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I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid. But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't? In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway. NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it. And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?

Replies (74)

Me as a node runner (core version 27) invested in the hardware and my time to build and run it. In the white paper I can not see any indication that other data than transactions. Whenever I can, I'll keep to this. I also don't like the idea that possible shitty data is stored on my ssd which makes me personally vulnerable. I want to keep my house and garden clean as possible. And I repeat, treat the node runners well.
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↩ replying to npub1gexa...gv8x
It gets in the timechain anyway because they fit within consensus. Node-level filtering only prevents types of spam that people aren't willing to pay for; not what they are willing to pay for (since they can go directly to miners). So it's down to either proposing a consensus change that actually limits that stuff from getting in there, or it's mainly just performative.
↩ replying to Lyn Alden
Yes, I know all about this. But I feel more and more reluctant of updating my core version, which is also not a good approach. It is like being a security guy at the door. You do what you have to do in the according situation, but there are rules and frame work you have to apply and follow. The last option in this job is to quit, which would mean I would shut down my node.
Just curious if you are running your own node or not. Have you actually tried doing IBD on your node in last 2 years before start commenting about JPEGs? You would have understood importance of filters in 2023 (when all of these shitcoinery on Bitcoin initially started) if you were running your own node. Maybe you should probably stick to giving your opinions about macros. I mean you can give an opinion on JPEGS but the more you comment about this stuff the more plebs will realize that you probably don't know anything node decentralization.
↩ replying to Bitcoin_To_The_Oblivion
and the gruesome thing to know: even a pruned node does an IBD in full (you may test this with a Start9), takes now two weeks, depending on ... And you can even see (if following in details), where the alien to bitcoin materials drop in. Yes, we could assume, that the technical improvements (kind of Moore's law ) outdo these attempts, but still, its a burden the chain should not have to take on. If easy to forestall, let's do it!
With every argument you keep proving to me that you fundamentally misunderstand what money is, despite having written an entire book on the subject. Bitcoin is not “just a ledger,” as you’ve claimed in the past. Bitcoin is a monetary good, a decentralized payment network, and a censorship-resistant currency all in one. It’s a full-stack monetary system, not a spreadsheet. From economics perspective, money emerges from the market as the most saleable good. Bitcoin fits this because it optimizes for scarcity, verifiability, and portability. Turning the blockchain into a dumpster for arbitrary data directly contradicts these foundational principles. It bloats the system, undermines its monetary utility, and creates financial friction for actual users. Bitcoin *is* the most spam-prone system in the world. That’s the price of having no centralized party to manage or steer usage. And that’s exactly why its culture has always been hostile toward non-monetary use of the blockchain. Every byte of nonsense stuffed into blocks competes with real monetary transactions, increasing fees *unnecessarily*, straining bandwidth, and degrading node accessibility. That is not neutrality, it is misallocation and *abuse*. This isn’t a technical debate, it’s an economic one. Austrian economics warns about malinvestment (capital being misallocated due to distorted incentives). JPEGs, tokens and other data on Bitcoin are a textbook examples of that. They waste block space, misalign incentives, and sabotage the very foundation that gives Bitcoin value: its usability as money and its decentralization. If you make it expensive or difficult to run a node, you centralize validation. Most miners don’t run full nodes or create their own block templates. They outsource that to a handful of mining pools, most of whom are already flirting with KYC and OFAC. You let guys like that dictate consensus and the 21M becomes meaningless. That’s how Bitcoin dies. Not with a bang, but with friction, complexity, creeping node centralization and ruined culture. Your current stance is pure cope. It betrays a deep ignorance of the very economic principles you claim to understand. Bitcoin is money. Everything that weakens its monetary properties weakens the entire value proposition. As a prominent influencer loved by many Bitcoiners you should do better.
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↩ replying to Tauri
I agree with you about some of this, but I just want to point out that the filters are what's causing bandwidth strain because nodes and other miners that aren't aware of certain transactions and have to download them to validate a recently mined block. Bandwidth usage is already limited by block size and blocks are almost always full anyway, so it's not like spam would actually increase the amount of data that needs to be shared every time a block is mined. Having everyone aware of all the transactions available to be mined would reduce latency and keep the network running smoother. As for the rest, I agree that spam is marginally detrimental to the monetary use case, but I also think it will be priced out pretty easily at higher fee rates. My current opinion is that I would like to see fees reach a higher baseline to preemptively price out spam before the filters are dropped, but I do think they should be dropped eventually.
