MicroStrategy recently made headlines during their annual MicroStrategy World conference with the unveiling of “MicroStrategy Orange” – a decentralized identity solution built on Bitcoin. This platform aims to combat online spam by providing an enterprise-grade platform for implementing Decentralized Digital Identifiers (DIDs) across organizations. One of the core services offered is “Orange for Outlook,” which verifies the authenticity of emails to distinguish them from spam. While this sounds promising, the reaction from the Bitcoin community has been mixed.
Skepticism from the Bitcoin Community
Despite the lofty goals set by MicroStrategy, many Bitcoiners remain skeptical of the effectiveness of their solution. The idea of using Bitcoin as a basis for decentralized identity has raised concerns about practicality and efficiency. While MicroStrategy claims that their platform can deploy DIDs to tens of thousands of team members within hours, experts like Daniel Buchner from Block question the necessity of using Bitcoin in this way. Buchner argues that while the concept is good, there may be more efficient methods to achieve the same goal without burdening the Bitcoin blockchain.
Critics of MicroStrategy’s approach point to the potential for bloating the Bitcoin blockchain with unnecessary data. By anchoring digital identities into the Bitcoin blockchain using public-private key cryptography, there is a risk of increasing network fees and congestion. Some industry insiders, like Tony Giorgio from Mutiny Wallet, accuse MicroStrategy of using Bitcoin as a personal and corporate data store. This type of usage goes against the original purpose of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Support from Ordinals Fans
Despite the backlash from some in the Bitcoin community, supporters of Ordinals, the protocol used by MicroStrategy, see the announcement as a validation of their technology. Ordinals, known for minting speculative NFTs and meme tokens, now has a more serious use case with the introduction of MicroStrategy Orange. Fred Krueger, a proponent of Ordinals, believes that leveraging Bitcoin as a data layer opens up new possibilities for the protocol.
MicroStrategy’s proposal of using Bitcoin for combating online spam through decentralized digital identities has sparked a debate within the cryptocurrency community. While the concept is innovative, there are valid concerns about the practicality and efficiency of the approach. As the project develops, it will be interesting to see how MicroStrategy addresses these criticisms and whether they can successfully implement their vision of a decentralized identity platform backed by Bitcoin.