Bitcoin Forum

This morning I was browsing Twitter and saw that Michael Saylor shared a video in which he encourages the use of Bitcoin Knots. .
https://x.com/saylor/status/1970942399078940791

It seems that this could be the end of Bitcoin Core as the reference implementation, as the most prominent bitcoiners and holders are now supporting Knots

Saylor doesn't really have that much leeway to cause such.
I shared something similar on his view about OP _RETURN  in a thread and his response surprised me
I thought he was just only buying and investing.


Michael Saylor supports Bitcoin client that doesn't encourage or makes spamming cheaper
And knot just happened to be an alt walking in same direction.

Unless Luke (main maintainer of Knots) improve his security and programming practice, i expect fair amount of people/company would rather stick with Bitcoin Core. Jameson Lopp talk about it on https://blog.lopp.net/knot-a-serious-project/ (https://blog.lopp.net/knot-a-serious-project/) section "Luke's Security Practices".

Is it the end of Bitcoin Core?
I believe it won't be the end of Bitcoin Core and you know Bitcoin is a decentralized project from developments, wallet softwares, Bitcoin nodes, hashrate distributions so a tweet from Michael Saylor does not have any power to change this.

Bitcoin Node Clients Ranked by Popularity. (https://bitref.com/nodes/)
Thinking of a flippening between Bitcoin Knots and Bitcoin Core is like a flippening between Ethereum or Ripple against Bitcoin which has never happened.

I agree, Bitcoin Knots will never surpass Bitcoin Core, it’s highly unlikely. I’m still sticking with Core, and I’m not sure if I’ll update right away to 30.0 when it’s released. I’ll probably stick with 29 for a while.

I like Michael Saylor but I do not like what he says this time. In that interview, he did not say a meaningful reason he is supporting Bitcoin Knot. But he did not mention Bitcoin Knot, he only indirectly comparing Bitcoin Core to smaller ones like Bitcoin Knot, using big government and small government as an example. That small government become big and make more laws. He was referring to Bitcoin Core developers making more laws that may harm bitcoin.

He also said that segwit is like inflation. Do not get him wrong, he used inflation to just say something that is affecting bitcoin negatively because he thinks segwit only deprive miners from earning more money from bitcoin mining. He did not know or maybe he has forgotten that it was miners that signal for the upgrade to the network and that is beyond the power of Bitcoin Knot developers and other developers. If miners turned against the upgrade, it would not have happened.

About what is happening recently, I do not know what Bitcoin Core developers are doing wrong but some people will just prefer to against any further upgrades. I think Bitcoin Core developers is thinking more about the future of miners and which is not bad.

He also use ethereum developers as an example. Bitcoin is entirely different from ethereum that is far more centralized and massively controlled by just 2 or 3 developers like Buterin Vitelik.

Shiiit. J-Lopp really went all out with this one. He tracked Luke’s history all the way back to 2005 when he was hanging out in religious forums. Luke came this close to become a flat earther but blowed his chances when he claimed sun orbits the earth. :(

Unless he makes a come back with a mega reply that destroys J-Lopp, he is done. Since Michael Saylor recently declared his support for Luke, it looks like they both goin down.

Never really trusted Saylor and seems to have lost his way on what bitcoin's foundation was built on.
He is a capitalist and over the past few years this has started to show more and more as the years go on.
The way he has shaped MicroStrategy and changing his company's name only shows the change of how he wants to change people's overall view of bitcoin.

People using an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin Protocol doesn't change the reference implementation status of bitcoin core.

People should seriously stop creating a conflict where there are none in my opinion...

I am sure a lot of people would be in support of improving or developing more of what we have of bitcoin but if it has risks or sacrifices to be made then everyone will have a hard time accepting that obviously. Bitcoin core has served a lot of people well for the past years and its integrity must be maintained even with new upcoming developments. It needs more time.

It is possible that on a technical level, people who believe Saylor's statements regarding Bitcoin in general may not fully agree or follow Saylor's encouragement of the use of Bitcoin Knots.

He was wrong before (Michael Saylor in 2013: ''Bitcoin days are numbered").
He only cares about price (i.e. fiat), onboarding big fish and his company's shares' price (fiat again).
He's not technical.

All in all, I would not follow blindly what he says.
On the other hand, it's a free world, use the client you want. I would love to see you are truly interested in the implications of your choice (e.g. helping make censorship a standard in bitcoin), but again, it's a free world.

Did anyone read this article from Jameson Lopp?

Without reading it, I believe Bitcoin Knots will never be able to replace or take over a first position of Bitcoin Core.
After reading it, my belief in Bitcoin Core becomes stronger.

