11 questions ...

1. Do Bitcoin Core devs own any Bitcoin themselves (as individuals)?

2. Have they ever indicated that they care about its future as money?

3. What is their incentive for damaging Bitcoin, thus freedom of humanity?

4. Are they knowledgeable about the fight between the central controllers of fiat and decentralised freedom money?

5. There are thousands of alt coins, why use/choose Bitcoin for this purpose?

6. "If it ain't broke then don't fix it", so... what is "broken" that Bitcoin needs the Core 30 changes?

7. Who would have greatest self interest in blackmailing or paying the Core devs to make their op_return changes?

8. Are the Core devs greedy, blackmailed, insane, drugged, stupid, evil or all the above?

9. Will they drop the whole thing at the 11th hour because it was all just an almighty psyop to get weak hands to sell or to test bitcoin diamond hands?

10. Is it just more fiat price suppression FUD and Core 30 changes won't really happen?

11. Other than running Knots or convincing Core devs to reverse their decisions, do we have any other ways to protect Bitcoin against this attack (yes, I see it as an attack)?

I probably can come up with more questions, yet anyone who owns bitcoin needs to ask themselves those questions and get answers well before end September.

Otherwise, we just might have a new website to share with future generations, called "WTF happened in 2025". 🤨😥

He is so well spoken

Bitcoin is not a finished product. We may be on a detour to address spam, and part of the crisis did originate with (mishandling of) the Segwit and Taproot upgrades - but to improve the world, we still need more functionality. Stopping all improvements forever ("ossifying") is fatal.

Part of addressing the issues with Core needs to be ensuring we don't repeat the same mistakes: if an upgrade introduces unforeseen vulnerabilities, those need to get addressed in a timely manner. All protocol changes require support from the entire community, so we developers are going to have to earn that reputation back.

There are fairly simple, low-risk softforks like CTV, or even a consensus cleanup (though I have reservations about BIP 54), that should not introduce vulnerabilities, and could be a starting point to regain confidence after Core is out of the picture.

The next step up is probably native zero-knowledge support, BitVM optimisations, and similar. This is when it *might* make sense to start considering Bitcoin L1 "complete", and capable of handling further improvements and even scaling on true trustless sidechains. We have a long road to get there still, and every step will take consensus - possibly quick mitigation of unforeseen outcomes - but we shouldn't lose sight of the end goal: a decentralised currency that nobody can undermine, and hopefully one day onboard the entire global economy.

It's possible to accomplish, but we will have to work for it.

Hacker News is full of engineers. The tech discussions are usually useful and interesting, but the moment they go into non-technical stuff? You will see how arrogant they can get—often blind to their own ignorance. I have know sharp engineers in real life too, and a lot of them are also closed-minded and cocky. The exceptions? Usually folks building mission-critical systems or complex infrastructure, where mistakes can be catastrophic. Watch "core" torch their reputation by refusing to course-correct, just doubling down until it is all gone.