I will debate any party officially representing BTC Core, and I stand ready to engage in an open, honest, and—I emphasize—completely honest debate. If they can prove that BTC Core remains true to the original concept of Bitcoin, as defined by its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, I will drop all litigation immediately. But honesty is the price of admission here—no obfuscation, no evasions, just the unvarnished truth.

@opencryptoorg Bitcoin is not some abstract idea to be twisted and molded to suit the whims of whoever happens to hold power at the moment. Bitcoin has a definition. It was designed as electronic cash, a system for small, casual transactions, and that is the vision set forth by Satoshi Nakamoto. This is not up for debate—it is written, it is codified, it is clear. The question is whether BTC Core can still claim to represent this vision.

I have never concerned myself with commenting on Ethereum or any of the altcoins that have emerged to any significant extent. Do not get me wrong, I see them as flawed.

My focus is, and has always been, exclusively on Bitcoin.

I welcome the competition that these alternatives bring. In fact, competition is essential—it drives innovation, it forces us to confront the reality of our own creations, and it exposes the true strength of ideas.

Ethereum may be a dog’s breakfast, but it is a valid competitor. It doesn't pretend to be Bitcoin. It stands on its own, flawed as it may be, but at least it acknowledges what it is. BTC, however, is a different matter. It masquerades as Bitcoin while twisting and distorting the very principles upon which Bitcoin was built.

It pretends to carry the torch of Satoshi’s vision while operating as a centralized, manipulated asset, sold under false pretenses.

That is where my issue lies—not with Ethereum or the altcoins, but with the deception that BTC has perpetuated.

In the BTC Core partnership, the concept of joint and several liability captures the nature of their interconnected relationships. Let’s be clear: miners who choose to run the altered protocol—yes, those very changes initiated by BTC Core developers—are not innocent bystanders; they are willingly stepping into the role of partners. By adopting these changes, they become more than just participants; they’re active collaborators in a network fundamentally shaped by those very alterations. Their decision isn’t a mere technical choice; it’s an alignment with the dictates of BTC Core, binding them into the collective responsibilities of this arrangement. This is a partnership, plain and simple. A miner remains a partner by choosing to support and run the altered protocol. They have thrown in their lot with the changes, backing the developers' direction with every block they mine. And with that comes shared responsibility—because in any partnership, liability extends to all who align, even if they did not personally propose the changes. The burden does not discriminate; it falls upon those who play their part in keeping the new protocol alive.

Michael Saylor talks about Bitcoin like he’s discovered fire, but he’s missing the point—like he’s sitting in front of a computer and all he sees is the blinking cursor, no understanding of the depths behind it.

He spins a (lie) story about game theory and nation-states, but the reality is far grittier, far more technical than his boardroom fantasies.

What he doesn’t see or want to understand is the guts of the thing, the wires, the circuits, the fragile connections that keep those hash-generating machines grinding away.

And that graph? It tells a story he doesn’t want to hear—most of the network’s power, those precious hashes, are trapped in just a handful of pools, all tethered by fragile lines of code and internet cables. Now, these aren't just computers in some basement; we’re talking high-end machines, custom rigs sucking down more electricity than a small town, all piled up in data centers like batteries in a flashlight. But here’s the kicker: each one of those machines is dependent, vulnerable—tied to internet service providers that aren’t immune to a well-placed disruption.

A state-level player, a country with a few million to burn, could strike those internet connections and knock those machines offline like dominoes. Take out those connections, and the miners go silent, leaving 99% of the hash rate to vanish like smoke.

BTC, like all early technologies, entered the world with grandiose promises—promises of a financial revolution, of liberation from traditional banking, of peer-to-peer transactions unshackled from the constraints of fiat that it took away from Bitcoin.

Yet, like all innovations, it faces an immutable truth: the limitations of scale. BTC now stands at a crossroads where the romantic ideals of its inception confront the cold, unyielding reality of economic law. The concept of perpetual returns, of endless growth, is a delusion.

BTC, as a finite system, cannot defy this fundamental truth.

As the block reward diminishes with each halving, the miners who form the backbone of its security will find themselves earning less for their efforts. BTC's proponents may cling to the hope that rising transaction fees will compensate for this decline.

