Saylor Declares Bitcoin Code a Constitution, Calls Protocol Tweaks a Crime Against Economic Rights 🇧

Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor escalated his opposition to Bitcoin protocol changes on Tuesday, publishing a nine-post thread on X that recasts the software debate as a constitutional crisis. "Bitcoin has won. Now it must survive victory," Saylor wrote. "Its gravest threat is not an enemy at the gates, but corruption from within: factions that invent pretexts, rewrite the rules, and seize economic rights until freedom becomes permission and law becomes loot." The comments mark a shift from Saylor's earlier fight against a single proposal to a broader argument that any change to $BTC's consensus rules amounts to confiscation.

Saylor's thread lumps together three categories of proposed changes. The first is BIP-110, the "Reduced Data Temporary Softfork" he has already attacked in a 110-point essay titled "110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea." The proposal would restrict non-financial data such as Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain for roughly one year. The second category covers covenants, smart contract-style restrictions that would let users pre-program how their Bitcoin can be spent in the future. The third is larger-block proposals, which call for increasing how much data fits in each block to process more transactions. "Some proposals, like BIP-110, censor valid fee-paying transactions. Others add covenant machinery. Others demand larger blocks," Saylor wrote. "Different instruments, same constitutional offense: a faction rewrites Bitcoin's rules and imposes its agenda, costs, and risks on everyone."

The framing recasts Bitcoin's consensus rules, the shared set of conditions nodes and miners use to validate transactions, as the network's founding law. "Bitcoin's consensus rules are its constitution," Saylor wrote. "To rewrite them for the convenience of any faction is to attack the economic rights of every participant today and every generation to come." He closed the thread with a call for restraint. "Protocol changes must be rare, conservative, and driven by necessity, not ambition. Defend Bitcoin's constitution. Defend the future."

BIP-110's principal advocate is its pseudonymous author Dathon Ohm, with longtime Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr listed as a key participant in writing the original draft. The proposal is supported primarily by a relatively small "anti-spam" constituency around Bitcoin Knots and node operators who believe Bitcoin should remain focused on peer-to-peer electronic cash. Based on the current status of BIP-110, Saylor's position appears to have prevailed in the near term.

Saylor's escalation reframes a technical dispute over block space and data filtering as a contest over who has authority to rewrite Bitcoin's ground rules. Whether the constitutional framing gains traction beyond his existing base of supporters will shape the reception of BIP-110, covenant schemes and any future increases to $BTC's block size.