Your attempts to filter Bitcoin are futile

Conspiracies are being loosely thrown around on X (formerly Twitter), including accusations of bribery. Some even go so far as to warn the the next version of Bitcoin–Bitcoin Core v30– will "destroy Bitcoin" if run.

Previously, I had tried to somewhat neutrally cover the topic, although I will be forward and say I’ve never personally been neutral. I believe the attempts to filter economically demanded transactions on Bitcoin are at best misguided, but the overwhelming majority of those pushing the narrative are disingenuous and hostile actors.

1 sat/vbyte summer

Some claim filters work. But they do not when a certain type of Bitcoin transaction has economic demand and those transactions are already being mined.

This is the same principle that ensures that a nation state has an asymmetric challenge censoring transactions on Bitcoin: it is incredibly difficult to prevent a transaction from propagating.

What if we could change Bitcoin's rules to filter out certain transactions? Let's take a look at an example from this summer: the filtering of 1 sat/vbyte transactions.

Despite 100% of users filtering transactions with extremely low fee rates, those transactions were still being mined in over half of the blocks.

Fees are the filters, and it works

Bitcoin spam itself is a subjective evaluation: one man's spam is another man's economic transaction.

The best way to disincentivize transactions the majority of users consider to be spam, then, it is to assign a cost to transactions that are a function of the amount of data: make them pay for it! Empirically, fees are highly effective at disincentivizing spam.

The ugly side of Bitcoin development

It’s worth mentioning that the debate has gotten pretty ugly, with claims of tacit or explicit support for child exploitation, not-so-veiled death threats, and delusional conspiracy floating around Bitcoin discourse.

Multiple Bitcoin developers have expressed exhaustion on the topic, tiring of the constant personal attacks and character digs.

Some time in the future when the debate has lost steam, many of the leaders of this “anti-spam” movement may claim these were never actually mainstream narratives that they drove.

However, it needs to be documented that these are actually the things they are saying and encouraging today. Without proper accountability, the Bitcoin economy will have a difficult time in the future finding developers willing to place their reputations on the line.

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