Does BTC need an ecosystem?

Nakamoto 2026-1-30 10:15 68986人围观 BTC

Today we will talk about a topic that was discussed before when ordi and other inscriptions became popular, namely: Does Big Brother need an ecosystem? A very simple logic. Since many people compare it to gold and compare it to digital gold, the so-called

Let’s talk about a topic today. I was talking about it beforeOrdi and other inscriptions sparked discussions when they became popular, namely: Does Big Brother need ecology?

A very simple logic. Since many people compare it to gold and compare it to digital gold, the so-called big brother can rise to 1 million per coin. This is the analogy. (Of course, gold is rising rapidly. Just now, the news was pushed that it has risen to 5,270 US dollars per ounce. Even the giant TEDA said that it will soon become one of the world's largest gold banks).

According to the same logic, let’s extend it. We only need to think about whether gold has surrounding ecological products to get the answer.

So besides its value-preserving properties, does gold have an ecology?

Apparently there is.

We will not mention the upstream exploration, production and processing links. Just talking about the product itself, gold, by virtue of its Unique physical and chemical properties, has long formed a large and high-tech "ecological peripheral" system that is closely related to people's production and life. It has been used in the electronics industry, aerospace, medical, precision industry, etc., not to mention jewelry and other decorations that are well known to the public.

So does Big Brother need ecology?

According to this logic, it is necessary.

The mainstream view has reached a high degree of consensus in 2025: Big Brother's core value is "digital gold" and value storage, but to achieve long-term sustainable growth, attract more capital and developers, and release its trillion-dollar liquidity, a rich ecosystem (including Layer 2, DeFi, asset issuance, Inscriptions/Runes/Ordinals, etc.) must be built.

Bitcoin does not “need” the ecosystem, but the ecosystem is an inevitable evolution: conservatives in the early Bitcoin community believed that BTC only needs to maintain pure monetary attributes (store of value) without complex applications. However, after the outbreak of Ordinals, Runes and other inscriptions, the mainstream has shifted to "Bitcoin needs expansion and application layers to unlock its potential." Without an ecosystem, Bitcoin liquidity is fragmented, assets are idle, and developers are lost. ； With the ecosystem, we can move from "digital gold" to "programmable financial foundation".

The BTC ecosystem has entered a period of rapid development from the experimental stage. Institutional adoption (such as ETFs, company holdings), the explosion of Layer 2, and the rise of BTCFi (Bitcoin DeFi) have promoted the transformation of BTC from static storage to dynamic financial assets. Grayscale, Galaxy and other institutions predict that the BTC ecosystem will benefit from regulatory clarity and institutional capital inflows in 2026, becoming a mainstream financial infrastructure.

Of course, one thing that needs to be realized is that it is now far less mature than the ETH ecosystem (dominated by DeFi TVL and rich in DApps), but the BTC ecosystem has unique advantages - the highest security, the largest liquidity (more than 1.8 trillion US dollars in market value), and institutional preference. Although the BTC ecosystem started late, it has grown rapidly: Runes/Ordinals have spawned local DeFi, NFT, stablecoins, etc.

Last year, I paid a lot of attention to inscriptions. Finally, I will briefly talk about these inscriptions.

ORDI (BRC-20/Ordinals): As the representative of Bitcoin's inscription token, its market value skyrocketed in the early years due to narrative hype, but the real explosion relied on the ecosystem: UniSat wallet, OKX/Bybit listing, and DEX integration. Without these infrastructures, ORDI has poor liquidity and transaction lags. In 2025, BRC-20 such as ORDI will benefit from Runes upgrades and L2 bridging and become the local DeFi entrance for BTC. He is the only one among the several inscriptions who is still alive.

ATOM (Atomicals/ARC-20): The Atomicals protocol is more "native" than Ordinals, supports asset issuance and programmability under the UTXO model, and is regarded as the "Ethereum on Bitcoin". It needs an ecosystem to realize advanced functions such as merging and lending (such as Ordibank building a money market on top of it). The mainstream believes that Atomics has greater potential and can fill the inefficiency gap of BRC-20, but it still relies on BTC's overall L2 development and tool maturity.

STAMP (SRC-20): SRC-20 is another Bitcoin inscription standard. As its top token, STAMP has a relatively undervalued market value (in human terms, it has fallen to shit), with a total supply of 1 billion. The ecological needs are obvious: in the early stage, it relied on narrative and community hype, but to explode, it requires exchange support, AMM pool, and cross-chain integration. Similar to the ORDI path, if SRC-20 tools (such as wallets, DEX) keep up, it can move from speculation to practicality.

We have now entered 2026. With friendly policies and regulations, institutional admissions, and L2 maturity, we will wait and see whether the Bitcoin ecosystem can develop. In the short term, we will look at the narrative driver, and in the medium and long term, it will depend on infrastructure and liquidity.