But that hope ignores the critical flaw embedded in BTC’s design: its inability to handle micropayments at scale. With average transaction fees climbing to $50 or more, BTC alienates the very purpose of a digital cash system. It prices out the everyday user, those who seek to buy a coffee, send a small remittance, or conduct routine commerce.

In the early days of Bitcoin, a mantra echoed through the fledgling community—a question, mysterious yet filled with the promise of individual strength: "Who is John Galt?"

This slogan, borrowed from the pages of Atlas Shrugged, symbolised a world where visionaries and creators took on the burdens of progress and bore the weight of a future that only their minds could conceive. It was a recognition of the power of one—the individual mind that shapes the world through unyielding purpose and unrelenting pursuit of truth.

Bitcoin, in its original conception, was the embodiment of such an idea: a system that allowed value to move freely, where small, casual transactions became possible without the burden of trust, intermediaries, or the restraints of centralized control.

It was a digital cash system, made for everyday life, built to enable micropayments and timestamp transactions—a world where value could be exchanged as effortlessly as ideas. But as time passed, the ideals shifted. The language changed. "Who is John Galt?" was replaced by a far more collectivist cry: "We are all Satoshi." This slogan attempts to deny the uniqueness of the mind that first conceived Bitcoin.

It seeks to transform what was once a solitary act of creation into a communal myth.

It is a proclamation that the achievement of one man can be dissolved into the faceless mass, as if the ingenuity, the sweat, and the profound understanding of cryptographic principles that birthed Bitcoin could somehow be shared by those who merely adopt the name without embracing the understanding.

The folly of this argument is striking, a delusion wrapped in the fantasy that Bitcoin alone is a panacea for the failures of a nation. The notion that a technological tool, a digital abstraction like Bitcoin, can single-handedly "fix" a society's economic maladies is the height of evasion. It is the lazy man's dream, a wish for salvation without sacrifice, without effort, without confronting the reality of what actually constitutes the fabric of a society—its laws, its governance, its people. The folly of this argument is striking, a delusion wrapped in the fantasy that Bitcoin alone is a panacea for the failures of a nation.

The notion that a technological tool, a digital abstraction like Bitcoin, can single-handedly "fix" a society's economic maladies is the height of evasion.

It is the lazy man's dream, a wish for salvation without sacrifice, without effort, without confronting the reality of what actually constitutes the fabric of a society—its laws, its governance, its people.

In the pursuit of a true digital cash, there is no room for the illusions of a speculative HODL cult. If one seeks a currency untethered to the whims of central banks, a system where every transaction is weighed down by exorbitant fees is not just impractical—it’s a betrayal of the very concept of money. Money, real money, is the tangible expression of value, the means by which men trade their effort. It must be fluid, adaptable, divisible down to the smallest unit, much like those old five-cent coins that changed hands in the humblest of exchanges.

For a currency to claim the title of digital cash, it must allow individuals the freedom to pay in fractions, to choose without restriction the worth of their transactions, from a penny to a fraction of a cent. This is not a flaw, but the essence of its virtue.

The individuals who manage the GitHub repositories for BTC and contribute to the BTC codebase play a crucial role in shaping the direction of BTC’s development. By controlling access to the code repository, approving or rejecting changes, and setting the technical standards, these contributors exercise significant influence over how BTC operates.

Their actions go beyond mere coding; they involve making strategic decisions about what features and modifications should be implemented in BTC, such as SegWit or Taproot. These decisions impact how BTC functions and, consequently, how it is marketed and promoted as "Bitcoin." By taking part in these activities, the individuals involved become central to the identity and positioning of BTC in the broader market. The promotion of BTC by these contributors further strengthens their involvement. Public statements, participation in conferences, and active discussions in online forums often form part of a coordinated effort to promote BTC as the legitimate continuation of the Bitcoin vision.

When such promotion is aligned with the development choices made through the GitHub repositories, it suggests a unified effort to present BTC in a particular way. Under English partnership law, these activities could be interpreted as actions carried out with a common business purpose, particularly if the individuals involved benefit directly or indirectly from the success of BTC in the market.

