Michael Saylor calls proposed blockchain cleanup a bad idea, publishing 110 reasons against BIP-110

Michael Saylor, the man whose company holds more Bitcoin than some small nations hold in gold reserves, has a message for anyone trying to tidy up the blockchain: don’t.

The Strategy executive chairman published a lengthy essay and social media thread on July 18-19 laying out what he calls “110 reasons” against BIP-110, a proposed temporary soft fork designed to restrict the embedding of large non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions.

What BIP-110 actually proposes

BIP-110, formally titled the “Reduced Data Temporary Softfork,” would introduce several technical constraints aimed at curbing what its supporters consider blockchain spam. The proposal would cap outputs at 34 bytes and restore an 83-byte limit on OP_RETURN outputs, effectively invalidating data strings over 256 bytes that protocols like Ordinals have been using to embed images, text, and other non-monetary content directly onto Bitcoin.

The soft fork is designed to be temporary, lasting roughly one year before the community would evaluate whether to continue it. Activation would require approximately 55% miner signaling, a threshold that sounds modest but has proven difficult to reach.

Miner support has been notably low. Miners collect fees from all transactions, including the data-heavy ones BIP-110 would restrict.

Saylor’s case against consensus tinkering

Saylor’s argument centers on Bitcoin’s neutrality. The network processes transactions without judging their content, and Saylor argues that introducing content-based restrictions, even temporary ones, sets a dangerous precedent. Once you establish that consensus rules can be altered to filter certain transaction types, the door opens to future modifications that could be far more consequential.

He also flagged that BIP-110 could stall innovation pathways like BitVM-style contracting, which relies on flexible data embedding to enable more complex operations on Bitcoin.

Strategy holds hundreds of thousands of BTC and has built its entire corporate identity around Bitcoin as digital capital.

The 2026 spam wars and echoes of history

The BIP-110 debate is the latest front in what the community has started calling the “spam wars” of 2026, a period of intensifying conflict over whether Bitcoin should remain a narrow monetary network or accommodate broader data uses.

The parallels to the Blocksize Wars of 2015-2017 are hard to miss. Back then, the community fractured over whether to increase Bitcoin’s block size to handle more transactions. That fight ultimately led to the Bitcoin Cash fork. The current dispute has a similar flavor: a technical proposal with deep philosophical implications, vocal factions on both sides, and no clear path to consensus.

The low miner signaling for BIP-110 suggests the proposal faces an uphill battle toward activation. Various alternative proposals have emerged in the governance vacuum, further fragmenting community attention.

What this means for investors

Saylor’s vocal opposition carries outsized weight because of Strategy’s massive Bitcoin position. When the single largest corporate holder of Bitcoin publicly argues against a protocol change, it signals to institutional investors that the network’s conservative, don’t-touch-the-consensus-layer faction still has powerful advocates.

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