Bitcoin Needs Guardians of Neutrality — Michael Saylor Just Published 110 Reasons Against BIP-110

Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy and one of Bitcoin’s (BTC) most prominent advocates, published a piece on X (Previously Twitter) opposing BIP-110 — a proposed software update that would restrict certain types of BTC transactions, specifically those used for storing non-financial data like Ordinals on the network. 

Saylor laid out 110 reasons why he believes the proposal is a mistake, framing his opposition not as a defense of every use of Bitcoin but as a defense of the principle that BTC’s rules should remain neutral.

Saylor’s Entire Problem With Bitcoin’s BIP-110 

 BIP-110, formally known as the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, advanced to complete status on June 25, 2026, proposing seven consensus restrictions that would limit the size of certain transaction components, disable upgrade paths reserved for future development, and restrict specific scripting operations. 

The proposal would be active for approximately one year and uses a 55% miner-signaling threshold — significantly lower than the 95% threshold that Bitcoin’s standard deployment process typically requires.

Saylor opened by acknowledging the legitimate concerns behind the proposal. Those who support BIP-110 want to keep Bitcoin nodes accessible, preserve affordable payments, and keep BTC focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. He said he shares those objectives. His disagreement is with the remedy.

The core of his argument is that Bitcoin cannot determine the intent behind a transaction. The network has no way of knowing whether a set of bytes represents an image, a financial contract, a custody record, or something else entirely.  That means any restriction based on perceived purpose will inevitably catch legitimate uses alongside the ones it targets. 

https://t.co/wmUErVBFOo

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 18, 2026

In his view, that is not a minor technical concern. It is a fundamental problem with using consensus, Bitcoin’s most powerful and consequential tool, to address what is essentially a dispute over how block space should be used.

Saylor’s second concern is setting a precedent. Even if BIP-110 expires after a year, the underlying logic will remain. He said once the community accepts that consensus can be used to restrict transaction types that a significant group considers undesirable, future campaigns can apply the same reasoning to privacy tools, describing it as a governance risk that outlasts the proposal itself.

The Alternative He Prefers 

On the technical side, Saylor argued that the proposal bundles seven distinct restrictions into a single package that participants cannot separate — supporting one means accepting all of them. 

Several of those restrictions, he said, close upgrade paths that Bitcoin’s developers deliberately reserved for future soft forks. Disabling the Taproot annex, restricting future witness versions, and blocking certain scripting operations all narrow the design space available for future development, potentially complicating or delaying work on Layer 2 (L2) systems and advanced contracting research.

His preferred alternative is not to ignore the concerns that motivated BIP-110 but to address them through tools that do not alter consensus, while also noting that node operators and miners can set their own relay and inclusion policies. 

Saylor closed with a line that summarizes his entire position. “Bitcoin does not need guardians of purity. It needs guardians of neutrality.” For him, that means keeping consensus changes reserved for clear security failures — not for settling disputes about what BTC should or should not be used for.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $64,550 — consolidating in a tight range between current prices and the key resistance level at $65,000, which has capped the recent recovery.

Featured image generated with OpenArt.