Bitcoin Ordinals rely on a satoshi indexing system that pretends to assign unique identities to sats. But here’s the kicker: the whole system is built on arbitrary rules. Ordinals use a first-in-first-out model to trace sats—but why not last-in-first-out? Or any other ordering? All are equally valid.
There's nothing objectively true about the "right" sat number. Some argue first-in-first-out is simpler. But that's just optics. first-in-first-out and last-in-first-out require the same number of computational steps to determine sat origin. Simplicity is symmetrical here.
Even if you trace a sat back to the genesis block, your answer changes depending on the model you pick. So which one is "true"?
At its core, Bitcoin is fungible. Inputs and outputs aren’t individually linked at the sat level. Assigning identity to individual sats is a social convention—not a protocol truth.
Let’s not confuse clever labeling with objective reality. Sat numbering is arbitrary. Bitcoin’s base layer doesn’t care. Neither should you.