment, simply replying under @TO's comment: "Thanks for your support! If you want a wizard, go take a shower!"

It is reported that Taproot Wizards aims to revive the culture of building and innovating on Bitcoin. The project has a limited issuance of 2,121 wizard NFTs. Currently, less than 1% of Taproot Wizards' Ordinals have been minted. In fact, even before this round of Bitcoin ecosystem narrative, Taproot Wizards had already stirred up a wave earlier this year.

In March of this year, the official Taproot Wizard shared the founder Udi Wertheimer's journey on social media: "On the day Silicon Valley Bank announced its collapse and the USDC panic, I decided to launch the Taproot Wizard NFT project today and have people record videos of themselves showering in wizard costumes."

"Making bitcoin magical again" also became one of the main narratives of Taproot Wizard.

One of the Oldest Memes in Bitcoin

The image of the Bitcoin wizard first appeared in February 2013 when /r/Bitcoin admin theymos solicited creative ideas for community advertisements. Within an hour, a friend named /u/mavensbot submitted a piece titled "Magic Internet Money Wizard."

With its creative painting style, eye-catching image design, and simple, direct cultural slogan, this piece quickly became the most popular answer in the forum. Later, this image was selected as the official promotional image for the /r/Bitcoin forum and was displayed on Reddit for a period.

The simply brainwashing design brought a lot of traffic to the /r/Bitcoin forum, with more and more people clicking in to see what this "not-so-advertisement-like advertisement" was trying to express and represent. Many people thus learned about, understood, purchased, and spread Bitcoin.

It is worth mentioning that at that time, Bitcoin was only $287 each.

Therefore, this image quickly became an iconic symbol of the Bitcoin community, representing the mystery and charm of Bitcoin. Taproot Wizard was created based on this image, adding elements related to the Taproot upgrade.

With the concept of Bitcoin wizards, Taproot Wizards gradually gained popularity. Many in the community support Taproot Wizard because they believe this meme is inextricably linked to the rise of Bitcoin and is the most original and purest meme of Bitcoin.

The Largest Block and Transaction in Bitcoin History

Interestingly, the largest block and transaction in Bitcoin history also successfully led to Taproot Wizards being referred to as "the largest Bitcoin block ever," further fueling the popularity of Taproot Wizards.

Udi had previously confirmed on social media that Taproot Wizards "mined the largest block and the largest transaction in Bitcoin history," with the block size being 3.96MB, slightly below Bitcoin's 4MB limit, containing an NFT based on the original "magic internet money" meme, named Taproot Wizards.

This incident caused a significant stir in the Bitcoin ecosystem, with Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Bitcoin Core developer LukeDashjr, and others believing that Taproot Wizards' actions caused the Bitcoin blockchain size to expand rapidly, potentially leading to some facilities experiencing anomalies, and even suggesting that this was an attack on Bitcoin rather than innovation.

However, Udi disagreed, believing that Bitcoin should not only be used for simple transactions but can also achieve more functions through technological upgrades, with NFTs being just one of them. By subverting, building community, and rebuilding the long-standing rebellious spirit of BTC, new waves of interest and innovation in Bitcoin can be stimulated.

To achieve this, Udi believes Bitcoin minimalists need to let go of their high ground and biases. In fact, this somewhat reveals the reason Rijndael chose to join Taproot Wizards, as both, being Bitcoin OGs, promote similar concepts and ideas.

For example, Rijndael does not oppose speculators, believing that 99% of Bitcoin adoption is achieved through speculation; Udi also believes that Bitcoin minimalists should not continue to hold their biases but should have greater inclusivity to achieve true Bitcoin mass adoption.

In fact, whether it is Rijndael or Udi, they may have gone through the process of questioning, understanding, and embracing speculation in the Bitcoin ecosystem, as well as the seemingly meaningless so-called "uses." This process has, to some extent, influenced the future development direction of the Bitcoin ecosystem.