Ordinals Asia 2024: Bitcoin Season 2, Runes Token & Highlights

The largest annual Ordinals-community gathering talking all things Bitcoin and the growth of the Runes ecosystem saw over a dozen news announcements being made surrounding its global adoption and development. 

The full-day event saw nearly 1000 attendees at the Soho in Hong Kong, bringing together an all-inclusive ‘Bitcoiner’ community of builders, leaders, investors and founders working towards what the agenda stated was the ‘season 2’ of Bitcoin. The successful conclusion of Ordinals 2024 featured a number of hands-on sessions, networking opportunities and conversations exploring topics of Bitcoin Inscriptions, token standards, Ordinals and Runes, amongst other things. 

Creator of Ordinals Protocols and Runes Casey Rodarmor were one of the many featured speakers representing the future of Bitcoin, alongside over 100+ industry leaders, including the likes of Jason Lau, chief innovation officer at OKX, co-founders of Taproot Wizards Udi Wertheimer, Eric Wall and their head of product Tyler Whittle, group president of Animoca Brands Evan Auyang, Runes Dex core contributor Viktor Ihnatiuk, Co-Founder & COO of Magic Eden Zhuoxun Yin, CEO, Darewise & Special Council, Opal, Benjamin Charbit as well as founders and leaders from leading projects such as Merlin Chain, Botanix Labs, Xverse, Unisat and more. 

Venture capital leaders such as Yushan Zheng, Founding Partner at Waterdrip Capital, Trevor Owens, Managing Partner at Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Adrian Lai, Founder & Managing Partner at  Newman Capital led conversations around the global investment landscape for Bitcoin based startups. According to reports, 2024 has seen millions of capital poured into the market with Bitcoin backed projects such as Botanix Labs raising over $8.5M earlier this year. 

Leonidas, co-founder of Ordi.io and an initiator of Runestone, the largest airdrop in Bitcoin’s history, shed light into why NFTs and meme coins on Bitcoin make sense, and how investors could make the most of it as we experience the crypto bull cycle of 2024. 

Key takeaways from Ordinals 2024 even included a number of major announcements including the rise of Bitcoin and investment landscapes in Asia, with a range of topics surrounding the continuously expanding adoption within the BTC landscape. Key discussions covered: 

• From Inscription #452 to BIP-420 and why it matters, led by the Taproot Wizards team
• Different approaches to achieving scalability and programmability of Bitcoin, moderated by Benjamin Charbit of Darewise. 
• Developments within the BRC ecosystem in the east vs west, hosted by Xverse Asia Growth representative Dominic Tsang.
• Discussions on Bitcoin ecosystem development 
• Unisat’s Founder Lorenzo’s Keynote on “Fungible Bitcoin^2”
• Debates around token standards on Bitcoin
• Impact of Ordinals on Bitcoin mining over the past years

Merlin Chain Founder Jeff Yin also led a keynote session on expanding the native Bitcoin innovation from a layer-1 into a layer-2, as Casey Rodarmor, Benjamin Charbit and host-organiser Jan Smejkal brough the event to an exciting end. 

Creating economic freedom has always been Bitcoin’s mission, and is fully supported by founders and investors developing on the chain, aiming to make its native layer-1 technology fast, frictionless and a choice for thousands of startups globally. To learn more about Ordinals Asia 2024, click here.