↩ replying to Crizzo
Wrong. Suggest reading the whole post, but I pulled out the relevant part to your opinion. nevent1qqs9glszh26df9cdhlm6w94rswczfwsnw9lx3zkv9v9sqc8z4yxaf6spupmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhj2v3swaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxumm5daeks6fwwa5kute9xgc8wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9ujnyvrhwden5te0wfjkccte9eekjctdwd68ytnrdakj7ffjxpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuvrcvd5xzapwvdhk6te9xgc8wumn8ghj7mnxwfjkccte9eshqup0y5erqamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7tjwvhxumm5daeks6fwwa5kute9xgc8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwv4u8getj0ghxxmmd9ujnyvrhwden5te0vejkuunfwgkhxtnwda6x7umgdyh8w6twp2effm image
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↩ replying to Tauri
I read both posts twice and I’m honestly not getting where you think she argued Bitcoin was a generic database, even though that’s the position you seem to be debating. Her claim on the book is that *money* is a ledger system. And it is, but that also isn’t a claim that it’s a generic database. Her logic is going the other direction, not claiming what can or ought to be written on or even what that “ledger” look like, only that successful money is able to behave as a ledger system, both physical and digital forms. I feel like half these comments aren’t responding to the specific content of the original note.
Fiat is infinite, blockspace is limited. What an idiotic take! 🐸
Lyn Alden's avatar Lyn Alden
I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid. But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't? In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway. NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it. And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?
View quoted note →
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By my calculations it’s not even near 1% Fedwire settles ~1,200 trillion every year, but Bitcoin only settled about ~3 trillion last year excluding same wallet and known exchange internal movements (according to a basic Glassnode metric I was looking at) Making Bitcoin settlement only about 0.25% of Fedwire But otherwise yes nevent1qqsz394wpaq9jmu6ksyw74rfkgkvrz3tdtamaew3ya0nfg5ecnevgycq459ke
Thank you for your point of view, i agree that #bitcoin transaction *should* be enough high to avoid jpeg on blockchain. But we are not speaking only about jpeg but every other use that could delay transactions. Nakamoto has a vision for #bitcoin and he explained and made his vision a reality. We are not "fighting" here to know if a block can handle or not some extra data like jpeg. We are "fighting" here to know if the blockchain is enough secure for futures attacks. You know attacks like "put your birthdate and name on the blochain for 15$" for the newbee. And the operator that want to do that just need few space for 15$ to do it (but with a lot of customer it could take a lot of space in a block). Perhaps it is a stupid example. Perhaps it will not happen this way. But be sure that if there is no filter and just a "hope" that spam will be stopped by fees, it is a big lack of vision. #bitcoin is used to transfer value from a wallet to another, it has be built for this use and it is more and more use for this with time. If you don't have any vision about how to preserve that, it will be a huge danger for the legit transactions in future. When the perfect high value spam will delay legit transactions because they will find a way to make their spam enough valuable to be push in the blockchain. And it is not acceptable that fees would be over-high for legit transactions. I am not saying you can't put "extra data" on the blockchain, but it MUST be a way to preserve legit transaction and not only rely on fees. It is a lack of vision to just "hope" it will be enough. Thanks for your share. #btc4ever
Is it the case that the current world order with regard to the dollar being the world reserve currency is breaking down? The tariffs and the sanctions and the increasing fragility of the treasury market makes me wonder if cross border Capital flows are signaling that it is The Sterling went away [it took several decades] and the dollar took over and then the dollar changed a couple times from gold to oil to ... whatever it is now So now it's [apparently, maybe] time for a new financial system to take over the planet again like it does every 50 years or so What are the odds that it will be bitcoin based?
↩ replying to npub149je...5weh
Well damn. I considered storing information on the blockchain before, (email specifically) but I never fully considered the implications. I want to see what happens if people start uploading CP to the Bitcoin blockchain. Would it damage the price of Bitcoin? Would chain analysis tools be restricted? Or would it get people to rethink the reasonableness of child porn laws? Personally I trust the mantra "nothing ever happens." People would just pretend that the child porn doesn't exist, or come up with a retarded rationalization for why it doesn't count.
↩ replying to armstrys
How much effort does it take to run Knots instead of Core and choose my settings? I’ve already made the switch, and I can tell you it doesn’t take much. Making this change ISN’T useless. No, my one node won’t do much to fix this issue (beyond my node), but I voted with my feet by leaving Core over an issue that’s important. Each node operator can cast their own vote regarding this issue based on which software they choose to run. The ability to choose is an important right…and the big migration to Knots in recent weeks is a really important start!
