| Bitcoin has been around for a lot longer than some of the other crypto kids on the block(chain): The oldest cryptocurrency is now into its teenage years, while its second-largest counterpart, Ether, hasn't even hit the double-digits. And yet, despite several attempts in the last decade, developers have struggled to find ways to make Bitcoin useful. A recent development offers a promising solution. But like seemingly everything in crypto, it's also sparking controversy. We're talking about NFTs on Bitcoin, and in some ways, the network actually does it better than Ethereum, where most nonfungible tokens are minted at present. A development by newly launched protocol Ordinals earlier this week meant that for the first time, a Bitcoin-minted NFT can store a real image, right there on the chain. Thanks to upgrades that Bitcoin went through a couple years ago, Ordinals found a way to store information in a Bitcoin transaction beyond the limits that the network previously deemed acceptable. The process represents an improvement compared to other chains because those transactions can only store a link that then points to a webpage where the image is hosted. If that page gets taken down — like all of now-defunct crypto exchange FTX's NFTs — then tough luck. During the apex of their hype in 2021 and 2022, NFTs were so buzzy that they made Ethereum one of the most commercially important blockchains. People were willing to pay tens of millions of dollars just for one token. If Bitcoin could tap into some of that demand, surely it would be a good thing? Wrong, say some of Bitcoin's most hardcore inner circle. Leaving aside a longstanding debate around whether the chain should be reserved for recording financial transfers only, these NFTs are data-hungry — taking up a much bigger chunk inside each block to get the transaction processed and pushing up the fees that miners can charge in return. NFTs aren't the only thing in crypto that Bitcoin hasn't quite pulled off successfully. It's not very good as a means of payment because its price is still volatile enough to swing by thousands of dollars in a day, especially when trading volumes are thin. Donations sent to truckers protesting in Canada last year showed it's not very good at being censorship-resistant either, because just as the truckers' bank accounts were locked, any Bitcoin sent to support them were similarly hampered by compliant crypto exchanges. As a so-called proof-of-work blockchain, it's also still pretty bad for the environment. So what good use can be made of the king of cryptocurrencies? It seems that even after the Bitcoin NFT breakthrough, this question is still very much alive. | 
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