Bitcoin's biggest advocate, Michael Saylor, says new plan to clean up the blockchain is 'a bad idea'

Michael Saylor, executive chairman and co-founder of Strategy—the largest publicly listed Bitcoin treasury firm holding 843,775 BTC valued at $54.31 billion as of July 19, 2026—has publicly opposed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110). This proposal seeks to temporarily restrict arbitrary data storage on the Bitcoin blockchain through a one-year soft fork, introducing seven consensus limitations including size caps on data payloads and rejecting certain script executions. Additionally, BIP-110 proposes lowering the miner approval threshold for upgrades from 95% to 55%, a change Saylor warns could lead to network splits and increased market uncertainty.

Saylor argues that BIP-110 threatens Bitcoin’s core principles of neutrality and open permissionless use by enforcing subjective judgments on what constitutes “spam.” He emphasizes that Bitcoin, as a network, cannot interpret intent behind the data recorded on-chain—be it images, proofs, contracts, or other applications. According to Saylor, implementing protocol-level restrictions based on such judgments would undermine Bitcoin’s longstanding conservatism and shift it away from pure monetary function towards censorship.

The proposal’s supporters aim to preserve Bitcoin’s original focus as peer-to-peer digital cash by limiting data storage that they view as extraneous or misuse. However, Saylor and other critics contend that these restrictions risk stifling future innovations in privacy, custody, or corporate use. Furthermore, Saylor highlights that suppressing certain transactions could reduce overall fee revenue, which—compounded with diminishing block subsidies—might weaken miner incentives and thereby compromise network security.

Instead of changing consensus rules as BIP-110 suggests, Saylor recommends handling data “spam” through existing mechanisms like market-based fee incentives and relay policies, allowing individual users and miners to filter transactions without imposing protocol-wide bans. He concludes with a call for the Bitcoin community to focus on preserving Bitcoin’s neutrality rather than introducing burdensome “purity” guardians, warning that the current proposal could harm Bitcoin’s long-term vision as an open, permissionless financial system.