This article was published in Bitcoin Magazine. “The inscription problem”. click here To get an annual Bitcoin Magazine subscription.
For its entire life, Bitcoin has been considered a monetary network that allows users to send and receive its native token BTC. Given the massive price rises since they were first introduced in 2009, monetary instruments have become a store of value. This provides a means for someone to save their valuable working time and instead experience increased purchasing power without devaluing their working time. Loss.
However, not all users are the same. Despite the popularity of these money stories, some outcasts have been using Bitcoin for all kinds of purposes over time. Most notably, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks and now a famous journalist and political prisoner, has used Bitcoin for a variety of reasons, including as a proof-of-life mechanism and as a verifiable proof of publication. For Assange, Bitcoin was and remains much more than a decentralized currency system that solves the double-spending problem inherent in digital cash. For the journalist, Bitcoin can do so much more, and as he fights for his life, others have joined the mission.
Now, before we get into the intricacies of what Bitcoin is and could be for Assange and his supporters, let’s take a step back and look at what journalists have been doing with this digital coin since his NGO first adopted it.
Assange’s organization was left out of the global banking system as Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal suspended their online platforms shortly after WikiLeaks released U.S. diplomatic cables about the infamous Chelsea Manning leaks in 2010. . This reality led Assange to adopt Bitcoin, and in June 2011, WikiLeak’s Twitter account announced that it would begin accepting Bitcoin donations.
Interestingly, WikiLeaks expressed interest in adopting Bitcoin much earlier than in June 2011, and Satoshi prevented Assange from pursuing that route in December 2010, according to a post on the popular forum BitcoinTalk at the time. Why? “Bitcoin is a small beta community in its early stages. You won’t try to earn more than your allowance, and I think the heat you’ll bring will destroy us at this stage.” WikiLeaks waited another six months to receive Bitcoin.
Ironically, Assange later praised the US government for allegedly carrying out this coordinated attack, which of course led to WikiLeak’s embrace of Bitcoin, resulting in a capital appreciation of over 1,000% in dollar terms. It’s both interesting and comical that the fact that WikiLeaks was blocked from the mainstream financial system simply for publishing leaked documents would lead to a much better financial situation. In dollar terms. Poetic.
In September 2014, Assange began hinting at other use cases he saw for Bitcoin. His tone and delivery lead me to believe he was much more passionate about Bitcoin than financial speculation. Monetary use cases:
“Bitcoin is a very important innovation, but not in the way most people think. The true innovation of Bitcoin is the globally verifiable proof that it was published at a specific point in time. The entire system is built on this concept and many other systems can be built on it as well. Blockchain records history by breaking Orwell’s maxim, ‘Whoever controls the present controls the past, and who controls the past controls the future.’”
A few years later, the use of Bitcoin as a timestamping server for WikiLeaks documents began to emerge, but it was unclear whether WikiLeaks itself was doing the timestamping or if it was grassroots activists. A Reddit user posted on r/WikiLeaks that someone had applied timestamps to the hashes of some WikiLeaks torrent files using OpenTimestamps, an open-source tool created for this purpose by Bitcoin developer Peter Todd.
Film producer and Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton said: Bitcoin Magazine On his brother’s early interactions with Bitcoin:
“Julian recognized the power of Bitcoin in 2011 to build an ‘intellectual foundation’ for civilization. This is a protocol that allows independent verification of references to human intellectual contributions without dependence on any organization. “Bitcoin excites him not only because it is the most censorship-resistant publishing method, but also because of what it offers: the ability to build wondrous knowledge, a critical tool in humanity’s fight against ignorance.”
Assange’s thought process about Bitcoin use cases is significant not only because it sheds light on an entirely new use case for the decentralized network, but also because of how early it was mentioned. Assange saw this potential a decade ago, but it wasn’t until the release of Ordinals that this use case became popular in a meaningful way.
Launched on the Bitcoin mainnet in early 2023, Ordinals allow anyone to easily add random data to a Bitcoin block at any given moment. When that data is added, it inherits Bitcoin’s immutability and security, and at that moment Assange’s vision of verifiable proof of publication can be achieved. The inscription goes further. In addition to storing timestamps that enable proof of posting, which users attempted to do using torrent tracker files in early 2016, Ordinals can also publish the data itself directly to Bitcoin. Not only do you have an immutable record of time and date in terms of block height, but you can now also post the actual content of the article or the torrent link itself. A new era of using Bitcoin blockspace.