↩ replying to Hoshi
Uploading an image to the Bitcoin blockchain would be expensive enough. Buying enough CSAM to train an AI to generate it would be prohibitively expensive. I don't mean to virtue signal, but my child porn collection isn't anywhere close to the size of the FBI's collection, and I sincerely doubt they'd be fine with their CP being used to incriminate globalists.
↩ replying to Hoshi
"Go Fund Me! I neen money so I can pay for child rape!" To be honest, I did not consider that possibility. But I don't believe in asking for money for something unless I believe it's worth the price. I myself would never contribute to a Gofundme like that since I don't believe that the high cost of child porn is worth the benefit of screwing with globalists.
↩ replying to Hoshi
I refuse. Price caps are immoral. Besides, there are already laws against pirating child porn and there are many who still break those laws. Even if the state made price caps, most sellers would probably just ignore the price caps. Alas, all that tax revenue falls through the state's fingers. Ah well, the biggest cost of child porn is to children's modesty anyway, so it's not really something we can extract or control anyway. Not to virtue signal or anything. Also, if I'm going to run for public office just to make AI generated CP depicting a public official, why not just run for office and then make child porn the old fasioned way? Faith in public officials would be in shambles...
↩ replying to Hoshi
Man, that just sounds like some supid pedophile smut story. There's just way too much going on in it. I already told you from the start that I didn't see much point in seriously considering this. Elaborate plans and schemes can never accomplish as much at just talking with someone can, in which case all of these extra details are entirely gratuitous.
Then why bitcoin fix satoshi dice? Do you think bitcoin could survive with satoshi dice?
Lyn Alden's avatar Lyn Alden
I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid. But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't? In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway. NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it. And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?
View quoted note →
>And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice >JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that >valuable. The demand for *arbitrary* data is gigantically larger than monetary data. Bitcoin the money will never be able to compete with that, and expecting it to do so is just stupid. Especially if we take the time dependency into account. The monetary use case proves its value in the Long Run (as fiat systems gradually start to fail one by one in the future). But by the time we reach the point we actually need it, it could well be already dead - because it was just dominated by garbage in the meantime and ppl stop running nodes for this type of junk.
↩ replying to Lyn Alden
My point is: it would take decades for Bitcoin to reach its (full) monetary potentisl, since fiat currencies fail gradually across the world. At the same time it would take only a few years of constant spam for Bitcoin to be abandoned by disillusioned node runners. It could fail wayyy before it even reaches your $300trillion market cap. The gambler's ruin fallacy
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More stuff on block chain means more data means more storage required for nodes means only very rich people with access to large data pools like AWS are capable of running nodes. We are watching bitcoin centralization unfold in front of us in real time.
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↩ replying to Lyn Alden
The bigger issue than size is utxo bloat. Which admittedly OP_RETURN doesn't really do anything to fix in either direction, because after a modest size is reached, the segwit discount makes it cheaper to bloat the utxo set than to use OP_RETURN anyway. The current uproar is definitely not an existential argument. I'm glad it's shining more light on Knots though, which I was already using anyway, and also on the governance issues around having a monopoly on node development. We need alternatives that are maintained in a robust manner, precisely to offset any centralization of power in the hands of whoever controls a given github account. And sure, you can always just not upgrade your software...for awhile. Eventually security fixes come out, and then you get to decide whether to stay vulnerable or to do whatever that cabal has told you to do. Not an ideal situation.
One of the smartest ideas behind Bitcoin is keeping the network small and efficient. JPEGs and heavy data clog the timechain and raise storage needs — that’s not what Bitcoin was built for. If we wanted that, we could just tokenize files and let Google or another giant host them. The real value of Bitcoin is decentralization — validating transactions without trusting a centralized company. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose entirely.
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↩ replying to Zach⚡️
Node runners: making changes that will inevitably lead to contiguous blobs of CSAM stored in blocks will bring unnecessary scrutiny from governments and likely make it a moral and legal liability since I can reasonably be described as someone hosting and distributing CSAM. With this in mind, it might be prudent not to make this contentious change on the next revision of Core. Lyn: I don’t think JPEGs will kill bitcoin, in a way it is a reflection of our society. 🫠 Like wut??