Jimmy Song - Inside the Bitcoin Betrayal

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Nov 3, 2025

Jimmy Song, a prominent Bitcoin developer and educator, shares his insights on the complexities within Bitcoin Core development. He explores the political dynamics surrounding funding models and the implications of uniform mempools for decentralization. The conversation touches on the controversial changes to OP_RETURN, the motivations behind the shift from Core to Knots, and the potential risks of community division. With an eye on future developments, Jimmy argues that despite conflicts, the scrutiny could ultimately strengthen Bitcoin's resilience.

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INSIGHT

Clients Differ By Trade-Offs

Different Bitcoin clients matter only if you care about their trade-offs like relay policy, bandwidth, and security.
Running a node primarily exists so users can verify their own transactions and avoid trusting third parties.

INSIGHT

Consensus Versus Relay Policy

Consensus defines what can be included in blocks while policy defines what nodes will relay to peers.
Policy differences shape the mempool and therefore strongly influence what transactions actually reach miners.

ADVICE

Favor Faster Block Propagation

Keep mempools similar to speed block propagation and reduce stale-block risk via compact relay techniques.
Faster propagation improves finality and makes fee estimation and network reliability better for everyone.

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In this episode, I chat with Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer and educator that has been a driving force in Bitcoin for over a decade.

We dive deep into the political undercurrents around Bitcoin Core development, funding models, decentralization theater and the question on everyone’s mind: Is Bitcoin under attack from within?

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