Supply Shock Bitcoin’s Hard Limits and Illusion of Governance | John Carvalho
Jan 6, 2026
John Carvalho, CEO of Synonym and a seasoned Bitcoin developer, dives deep into Bitcoin's governance and scaling challenges. He argues that many current debates distract from Bitcoin's fundamental constraints. Carvalho emphasizes the difficulty of future changes and views soft-fork proposals as increasingly centralized. He critiques the misuse of Bitcoin's governance for moral arguments and asserts that the creators can't dictate its purpose. The discussion also covers Bitcoin's blockspace as an emerging commodity and the potential limitations of scaling with layers like Lightning.
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Debate Is More Performance Than Technical Risk
- The Nots vs Core debate is largely distraction and social manipulation rather than technical threat.
- John Carvalho argues many proposals lean on user ignorance and performative support rather than substance.
Keep Policy Out Of Core
- Avoid embedding policy decisions into Bitcoin Core because policy is unenforceable across users.
- Delegate policy and custom user experiences to downstream clients or alternative distributions instead.
Soft Forks Concentrate Trust
- Adding soft forks and speculative features is increasingly self-serving and centralized.
- Carvalho believes soft forks concentrate trust and make changes easier for Core plus miners, so the bar for changes must be higher.