It's Knot a Serious Project (https://blog.lopp.net/knot-a-serious-project/)
It's a long article so I don't quote any content here, please visit the Jameson Lopp's blog site and read it.

I believe many forum members still remember this Bitcoin developer @lukedashjr's wallet was hacked. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432665.0) with a possible reason is his carelesness by installation of an application on his computer.

Not until your post. I've avoided it because imho the two sides bashing each other is the worse thing I've seen in Bitcoin in many years.
I've read a little into it now, but more like "scanning between the lines" than actually reading since some things I knew, some are not unexpected and some are just attacks imho (even if they hold good rationale, I still see them as attacks).
After this read/scan, the situation saddened me even more.

I was still not convinced by any of the parties until 1-2 days ago, but what convinced me were good, logical and smart explanations here @ bitcointalk (of which some I just got to read a bit late), not the preaching, attacks, half-explained half truth on twitter. I still believe that even Core could have been doing it better technically (since as PR/politics I know they don't excel, I don't have high expectations in that).


Crypto twitter is lead by who shouts louder and "trust me bro" logic, so long article will not be read by the "shouters" anyway. (or it will not be read because it's written by "the others")
And your belief underestimates the "power of the herd". I do hope that you are right, but I am still not as sure/positive as you are.


Imho, while it's a valid concern, it's not the core of the debate (heh). Imho the points are:
* somebody is pushing an agenda for getting tx censoring in-built into the most used bitcoin node software (which imho is equivalent to "legalizing" it as main behavior in the network)
* somebody uses this OP_RETURN debate as helper for that agenda (tx can already be filled with even more crap before OP_RETURN)
* @lukedashjr doesn't seem to understand that he's just a tool in this (I don't think that he's ill intended, I think that the discussions on fork/get his stolen coins are too far fetched)
* Core devs have not expected this "political backfire" and handled it incredibly poorly, risking - yet again - to lose a big chunk of community support
* OP_RETURN related change is imho not a must, so I am not sure why Core devs are pushing it this strong - I've read that it may be tied to a future feature but I don't know more details and those details may be useful for supporting them in the debate.

I will continue running Core, I don’t care what Saylor says. There are no heroes in Bitcoin, the likes of Roger Ver, Hearn & others with big reputations in Bitcoin fell by the wayside in the fork wars of 2017. Saylor is not too big to fall the same way. I saw something recently detailing how easy it is to fake node numbers too, so we can’t trust that they have that high a % of existing nodes.

I did not know of any conflicts or attacks between Luke Dash Jr and Jameson Lopp, and honestly I only checked his website and read that article. I am not a programmer so I can not verify all technical things Lopp wrote in the article but after reading it, two main points I feel about Luke Dash Jr developer is his carelessness (that does not need to be known until reading this article, but since his Bitcoin wallet hack) and laziness.

These things are two big concerns I have about products coded by Luke Dash Jr, nothing more. Even without reading it, my belief belongs to Bitcoin Core, not Bitcoin Knots.

Me neither, but while questioning Luke's security measures or the ways he is handling the code is legit, calling him, even indirectly, "poisonous person", is imho an attack.

Of course, Luke's behavior is no better. And I expect that rational people have made an idea already from the ways Luke is calling liar pretty much everybody who is asking/telling uncomfortable questions/things.


Carelessness, yes. Laziness, I don't know; I have a feeling that it's more a "I know better" attitude on top of carelessness.
However, the result (and the conclusion) is the same.

Core 30 is turning bitcoin into a memecoin. It is worse than malware.

Jameson Lopp openly praising ethereum and memecoins tells you everything
you need to know about the malicious intentions of Core developers.

Run Knots or older version of Core.

But they are proposing in be able to change code and thus altering transactions on the blockchain.
They want to disable the use of ordinals and having questionable material being able to be embedded on there in the future.

Altering what is viewed on the blockchain sounds okay with anyone who uses bitcoin here?
I would think not. :-\

Yeah that's not going to fly, they shouldn't be able to do this and edit transactions on the block, isn't that the whole point of bitcoin having no trusted central authority. A bank could advocate for this and have more control to alter transactions for example and where would that lead us??

Really cool info, but Bitcoin is no longer limited to these amazing tweet hypes.
Maybe it was Saylor's repost of the Run Knots clip that caused a stir, I dunno. But the bulk of high profile tweets dont dethrone Core, lmao ..

He is definitely influential, I dont deny it, but do you know the reality of the protocol? it is Node + miner + developer consensus, celebrity vibes can never change the protocol, not even Donald Trump himself can..lol

The OP_RETURN change in Core v30 is a controversial update that may cause some people want to use Knots for a while in protest. I will run a client that aligns with Satoshi's values, defiantly not so called Michael's value,, you know till now so many Michael have came and gone...