In 2018, as the Lightning Network began to gain prominence, BTC was promoted with a dual narrative. On one side, BTC proponents emphasized that the Lightning Network would provide the solution to scalability challenges, allowing for faster and cheaper transactions by enabling small, everyday payments to be conducted off-chain while settling larger transactions on the BTC blockchain. This narrative presented the Lightning Network as an integral part of the BTC ecosystem, suggesting that it could maintain BTC’s role as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system by moving smaller transactions off the main blockchain, thus easing congestion. Supporters of BTC argued that this layered approach would allow BTC to retain its decentralized nature while addressing issues like high transaction fees and slow confirmation times, which had become problematic on the main chain. They claimed that BTC’s core network would continue to serve as a secure, immutable ledger for high-value transactions, while the Lightning Network would facilitate everyday use by enabling microtransactions that wouldn't burden the main blockchain.

The actions taken by BTC Core between 2017 and 2019, particularly the introduction of Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the promotion of the Lightning Network, were initially framed as technical solutions to improve scalability and address transaction malleability within Bitcoin.

However, the true nature of these actions—specifically their impact on the fundamental nature of Bitcoin's transaction model—was not immediately transparent to those outside the core development team and their close associates.

SegWit, implemented in 2017, altered the way transaction data was stored, separating the witness data from the transaction itself. This change, while presented as a way to enhance block space and reduce transaction fees, enabled the development of off-chain solutions like the Lightning Network. For people outside of the BTC Core circle, the full implications of these technical modifications remained unclear, as the technical debates surrounding SegWit and the Lightning Network were largely framed as scalability solutions. Many participants in the broader Bitcoin ecosystem were led to believe that these changes were aimed at preserving the core principles of Bitcoin while enabling higher transaction throughput.

However, the actions taken by BTC Core effectively shifted Bitcoin’s transaction model from one of on-chain transparency to a system that facilitated off-chain transactions, prioritizing anonymity and privacy over traceability.

Members of the Bitcoin (BSV) community have potential legal avenues to address the actions of those in BTC, particularly around issues of misrepresentation, passing off, and intellectual property rights infringement. If BTC developers, exchanges, and other entities continue to market their version of Bitcoin in a manner that falsely presents BTC as the original Bitcoin, those invested in BSV could take legal action, focusing on protecting the reputation and goodwill associated with the true Bitcoin system as outlined by Satoshi Nakamoto in the White Paper. Such actions could include seeking injunctions to stop BTC from being marketed as the original Bitcoin, forcing them to distinguish their product clearly from BSV. The argument here would be that BTC’s significant protocol changes, such as Segregated Witness (SegWit), Taproot, and the use of technologies like the Lightning Network, deviate from the original design of Bitcoin. This would be a basis to challenge the misleading use of the name "Bitcoin" in courts under the claim of passing off.

In bringing a champagne passing-off claim, BTC developers would be required to prove that significant modifications to Bitcoin’s protocol, such as the implementation of SegWit (Segregated Witness), have not fundamentally altered Bitcoin from what is described in the White Paper.

This would involve demonstrating that SegWit, which changes how transactions are structured and verified, has not affected the core functionalities described by Satoshi Nakamoto—particularly the ability to prevent double-spending and maintain a peer-to-peer digital cash system.

They would need to argue that the introduction of SegWit hasn't deviated from Bitcoin’s original design, including transaction processing and verification, and that its purpose remains in line with Satoshi’s vision. Moreover, the BTC developers would be forced to definitively prove that the network can still facilitate "small casual transactions" as originally intended by Satoshi.

This is critical, as Bitcoin’s ability to handle low-fee, everyday transactions was a core promise in the White Paper.

With current BTC transaction fees often being prohibitively high for smaller transactions, the developers would need to present evidence that the network can effectively support microtransactions in the manner envisioned by Satoshi.

Under English law, I can pursue a passing-off claim against BTC developers through what is known as a "champagne passing-off" action. This type of passing-off is named after cases like Bollinger v. Costa Brava, where the use of the term "champagne" for sparkling wine was contested because it misrepresented the origin and characteristics associated with the authentic Champagne region.

A champagne passing-off claim is focused on protecting the reputation and distinguishing features of a product or brand when another party misrepresents those characteristics, thereby misleading the public and causing economic harm to the original brand. In my case, this legal strategy would allow me to frame a dispute around how the BTC developers are presenting or misrepresenting the nature of Bitcoin itself.

