The Controversy Surrounding MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-Based Anti-Spam Strategy

MicroStrategy recently introduced a new Bitcoin-based strategy aimed at combating online spam. This strategy, known as “MicroStrategy Orange,” is an open-source decentralized identity solution built on Bitcoin. The platform is designed to provide an enterprise-grade platform for implementing Decentralized Digital Identifiers (DIDs) across organizations. One of the core services of the platform is “Orange for Outlook,” which offers an orange check for emails to verify their authenticity.

Despite MicroStrategy’s enthusiasm about their new strategy, Bitcoiners remain skeptical about its effectiveness. There are concerns about whether anchoring digital identities to the Bitcoin blockchain using public-private key cryptography is a practical solution. Some critics argue that this approach could needlessly bloat the Bitcoin blockchain, causing network fees to rise to extremely high levels.

Daniel Buchner, a decentralized identity expert at Block, has raised concerns about MicroStrategy’s strategy, stating that while the idea is good, it may not need to be implemented in the way Michael Saylor has chosen. There are worries that storing DIDs on the Bitcoin blockchain could have unintended consequences, such as increasing the blockchain’s size and potentially impacting its efficiency.

Despite the criticisms, there are supporters of MicroStrategy’s approach. Fans of Ordinals, a protocol that has been used for minting speculative NFTs and meme tokens, believe that the integration of DIDs into Bitcoin provides legitimacy to their protocol. Some members of the community have expressed excitement about the potential applications of Bitcoin as a data layer.

MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-based anti-spam strategy has sparked a debate within the cryptocurrency community. While the concept of decentralized digital identities backed by Bitcoin is intriguing, there are valid concerns about the practicality and potential drawbacks of implementing such a solution. It remains to be seen whether MicroStrategy’s “MicroStrategy Orange” will be embraced by organizations seeking to combat online spam or if it will face further scrutiny and backlash from the Bitcoin community.