Bitcoin Core Going Rogue?

Bitcoin core are going ROGUE, at least that's what some people are saying about the recent change proposed by Peter Todd...

In this weeks report we're going to cover exactly what is going on there.

But first, let's take a quick look at how the markets been holding up.

Macro Overview

Just a few years ago, if someone told you Bitcoin was going to be hovering around $97,000 whilst the rest of the world seemed to be heading towards decline, would you of believed them?

Right now it's showing incredible strength and that's reflected by it's dominance, which is currently sat around 64% based on the data in our dashboard.

As we've alluded to over the prior months, Bitcoin dominance tends to top out around 70%. That's not to say it will definitely go that high, but that's just taking a look at the past as an indicator of what may be to come.

But the simple take away here is, the higher that goes, the closer we are to alt season and the way things are setting up globally looks like we could be in for an explosive one.

The fear and greed index is back into greed territory at the moment, just a few weeks ago the world was ending and it was in the low 20s. That's when we bought.

Institutional Update

Total net inflow across all spot Bitcoin ETFs: $1.76 B – the strongest weekly haul since the week ending 14 March 2025, which also logged ≈$1.8 B in net inflows.

Public Company Bitcoin Treasuries – Weekly Snapshot

(Holdings as of 4 May 2025)

MicroStrategy 2.0?

On 23 April 2025, Strike CEO Jack Mallers unveiled Twenty One Capital, a Bitcoin‑native holding company poised to go public via a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners.

Backed by Tether and SoftBank, the firm will debut with a war chest of 42,000 BTC (~$3.9 B) and a laser‑focus on maximising Bitcoin Ownership Per Share—a deliberate echo of Michael Saylor’s playbook at MicroStrategy.

Should the deal close this quarter, Twenty One would enter the rankings as the third‑largest corporate BTC holder, leap‑frogging Tesla and Block.

Bitcoin Core

Since 2013 Bitcoin Core has enforced a default policy that restricts OP_RETURN outputs to a maximum of 83 bytes. The cap serves two purposes: (i) discouraging arbitrary data storage on‑chain and (ii) allowing nodes to safely prune OP_RETURN outputs because they are provably unspendable.

On 28 April 2025, veteran developer Peter Todd opened PR #32359 proposing to remove the hardcoded limit entirely. His argument: modern wallets and services already pass larger OP_RETURN payloads via custom relay policies (e.g., Ordinals inscriptions), so the limit is “a source of needless code complexity and inconsistent behaviour.” Todd insists that “policy should live in mempool, not consensus.”

Flash‑Point Issues

1. Blockchain Bloat: Opponents fear that unlimited OP_RETURN could rekindle the 2023 inscription frenzy, swelling the chain state, stressing archival nodes, and pushing fees higher for regular monetary transactions.
2. UTXO Set Growth: While OP_RETURN outputs don’t add to the spendable UTXO set, they do persist in the block files. Critics like Luke Dashjr warn this will increase IBD (initial block download) times, especially for resource‑constrained users.
3. Economic Centralisation: Higher fees may favour large custodial platforms at the expense of individuals, undermining Bitcoin’s decentralised ethos.
4. Precedent: Relaxing one long‑standing policy could embolden future attempts to loosen others—potentially eroding the narrow “digital‑gold” vision that the majority of Core maintainers support.

Debate Timeline

Outlook

Consensus is weeks away at best. Even if maintainers align on a policy‑flag compromise, major relay networks (mining pools, mempool.space, etc.) would need to upgrade before larger OP_RETURN objects propagate reliably. Expect the topic to dominate developer mailing lists through June’s Core v27.0 release window.

What do you think to this whole situation, has Bitcoin core gone rogue?