Michael Saylor posted 110 reasons against BIP-110. That number is a deliberate jab. BIP-110. 110. He's not just opposing a soft fork—he's mocking its existence.
Over the past seven days, Ordinals-related transaction fees accounted for 12% of miner revenue on Bitcoin. That's not pocket change. It's a significant income stream for miners already absorbing halving compression. Saylor, holding 214,000 BTC and running MicroStrategy’s balance sheet, has a clear interest in narrative stability. A proposal that threatens fee diversity risks breaking the consensus that Bitcoin is a pristine, non-programmable asset.
Data speaks louder than sentiment. But here, the data is ambiguous. Ordinals fees fluctuate. Bitcoin blocks are still full. The real battle is not technical—it's about what Bitcoin should be.
Context: What Is BIP-110?
BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal at the concept stage—no code, no testnet, no miner signaling. It aims to restrict non-financial data embedding in transactions, specifically targeting the witness field where Ordinals inscriptions store images, text, and other arbitrary data.
It is a backward-compatible soft fork. If activated, existing nodes would still accept blocks, but miners would have to enforce new rules. The proposal's authors argue that limiting data to purely financial transactions improves block space efficiency and reduces validation costs. Opponents, led by Saylor, claim it violates Bitcoin's neutrality principle—the network should not judge what data is valid.
Saylor's public opposition via 110 posts (each sent consecutively) is an unusual tactic. It signals coordinated intent to sway community sentiment before any formal review. This is not a debate about code; it's a battle for the soul of Bitcoin.
Core: Order Flow Analysis and Market Structure
Let me step back. I've been trading crypto assets since 2018, and I audited 0x protocol v2 during my graduate thesis in Berlin. That experience taught me one rule: code is law, but liquidity is truth. BIP-110's technical details are irrelevant until miners and capital react.
Miner Incentives
Bitcoin's security model depends on fees post-halving. Ordinals generated a new fee source: spikes in network congestion drove transaction fees up to $37 on peak days in 2023-2024. If BIP-110 eliminates non-financial data, that revenue disappears. Miners will have to rely solely on financial transfers, which currently account for 80-85% of block space. The other 15% is Ordinals and other data uses.
Is 15% material? Yes, because it's marginal revenue that prevents some miners from becoming unprofitable during low-volume periods. Over the past year, Ordinals fees added an estimated 3,500 BTC in revenue to miner pools. Removing that income stream could accelerate hash rate centralization as smaller miners drop out. The trade-off: cleaner blocks vs. a weaker security floor.
Liquidity Fragmentation
This is where my opinion comes in. I've written before that 'liquidity fragmentation' is a manufactured narrative by VCs pushing new products. But in Bitcoin's case, BIP-110 is a real fragmentation threat—not of liquidity, but of user base. If Ordinals are forced off-chain or to sidechains, the ecosystem bifurcates. One group holds Bitcoin as a non-custodial store of value. Another group uses Bitcoin L2s for data-heavy applications. The net effect is a psychological split: traders will price Bitcoin differently depending on whether they believe utility drives value or scarcity does.
During the 2020 DeFi summer, I learned this lesson firsthand. I deployed $50,000 into Uniswap V2 pools chasing high APY. Impermanent loss ate 40% of my yield before I realized that fee revenue hides cost. Here, BIP-110's cost is hidden: you lose network diversity, and with it, potential demand for blockspace. Yield-reality pragmatism says: what appears to be 'free' blockspace is actually a fee subsidy for future innovation.
Historical Precedent: The 2017 Debate
SegWit was controversial. It required a user-activated soft fork (UASF) to overcome miner resistance. The result was a chain split risk that depressed Bitcoin's price to $1,800 before rallying. BIP-110 is smaller in scope but equally divisive. The difference: SegWit solved an immediate scalability problem (transaction malleability). BIP-110 solves an ideological problem (data usage). Ideology is harder to compromise.
From a trader's perspective, volatility spikes when the narrative shifts from 'improvement' to 'purify'. We saw that with BIP-148. Options implied volatility increased 20% in the weeks before the activation date. If BIP-110 moves to the miner signaling phase, expect similar jumps.
Personal Experience: The 2022 Crash and Capital Preservation
When everything crashed in 2022, I had $200,000 in leveraged positions. I didn't panic-sell. I deleveraged aggressively, converting volatile assets to stablecoins at $1,200 ETH. Then I bought back at $800. That discipline preserved 60% of my portfolio. The lesson: survival comes before optimization. BIP-110 supporters are optimizing for a pure Bitcoin vision. Opponents are optimizing for network vitality. Neither is wrong, but one will lose if the chain splits. Survival-first capital discipline says: hedge now, debate later.
Contrarian: Why Saylor's Opposition Is Self-Serving
Retail interprets Saylor's 110 posts as a defense of neutrality. Smart money sees a billionaire protecting his $15 billion position. Saylor's MicroStrategy balance sheet is leveraged—he buys Bitcoin with debt and equity issuance. A protocol change that introduces uncertainty (even a small chance of chain split) threatens his ability to raise capital. Neutrality is a convenient argument to block changes he cannot control.
Moreover, Saylor is a known inflationist. He wants Bitcoin to be a macro asset for institutions. NFTs and Ordinals are seen as speculative, risky, and anathema to the 'digital gold' narrative. By opposing BIP-110, he reinforces the store-of-value thesis that justifies his own holdings. But he does so at the cost of innovation and miner revenue.
The blind spot: If Ordinals are killed, Bitcoin's utility becomes narrower. That reduces the set of buyers willing to pay a premium for the asset. Over time, a narrower use case leads to lower volatility and lower returns. I've seen this play out in equities—companies that focus only on their core product often get disrupted. Bitcoin may be too big to disrupt, but the risk is real.
Takeaway: Watch the Miners, Not the Tweets
BIP-110 is a proposal with zero code. Saylor's 110 posts are noise until miners signal. The only data that matters is hash power directed to pools that support or oppose the change. Currently, Foundry USA and Antpool have not taken public positions. When they do, that's the signal.
Panic sells, logic buys. If BIP-110 leads to miner opposition and a UASF threat, I'll buy the dip in Bitcoin because the resolution (likely compromise) will be bullish. If it passes quietly, I'll reduce exposure to Ordinals-related tokens and wait for the next narrative.
Data speaks louder than sentiment. Right now, the data says: over 200,000 Ordinals are inscribed monthly. That's not going away unless miners vote it out. I'm watching the blocks.
Liquidity dries up when trust breaks. But trust is still intact. So I trade accordingly.