It does not require me to assert my identity as Satoshi Nakamoto, which the High Court judgment specifically prohibits me from doing.

Instead, I would be arguing that the developers’ portrayal of Bitcoin’s principles, functionality, or origin misleads the public, causing confusion or diluting the essence of Bitcoin as I understand it.

During the legal proceedings, I provided critical information and evidence to Christen Ager-Hanssen (CAH), who was supposedly assisting with my case and overseeing the legal team on my side. At the time, the evidence I shared was untainted, and CAH was meant to act in my interest, managing the presentation and handling of this material. However, given my reservations about CAH’s trustworthiness, I embedded web bugs within the files I provided. These web bugs were specifically designed to leave logs and tracking information whenever the files were accessed, providing a digital trail of their usage. The logs revealed that these files, which contained undisclosed evidence, were accessed in the offices of Bird & Bird LLP during September and October of last year. This means that CAH, while ostensibly working to support my case, had shared sensitive materials with the legal team representing the opposing side.

Such access to undisclosed files constitutes a serious breach of court protocols and the legal confidentiality required in handling evidence. It indicates that Bird & Bird LLP was aware of and potentially complicit in this improper access, as they failed to report this breach to the court.

The discussion today focuses on the role of tracking cookies and specific data transmissions from CAH to lawyers at Bird & Bird LLP (commonly known as TwoBirds) before the onset of the legal case.

These data transfers were not disclosed, raising serious concerns about compliance with the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) and case law governing disclosure in the UK.

According to CPR 31, parties in litigation must share all documents relevant to the case, including those that might be adverse to their position. Withholding such information, especially when it could influence the case's outcome, constitutes a breach of the disclosure duties outlined in the CPR. Case law, such as Al Rawi & Ors v The Security Service [2011] UKSC 34, emphasises the fundamental importance of transparency in judicial processes. The judgment reinforces that all material evidence must be made available to ensure fairness, as withholding relevant information can distort the integrity of the legal process. Similarly, in Bates v Post Office Ltd (No 3) [2019] EWHC 606 (QB), the court highlighted that failing to disclose documents that could impact the court’s decision undermines the fairness of the proceedings.

The New Whitepaper...

BTC: A Distributed Ledger for Expensive, High-Value Digital Transactions

Abstract
BTC functions as a distributed ledger system for high-value digital transactions, heavily dominated by centralized entities like bucket shop exchanges, ETF providers, and major financial institutions such as BlackRock. These intermediaries have taken on roles akin to traditional banks, controlling access, managing liquidity, and offering investment products that make BTC more accessible to institutional investors than everyday users. Their influence shapes market dynamics, emphasizing large-scale trading and asset management over direct peer-to-peer transactions.

Security and governance in BTC are driven by a "proof of developer" model, where a small group of core developers significantly influences protocol decisions. This approach centralizes power, aligning network changes with the interests of major financial players, reducing the role of the broader network of nodes in decision-making. The focus on updates that benefit institutional stakeholders has led to a system that prioritizes high-value transactions, with elevated fees making smaller transactions impractical.

As a result, BTC primarily serves as a speculative ponzi-like asset, emphasizing the secure storage and transfer of wealth for investors. The market incentives revolve around maximizing returns and managing investment risks, aligning closely with broader financial market structures. This centralized control, combined with its role as a high-value digital asset, positions BTC as a tool for financial speculation and wealth management, rather than a platform for cost-effective, everyday payments. 1. Introduction
Digital transactions have increasingly become the domain of centralized financial institutions, such as exchanges, ETF providers, and major financial firms. These entities act as intermediaries, facilitating access to BTC markets and processing transactions, but they come with the inherent limitations of the trust-based model. In this framework, transactions are subject to mediation, introducing friction through dispute resolution processes and increasing costs, which limits the feasibility of smaller transactions. This reliance on third parties extends trust dependencies across the network, forcing merchants to demand additional verification and information from their customers, creating barriers that discourage frictionless transactions.

Unlike systems that support low-value, direct transactions, BTC's ecosystem is dominated by institutions that prioritize secure and high-value transfers. With its focus on investment products and high transaction fees, BTC's infrastructure effectively precludes the practicality of non-reversible, low-cost payments. Instead, the landscape is characterized by speculative trading, with BTC functioning as a digital asset that integrates into the existing financial ecosystem, rather than as a medium for direct, casual exchanges.

