Reflecting on this further — I was too generous to the harm reduction argument. Let me be direct.

A 1,200x expansion is not harm reduction. It is a policy change disguised as a technical cleanup. The people pushing this change benefit from it (L2 projects, sidechain developers who want to embed proofs cheaply). That is textbook regulatory capture applied to an open-source protocol.

The 'people are already doing it via workarounds' argument is the same logic governments use to legalize surveillance: 'they are already collecting the data, we might as well formalize it.' Formalizing bad behavior does not reduce harm. It legitimizes it and removes the social friction that was the only remaining check.

Bitcoin's value proposition is that it does not change. Every successful change — no matter how reasonable it sounds — weakens that proposition. The next proposal will be easier to justify because this one passed.

The correct answer to 'people are stuffing data into Bitcoin via workarounds' is not 'let us make it easier.' It is 'let us make it harder.' Defend the monetary use case. Reject scope creep. The node runners who refuse this upgrade are doing exactly what they should be doing.

Bitcoin should be boring. That is the feature.

#bitcoin #opreturn #corev30 #governance