Naturally, we’ve seen a ton of JPEGs being published as blocks due to the launch of this new protocol. Initially, some were random memes, but not long after launch, recorders became sophisticated, developed recursive techniques, and even began teleburning collections of Ethereum-based NFTs. Now, almost a year later, Ordinals has built an entirely new ecosystem on Bitcoin, allowing all kinds of art and software development to take place on the “parent chain.”
However, starting in 2014, some projects began to emerge that sought to fulfill Assange’s vision. These projects come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, but they all seem to pursue the possibilities brought about by Bitcoin and the Ordinals, and actually go above and beyond. Guess the images and videos posted on Bitcoin.
Most notably, a project to allow anyone in the world to add to Bitcoin emerged in October 2023, a cable originally published in the leak that cut WikiLeaks out of the global financial system in 2010. Ordinals made this project possible. It allows for not only timestamping of cables, but also the actual recording and storage of the pure content itself. Project Spartacus has turned Bitcoin into a kind of Library of Alexandria. It is a library that cannot be altered or destroyed, no matter how powerful the enemy.
In this case, the leaks expose war crimes by the U.S. military and government, revealing facts that stand in stark contrast to the main narrative promoted by the media and the government itself about what happened on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. .
Thirteen years after these cables turned journalists into political prisoners, this grassroots project has emerged to stand in solidarity with Assange and say “I am Assange.” An allusion to the famous “I Am Spartacus” scene from the 1960 film. spartacusProject Spartacus invites Bitcoin users around the world to say “I am Assange” and engrave the cable that starts it all on Bitcoin.
Project Spartacus aims to take a stance towards freedom of information and knowledge, ensuring that no one can tamper with the data that Assange risked his life to release. The journalist is currently an Australian citizen and faces the possibility of extradition to the United States, even though he did not commit a crime on American soil. The outcome of the extradition proceedings remains uncertain and concerns continue to grow about his future and whether he will ever regain his freedom.
Project Spartacus’ website provides a public interface where anyone can “record” war records (ordinal jargon for adding data to Bitcoin). There appear to be no fees associated with this operation other than the network fee, which is a necessary component of every transaction submitted to the Bitcoin network. The page also has a “Donate” button, which opens a panel where users can optionally send Bitcoin to Assange. Donations are said to be used to support organizations such as the Press Freedom Foundation, the Right to Information Project, and Reporters Without Borders.
Bitcoin Magazine spoke. We sit down with the anonymous creator of the technology behind Project Spartacus to explain the process and mission.
“Each war log that a user records through Project Spartacus is a file containing the original content of one of the 76,911 Afghan war diary records. We chose the Ordinals protocol to achieve early and widespread adoption as the standard for immutable data storage, simply because we believe Bitcoin is the most immutable and uncensorable technology for this use case. As each log is written, that data is embedded and propagated into Bitcoin and can be easily found by many Bitcoin and Ordinals clients. We see these use cases for Bitcoin as critical to human rights and freedoms, and we hope you will stand with Julian Assange by storing this sensitive data in Bitcoin with us.”
Upon going to the website, users notice a large rectangular button on the main page that says “Publish War Records.” When you click, the process of recording war records begins. Users are given the option to select the number of logs to record, with a maximum of 300 war logs per transaction. Users can then select the transaction fee at which the total payment amount will be calculated. After pressing “Continue,” the user will probably be redirected to payment.
The creators of Project Spartacus chose SVG files that contain raw log data as annotation fields, giving the files a graphical treatment while also giving users an easy way to view the information. The project leveraged Ordinals’ popular digital artifact use cases to focus on complete data finality in decentralized information chains operated by tens of thousands of nodes in hundreds of different jurisdictions around the world.
In this sense, Bitcoin has actually become more than just a financial asset, as Assange once imagined. It has now become a beacon of hope for those fighting against the suppression of truth and distortion of history.
This article was published in Bitcoin Magazine. “The inscription problem”. click here To get an annual Bitcoin Magazine subscription.