Lyn Alden: BIP 110 Could Trigger August Bitcoin Chain Split | SLP757

**Lyn Alden** (0:00)
I mean, my base assumption, unless things change between now and a few weeks from now, is that it will be a minority fork attempt. It could potentially result in a chain split, for a high risk of a chain split.

**Stephan Livera** (0:10)
Yeah, and it might even happen before that, right? So literally, it may not even be spam that gets into the block. It may be literally the miners choose not to signal in favor of Pro 110, and that itself will cause a split around August 9th or so.

**Lyn Alden** (0:23)
Sometimes things can't be settled with talk. Sometimes they have to be settled with action and market attempts. And this is yet another market test for Bitcoin to go through. And if people disagree on what open source software they want to run, sometimes it just has to go in different directions.

**Stephan Livera** (0:40)
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Rejoining me on the show today is Lyn Alden, renowned for her macro analysis, as well as being a Bitcoiner and partner over at EgoDeath. And I know, well, first of all, first of all, welcome back to the show, Lyn.

**Lyn Alden** (0:55)
Thanks for having me. Always happy to be on.

**Stephan Livera** (0:58)
So, I know you recently were engaging a bit on the BIP 110 question for some people. That has been quite a contentious kind of online discussion. You've been quite direct that BIP 110 doesn't actually stop spam.
Do you think this fight is mostly noise? Or is it like some kind of real cultural risk here? Or what do you think?

**Lyn Alden** (1:19)
I think I put it somewhere in the middle. You know, I've been monitoring this for a while. Like I monitor all kind of fork proposals, or at least anyone that has some degree of traction.
And I kind of made a decision just months ago that I wasn't really going to engage on it, just because there's countless forks out there that are pretty young or don't have a lot of consensus. And there's a lot of things competing for attention. And so I kind of just didn't comment. I had opinions, and occasionally we'd have like an LP at our fund, reach out and ask, or people would ask my thoughts on something, I would give it to them, but I wouldn't really make an article about it. But I was asked about it on a podcast, and gave, it was kind of the tail end of a podcast, gave my reply, which is I sympathize, and I think that I'm certainly in the camp that Bitcoin is money, and anything that detracts from it is money, or complicates, introduces a tax surface. I mean, I'm not really in favor of any of that. But when you have a set of things that already exists, already is consensus. And there's a pretty established complexity of how to mitigate spam in any system. I mean, that goes back decades of research, and you know, because spam can disguise itself, and is even hard to define at times.
And just kind of reviewing everything that exists about that software proposal, it mostly just kind of rearranges where non-monetary data can go. Some people have very strong opinions on precisely where in the blockchain, you know, the more appropriate types of places to put it. Even debates about whether or not this is even about spam. You know, because some proponents will say we have to cut down spam, and other people will say, well, read the BIP. It's actually admitting how limited it is at stopping spam. So, you know, my view is that, you know, kind of the most powerful attribute of Bitcoin is that it's very hard to change. If it was easy to change, so even if you're in favor of fork, there are fork proposals out there that I'm kind of passively in favor of. I don't really expect them to pass anytime soon. But the kind of the key takeaway is that even if you're in favor of a given fork, the fact that it's really hard to get your fork through is also the defense around people that see things differently getting their fork through.
So I certainly think that it's noble to try to find ways to optimize, to maybe add frictions, to add non-monetary data into Bitcoin over time. If there's a way that can do that, that builds consensus. I mean, I'm all ears. But for me, I think the main thing is the marketing around this particular fork, how it seems to differ from what the fork actually offers.
And it's become this kind of cultural moment, I think, more so than a technical solution.