BITCOIN SEASON 2: Bitcoin Isn’t Changing And That’s A Bad Thing
James O'Beirne discusses Bitcoin development challenges, the CTV soft fork controversy, and why protocol upgrades have stalled. He explains the community response to his developer letter and Bitcoin's ossification risks.
ABOUT
Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne joins us to talk about the current state of Bitcoin development, the controversial CTV (OP_CheckTemplateVerify) soft fork proposal, and why he organized a letter signed by 66+ prominent Bitcoin developers requesting Bitcoin Core focus on protocol upgrades. We dive deep into Bitcoin's development culture, the post-SegWit era challenges, and the growing concern about Bitcoin's ossification.
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**Notes:**
• 66 developers signed CTV support letter
• 96% of Bitcoin value uses non-taproot outputs
• 19% of global hashrate supports CTV proposal
• 5+ years of CTV development and testing
• 5 Bitcoin bounty offered for CTV bugs found
• 16.5 years since Bitcoin's initial release
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:55 Jame's work
08:33 History of BTC development
12:37 Culture & the block size war
16:34 Code change process
24:29 The CTV letter origin
33:53 Reception of the letter
38:33 Why is there resistance?
40:53 Alternative proposal
48:20 Upgrade Hooks
50:36 Future outlooks for changes
54:49 Reasons for optimism
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