"If you have this disconnect between Core devs that value one thing and the users that value something else, something's got to give at some point, right? Either you get developers that are more in line with the users or a lot of the other users kind of end up leaving and so on.
So this is not a trivial concern and it's a big attack
surface and we've seen it in these communities where a lot of this political stuff enters and then next thing you know it gets completely sort of subsumed by that movement, by institutional capture, if you will.
And that's not just true in open source software, it's true in every nonprofit organization and so on.
This is a big problem."
~ Jimmy Song

Jimmy Song joins me for a deep dive into one of the most heated topics in Bitcoin today - the debate around Bitcoin Core, the OP_RETURN controversy, and the growing cultural divide within Bitcoin development. We explore whether Bitcoin’s technical decisions have become political moves, and what “verify, don’t trust” really means when trust itself starts eroding.

We talk about Bitcoin’s identity crisis between innovation and ossification - should Bitcoin keep evolving with new toys, or hold the line and protect what already works? We cover everything from Taproot’s legacy to mining decentralization, censorship, left–right polarization in the dev community, and the spirit of cypherpunk independence.

Most importantly, Jimmy challenges us to think for ourselves - to stop being clones of whoever we agree with, and to test every assumption against reality. Because Bitcoin’s strength has never been in consensus for its own sake, but in the willingness to ask hard questions.

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Guest Links

Jimmy Song on X (Link: https://x.com/jimmysong)
Jimmy Song on Nostr (Link: https://tinyurl.com/543m6xm8)

Host Links

Chat_148 - It Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test with Jimmy Song

Bitcoin Audible

What is OP_RETURN and why does it matter?

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