Adam Back just dropped the hammer on BIP 110 supporters. His message is brutal: “You don’t understand Bitcoin. Fork off if you want. Bitcoin won’t follow you.”
In a lengthy post on X, the inventor of Hashcash and one of Bitcoin’s most important figures addressed the BIP 110 controversy directly. And he did not hold back.
The Quote
“The decentralization needed to create cypherpunk money has implications: a side effect of decentralization is that you can’t impose your views on others. The very decentralization mechanism that helps that, is working against what BIP 110 wants, which at it’s most basic is a quest to police other people.”
Adam Back is saying BIP 110 isn’t about spam prevention. It’s about control. And Bitcoin was designed specifically to prevent anyone from having control.
Source: Adam Back on X
The Cypherpunk Perspective
Back frames the entire debate through the lens of the cypherpunk movement that created Bitcoin in the first place. His mission: “to build the cypherpunk future, that ‘Snow Crash’ was a blueprint.”
BIP 110 supporters are upset about the default OP_RETURN relay policy change. Back says they simply haven’t done their research.
“There are extremely robust and simple reasons for Bitcoin changing default relay policy, and most just didn’t do their research, so don’t know what those are.”
The Harsh Truth
Back’s message to BIP 110 supporters is essentially: you’re new here, you don’t understand the system, and your proposal would break everything Bitcoin was built to achieve.
“If you won’t listen to reason, educate yourself, learn, the same radical freedom applies to you: your permissionless recourse is to club together and create a fork. But Bitcoin won’t be joining it.”
That’s not an invitation. That’s a warning. Fork if you want. Bitcoin stays on mission.
What Bitcoin’s Immune System Actually Does
Back’s post is a masterclass in why Bitcoin’s conservative development approach exists:
- Decentralization means no one polices anyone else — BIP 110 fundamentally violates this
- Technical consensus is the immune system — It rejects changes that erode security, even when they sound good
- Motives don’t matter — You can mean well and still propose something that would destroy the system
- Developers can’t force changes — No single developer can change Bitcoin without hundreds of technical peers agreeing
The Bottom Line
Adam Back wasn’t mean. He wasn’t dismissive. He was honest. And honesty is the rarest commodity in crypto.
BIP 110 supporters want to police transactions. Bitcoin says no. They can fork off if they want. And they’ll learn the hard way why Bitcoin’s immune system is the most valuable feature of the network.
As Back puts it: “Join the cypherpunks on Bitcoin, come cypherpunk summer.”
ADAM BACK TO BIP 110 SUPPORTERS: YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND BITCOIN, FORK OFF
