Sept. 23, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:39
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Alright. | |
| So blockchain bloat would escalate exponentially threatening decentralization. | |
| So a core strength of their argument is the quantitative risk. | |
| So Bitcoin's blockchain is already about 600 gigabytes. | |
| And workarounds like ordinals have spiked block usage up to 20% of space in 2023 peaks. | |
| Dasher has warned that this is utterly destructive, as higher costs would price out hobbyist node operators, leading to centralization where only well resourced entities, corporations and governments run full nodes. | |
| Yes. | |
| That is that is important. | |
| The fellow song builds on this and highlights sustainability. | |
| The fee market alone can't self-regulate spam if data is made too easy to include, as low value data transactions could still outbid during low demand periods, gradually inflating the chain and making Bitcoin less accessible for everyday financial users. | |
| See, here's the thing too. | |
| Like so Bitcoin has become the fastest growing asset, the fastest value increasing asset in all of human history. | |
| And it's had a very small OP return. | |
| Why do people want to mess with something that's working? | |
| So Bitcoin mechanic claims that an increased OP return would roll out the red carpet for scamers, normalizing what was once exceptional abuse. | |
| Jason Hughes echoes this, saying that the shift prioritizes short-term convenience over sustainability, as increased data floods blocks. | |
| Sorry, that was very badly phrased. | |
| As increased data floods blocks, raises fees for financial users, and burdens nodes with gigabytes of non-essential content. | |
| Yes. | |
| Critics point to empirical evidence from ordinal 2023 surge, which temporarily drove fees up ten times and slowed nodes. | |
| Expanding the OP return could normalize such events, eroding Bitcoin's resilience as a decentralized network. | |
| So critics also argue that Bitcoin's white paper envisions it as electronic cash, not a general purpose data store, and accommodating non-financial data dilutes this focus, potentially harming its value as money. | |
| The fact that people store data is a bug, not a feature. | |
| Expanding OP return legitimizes data storage, effectively steering Bitcoin away from its financial focus. | |
| Yes, as I said, the fastest growing, quickest increase in value in any asset in human history. | |
| Let's mess with it. | |
| Uh no. | |
| Dasher proposes stricter filters to reinforce financial primacy, arguing that ignoring demand preserves Bitcoin's niche as a secure monetary network. | |
| Yes. | |
| We need Bitcoin for when fiat fails. | |
| We don't need Bitcoin because people want to share their holiday photos. | |
| Song adds that this shift could fragment the community as seen in past debates and undermine Bitcoin's scarcity narrative by filling blocks with low utility data. | |
| Jason Hughes has warned that the update could transform Bitcoin into a useless altcoin, as it encourages storing images, documents, or NFTs on chain, commoditizing block space for non value transfer activities and eroding its scarcity as money. | |
| Yes. | |
| Bitcoin mechanic adds that while data spam like ordinals already harms the network, actively endorsing larger OP return, makes such abuse commonplace, turning Bitcoin into a junk drawer for gross media or malware. | |
| And you know, I gotta uh OP return is pronounced OP like opportunity. | |
| Thank UP return. |
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