Well, this is it... 17,786 RDTS nodes a day before activation, a big jump from the 15,352 we had 2 weeks ago. We've come a long way. Tomorrow we will see if bitcoin is run by plebs or suits.. #BIP110

I supported/support 110. Strongly. It definitely had a lot of support. As had the narrative that 110 was an attack. Reality is that 98% of the hashrate chose to ignore it. IMO likely after back channel talks. End result is still that BTC is the longest/heaviest chain with most pow. Seeing how it played out, alongside the state of Core made me lose most of my faith that BTC is salvageable as a decentralized project separating money from state. It didn’t make me believe BTC is not Bitcoin. Defining what Bitcoin is based on subjective and unquantifiable metrics like “had community support” (what is the “community”, who qualifies as a community member, how do we measure it etc etc) inevitably leads to sounding and looking like a bch or bsv bad actor. As well as the fact building narrative and name on top of unprovable metrics invites trust, not verify… I also think actively using “bpedo” and engaging in the “that’s not bitcoin, this is bitcoin” works against gaining more and broader support for the new chain that re-embraces decentralization and pure focus on being money. I understand where you are coming from though and I respect it. Decentralization plays out also in perspectives, and I have zero doubt your actions and words are in alignment with your beliefs and perspective. I will be following and supporting the Blake chain. After watching BIP-110 play out and seeing how little resistance was offered last years to what looked like coordinated capture of BTC, I’m no longer sure “bitcoiner” is the right label for me. I’m just an individual still committed to separating money from state through whatever decentralized project prove viable. Labels are downstream of principles. If the principles hold, the name can evolve.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Or by a miracle, the trajectory of BTC can change, making the term “bitcoiner” feel right again.

Great video, and your kid’s comments are hilarious. I think what you’re missing is that Bitcoin’s enemies are not good people. They are the psychopaths with a money printer. You cannot have a good faith negotiation and discussion and come to some political compromise with them. They want to destroy Bitcoin and are attacking it on multiple fronts. So you can’t just have a nice little chat with them. Politics won’t work here. Cypherpunks run code. At some point, you are going to realize that “Bitcoin” is no longer “home”— just like a country can change to the point where it’s no longer recognizable and no longer is run according to its founding principles. In situations like this, Exit> Reform. American founding fathers did not try to reform British politics but chose exit instead. I still own all of my BTC and will do everything I can to help both CoreChain and Luke’s fork. But I fear CoreChain is beyond saving

⚠️ The state of Bitcoin. 2022: “Never in a million years will noderunners agree to relay spam.” 2026: “Never in a million years will noderunners agree to inflation.”

Wouldn't be so obvious if the tail emissions guy wasn't also the guy who needed a few goes to get OP_RETURN blown out.

Got this shot of Consensus, just as it emerged organically (of its free will and not forced) out of its lair.

These views do not reflect the views of @ocean_mining and are mine exclusively: Saturday 8/8 saw the rejection of BIP110 by the Bitcoin industry despite broad support among the community. This shattered a long-standing belief that Bitcoin's anti-fragility and hard-monetary properties would continue thanks to its decentralized network of nodes who were run by people who understood Bitcoin and would fight to preserve it. I have been confident in Bitcoin's future and championed it as a tool for freedom. My reasons for doing so both required that it maintain and treat as a mission-critical priority the decentralization and ultimate authority of the network of nodes determining and enforcing its rules. They are no longer relevant. The degree to which this undermines Bitcoin's future cannot be overstated. Proof of Work is completely pointless if the criteria for what constitutes validity is decided by the ones doing the work. Pools have said "Our blocks are still valid, even if they violate rules we were told to respect." They did so within a small cartel of centralized pool operators clearly acting on behalf of industry players who operated behind closed doors ensuring that their public, breathtakingly arrogant, and nonsensically premature dismissal of BIP110 as a failure would not ultimately turn out any other way. They were not bluffing, they knew. By contrast, BIP110 supporters operated in public. We used neutral metrics that everyone had access to, and made the basis of our confidence publicly known. Sincere attempts were made to gauge community sentiment and engagement was public on all venues where discussion was permitted. Public engagement with influential Bitcoiners who opposed BIP110 demonstrated clearly that their opposition was not in good faith. This led to questions about their characters and intentions which were promptly corroborated by timely Epstein leaks. This meant that it was no longer frivolous dismissal of "the other side" out of pure tribal instinct as is standard within any conflict, and instead it would become laughably naive to continue assuming good faith on their part. Regardless, the spectacular, resolute dismissal of BIP110 necessarily reveals an equivalent stark and chilling reality with regard to decision-making about Bitcoin's consensus rules. No one, not even BIP110's most staunch critics can dismiss the implications of this. When Bitcoin is under attack, spontaneous defense that can withstand whatever onslaught it faces will simply be dismissed as "not economic", "a Sybil attack", "non technical", "censorship" or some other attempt to discredit and undermine it by the attackers. My expectation for the future is that for Bitcoin, reverse-Trojan horse theory continues to play out: The dollarization of the ecosystem will continue, and Bitcoin's ultimate goal - the separation of money and state, will be forgotten, while its captured players work towards the exact opposite end - its unification. Bitcoin is not the first protocol to become captured. It needed to become the exception, not the rule. The mechanism by which it did that is decentralization. Work is being done to hard fork Bitcoin with a new Proof-of-Work algorithm. I have said repeatedly in the past that in certain scenarios, should mining become captured and centralized to too great of a degree then the only defense the network would have would be to hard-fork to a new Proof-of-Work algorithm. I stand by this perspective as a truth fundamental to Bitcoin and everyone must agree with this stance if they are to believe Bitcoin is not whatever a necessarily few mining pools say it is. If you believe the miners acted on behalf of a silent community who secretly opposed BIP110 then I will respectfully disagree but agree that your conclusion about a PoW change being unwarranted must follow. You have misjudged the BIP itself and are simultaneously oblivious to the mechanisms that were abused to deny it, along with the intentions of the people working them. You also did not indicate your dislike of the BIP via discernable metrics (i.e not running a URSF and committing to its rejection) - instead you relied on a few pools to decide on your behalf. So what am I going to do? Wait with a stalled out Knots node. Another block will be along later rather than sooner, but I'll take it. That is what my entire Bitcoin stack sees as the state of the network. If a PoW change HF comes along with the next update to @BitcoinKnots that makes blocks start showing up faster I will upgrade to it and enjoy the benefit. I have no desire to attempt to call this new chain "Bitcoin" - Bitcoin is a case study in protocol capture and instead of dying, becomes a tool for the sickest of purposes. I can think of nothing more evil than centralized Bitcoin. It is whatever tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist told you Bitcoin was. But for all my day-to-day activities, all the software I use, Bitcoin is simply stuck at block 931,633. At current hashrate the next block will take ~32 hours. I sincerely doubt that anyone wants to find another 2000 blocks at this pace so HF is the only practical option.

