Saylor Warns ‘Ambitious Opportunists’ Are Bitcoin’s Biggest Risk, Sparking Ossification Debate

Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor said the biggest threat to Bitcoin (BTC) is “ambitious opportunists” trying to “push protocol changes”, basically arguing that people who want to alter the base rules of the network are a larger risk than technical issues.

Needless to say, it sparked a fight within the Bitcoin community about what counts as a real threat. Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz didn’t hold back on Saylor’s view, arguing that treating change itself as the enemy is dangerous because software has bugs and needs upgrades, calling it a “cancer of a mindset”.

Absolute cancer of a mindset “ambitious people wanting to evolve this technology are our biggest risk” nothing is infallible. certainly not bitcoin, which has had tons of bugs until now, like all other software — perhaps let’s let those bugs stay instead of patching them then.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius.

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Community Divided Over What Bitcoin Should Look Like

Moreover, Bitcoin maximalist Justin Bechler interpreted Saylor’s comment as a shot at developers advocating non-monetary features on Bitcoin, such as NFTs or the storage of images and other data on-chain, while others assumed he was referring to the quantum threat.

As many in the Bitcoin community know, quantum risk is another topic that splits the audience. Prominent voices like Nic Carter have pushed for moving toward post-quantum standards sooner rather than later, and cryptographer Adam Back pushed back, saying Bitcoin developers are already researching defenses without rushing changes into the protocol.

Likewise, investor and writer Fred Krueger pointed to quantum computing as the top long-term danger. 

The argument also tied into current disputes over “spam” and how much non-monetary data should be allowed in blocks. Some users referenced BIP-110, described as a temporary soft fork proposal aimed at filtering non-monetary data from the ledger.

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