INSCRIBED.
On 20 January 2023, Casey Rodarmor announced that inscriptions were ready for Bitcoin mainnet with the release of ord 0.4.0. The software offered a way to create and transfer digital artifacts using Bitcoin itself, without launching a separate token or sidechain. This card marks that public announcement, not the first experiment.
Ordinal theory provides a way to identify and track individual satoshis, the smallest units of bitcoin. Inscriptions associate content such as an image or text with a satoshi; their content is recorded on-chain in transaction witness data. The result brought a new collecting medium to Bitcoin, alongside its existing uses.
Inscription 0 predates the announcement. The Ordinals explorer records its timestamp as 14 December 2022 at 20:32 UTC, in block 767430. Its small PNG skull became an early visual reference. Here it is reimagined as a street mural, while a returning character from card 038 connects two chapters of digital collecting. The alley, artists and mural are fictional, not a documented launch event.
Sources & the artist’s interpretation
Sources: Casey Rodarmor: Inscribing Mainnet, 20 January 2023 ; Ordinals explorer: inscription 0 ; Ordinal Theory Handbook: inscriptions ; Ordinal Theory Handbook: inscription examples . The artwork is fictional. INSCRIBED. is an editorial caption, not a historical quotation. The card date is the public mainnet-ready announcement, not the first inscription date.
