Controversial bitcoin developer calls 99.99% of crypto projects "utter bullshit"

The crowd at the Consensus crypto conference in Austin, Texas, was all cheers Friday morning. But the audience seated in front of the main stage wasn’t celebrating the launch of a new coin or layer 2. 

Quite the opposite. 

On stage was Casey Rodarmor, the controversial bitcoin developer behind ordinals and runes. The two projects, which let people mint tokens on the bitcoin blockchain and have led to increased transaction fees, have won Rodarmor friends among crypto miners and made enemies among BTC purists. The former group appreciates the hundreds of millions of dollars in fees generated by ordinals and runes, while the latter argues that the projects take up valuable on-chain space that should be used for transactions.  

But Rodarmor had other controversies on his mind. 

“99.99% of the projects at this conference are complete and utter bullshit,” he said to laughter from the crowd. “They have some fancy white paper, they make all these crazy claims.”

“Glad that that’s sort of known,” he continued as the crowd interrupted him with applause. “Their purpose is really to print a token and dump it on retail investors.”

As the crypto industry works to put its Sam Bankman-Fried-tinged past in the rear-view mirror, the developers and industry insiders attending Rodarmor’s talk appeared to have landed on a path forward.

Simply put, call out the BS.