I am taking a sabbatical from OCEAN as Chairman and CTO and will turn my immediate focus to working on Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin. I believe this is the best use of my time and is in the best interests of Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s long-term health.

I said Bitcoin was money and nothing else. I said the miners weren’t in control. I said Bitcoin was decentralized. I said your node matters. I was wrong and I apologize.

Speaking your mind when it’s hard and uncomfortable is usually when it’s most important that you do it. When Craig Wright tried to silence people with legal threats. When the world lost its marbles during Covid. When Bitcoin lost its soul and decentralization through fiat capture. I will continue to do it.

@mattkratter, you probably have no idea who I am, and that is partly why I wanted to write this. I’m a Jordanian who has spent more than a decade working in technology in Saudi Arabia. Somewhere between work, family and trying to understand the world better, I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. Technology led to money. Money led to economics, history, incentives, energy and human behavior. Somewhere along that journey, I found Trader University. Matthew became one of the voices I kept coming back to. I trusted that he had done the work before turning on the camera. His influence went beyond Bitcoin. He once recommended Good Energy by Casey Means. I bought it. Someone records a video thousands of kilometers away, mentions a book, and a person in Saudi Arabia hears it, orders it and follows another rabbit hole. Matthew probably never knew. That is what education looks like from the other side of the screen. And that is why watching the attacks on him now bothers me. For years, the XRP army, Ethereum people, gold bugs and shitcoiners attacked him. At the same time, he could have monetized his audience with tokens, airdrops, exchange sponsorships, early allocations and paid promotions. He could have made a fortune. He kept talking about Bitcoin. Now I open X and see Bitcoiners directing the same hatred at him because of BIP-110. Disagreement is fair. Personal humiliation isn’t. There is still a human being behind. Someone who spent years educating people he will probably never meet. Matthew supported BIP-110 because he believed it was better for Bitcoin. So did I. I still do. Maybe history proves us wrong. Maybe it proves us right. History has a longer attention span than X. One lost signaling battle cannot erase years of integrity and contribution. So while your notifications are filled with people telling you what you got wrong, here is one from thousands of kilometers away saying something different: Thank you, Matthew. For the Bitcoin education. For the rabbit holes. Even for Good Energy sitting on my bookshelf. The replies are loud right now. They are not everyone. I’m still here. Still with Matthew. Still pro-BIP-110.

It’s been an honor to fight alongside every node runner who defended Bitcoin as permissionless money in the face of relentless mockery from the misguided, the captured, the institutions, and the influencers. The war has not been lost. 🧡

Congratulations!! Bitcoin is now a centralized shitcoin or data Dropbox. Public miners rule. Time to diversify in Fiatlandia. Sorry future generations; We tried 👍. Damned few!

Tick tock, next block

BIP110 BLOCK

.@AntPoolofficial you just mined an invalid block. Hope everything's OK!

BIP-110 activates in a couple of hours. I'm proud of every node runner and bitcoiner who chose the hard path of defending Bitcoin’s actual mission, instead of folding to the narratives and ridicule pushed by Big Bitcoin, suits and the influencer class. Standing right beside you. 🫡

GM☕ LFG

Yes it is