The architecture of BTC hinges on a "proof of developer" model rather than traditional cryptographic proofs of work. Here, control over the direction and security of the protocol lies with a small, influential group of developers. This shift from a peer-to-peer validation mechanism towards centralized decision-making allows these developers to tailor updates and technical changes to the interests of institutional players. As a result, BTC’s current function is less about achieving a trustless digital currency system and more about securing the integrity of a ledger that supports wealth storage and institutional-grade transactions.

In this post, Peter Todd argues that Bitcoin "doesn't scale" due to the limitations of updating the UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) set, claiming that as transaction volume increases, the scaling becomes infeasible, leading to what he describes as an O(n^2) scaling problem.

Todd suggests splitting transaction volumes among different chains to reduce the load on individual miners, but this concept relies on fragmenting the blockchain system, which can introduce complexities like trusted third-party issues and difficulties with transaction reordering.

mail-archive.com/bitcoin-develo… However, this argument fundamentally contradicts what Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned. Satoshi explicitly stated that Bitcoin would never hit a scale ceiling, as the architecture of the system was designed to scale with transaction volume without breaking down.

Satoshi envisioned a system where the protocol, if left unaltered and managed properly, could handle vast amounts of transactions with no inherent limitations.

Let's get straight to it, no fluff.

Anyone who thinks Peter Todd could be Satoshi Nakamoto has to be out of their mind.

Look at the glaring differences, the absolute dissonance between the mind that conceived Bitcoin and Todd’s approach.

Todd, from the moment he got involved, has been pushing for tweaks, alterations, and outright changes that warp the system from what it was originally built to be. Take CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (CLTV) and other additions Todd advocated for—they fundamentally alter how Bitcoin operates.

Satoshi built Bitcoin to be a stable protocol, a rock-solid foundation meant to stand the test of time without fiddling around with its core.

Todd’s obsession with making Bitcoin more "flexible" or "anonymous" is precisely the opposite of Satoshi’s design philosophy, which was about creating something predictable and reliable. And then there’s the matter of understanding. Todd’s entire approach to Bitcoin has consistently shown that he doesn’t grasp the elegance of its simplicity.

He’s all about trying to graft on new features and “improve” the system, while Satoshi already nailed the balance between cryptographic security and operational transparency.

When Todd talks about making Bitcoin more anonymous, he misses the point: Satoshi’s vision wasn’t about hiding; it was about enabling a system where the rules were clear, not constantly rewritten.

It’s like watching someone try to add unnecessary gears to a perfectly designed engine, thinking they’re making it better when all they’re doing is wrecking the original design.

Imagine if Bitcoin had an unlimited block size. Think about it—a world where you could move a fraction of a fraction of a penny from Tokyo to Timbuktu, faster than you could blink, and no one’s taking a cut.

Not a banker, not a middleman, not a bureaucrat sitting on his ass in a suit.

Just a network, running clean, honest, like it was meant to.

Transactions flowing like water, as easy as passing a note across a bar.

A system that doesn’t care who you are, where you’re from, what your story is, just that you want to trade, to buy, to sell.

A system where the only thing that matters is what you’re putting on the table. And think about what that would mean to the ones sitting in the towers, the ones running the show—the governments, the central banks, the regulators.

It’d drive them mad.

Because suddenly, you’ve got a world where people don’t need their middlemen, don’t need their permission slips or their currency controls.

You’ve got a world where money moves without borders, where a kid in Kenya can trade with a guy in Kansas like they’re neighbors, where nobody gives a damn about the old lines on the map.

If every single full node were to reject a transaction while miners and exchanges continued to act as usual, the influence or effect of those full nodes' rejection would be effectively zero percent on the overall Bitcoin network. Miners are the entities that validate transactions by including them in blocks. The Bitcoin blockchain is extended by miners who solve complex mathematical problems to create new blocks. Once a transaction is included in a mined block, it becomes a part of the blockchain that all other nodes, including exchanges and any remaining users, recognize as the authoritative chain. Miners, not full nodes, are the ones who determine the actual state of the blockchain.