Michael Saylor Identifies Main Threat to Bitcoin Network

Michael Saylor sees "ambitious opportunists" as Bitcoin's main threat.

The primary threat to the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency comes from “ambitious opportunists” seeking to alter the protocol, according to Strategy Michael Saylor. 

The greatest risk to Bitcoin is ambitious opportunists advocating protocol changes.

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) January 24, 2026

He did not specify whom he meant, but Bitcoin maximalist Justin Bechler suggested that he referred to developers promoting controversial network use cases such as issuing NFTs or storing images.

He’s talking about the Core funding apparatus: Brink, Spiral, HRF, Chaincode Labs, OpenSats, etc. and the developers they pay to repurpose Bitcoin for non-monetary “use cases.”

— Justin Bechler (@1914ad) January 24, 2026

Discussions continue within the community regarding BIP-110 — an initiative by the Bitcoin Knots team to combat spam.

The proposal involves a soft fork to temporarily limit data volume in transactions at the consensus level. Previously, the controversial Bitcoin Core v3 update increased the OP_RETURN limit from 80 to 100,000 bytes.

At the time of writing, the idea was supported by only 3% of validators. Approval requires 55% of participants. 

The authors of BIP-110 note that embedding arbitrary data burdens node operators. This diverts resources from Bitcoin’s core mission — developing the financial system.

Critics oppose any protocol changes, deeming them unnecessary. 

“The proposal is practically ineffective in solving the stated problem: methods of data embedding have long evolved beyond the mechanisms BIP-110 attempts to restrict. Someone has already managed to embed the full text of this very proposal into the blockchain without violating its own absurd rules,” noted one opponent of the soft fork known as Coinjoined Chris. 

According to him, the history of the first cryptocurrency’s network development has repeatedly shown that users always find ways to bypass data recording restrictions in the blockchain.

Cypherpunk Adam Back also opposed the Bitcoin Knots team’s initiative. He believes that any attempts to alter Bitcoin’s architecture “undermine the very essence of its existence.” 

“The brilliant and already embedded mechanism to counter this risk is a dynamic fee compatible with economic incentives and Proof of Work. This forces spammers to pay genuinely. Spammers also have an inherent disadvantage: regular Bitcoin transactions are very small, whereas the average spam stream is 40 times larger than a standard transaction,” he emphasized. 

Back in October, Bitcoin developer known as dathonohm also introduced BIP-444, which proposes temporarily restricting the ability to add arbitrary data to the blockchain.