For over a yr, some have thought of bitcoin to be beneath siege. Fee spikes and transaction volumes related to Ordinals and Inscriptions have impacted different customers, and a few even suggest these could also be cowl for a deliberate assault by a well-funded state actor. But on the identical time, others see the exact same occasions as demonstrating Bitcoin is stronger than ever. Tensions between each side are escalating, positions have gotten entrenched, and dialogue is breaking down. Battle traces are being drawn and reconciliation appears more and more unlikely. We could also be within the early innings of the subsequent fork warfare, and I consider that after once more, one aspect is basically misunderstanding the problems.

Fascinatingly, the talk is nearly equivalent to at least one from 2014. Bitmex’s wonderful article describes the gamers and strikes of that point, and the final word end result. You might or might not want to learn up in your historical past first; on the finish of the piece, we are going to tie this present debate again to the occasions of 2014.

With the purpose of presenting a impartial perspective, the battle will be described as whether or not Bitcoin as a system ought to change to stop sure sorts of transactions. What’s simple is that these transactions are at present being made, they don’t presently invalidate blocks if included, within the majority of circumstances are competing for block house with fee bids similar to each different transaction does, and collectively spending a major quantity on these charges.

Some individuals really feel these transactions are immediately dangerous to the community from a mixture of their technical nature and the recognition of their utilization, and thru this hurt they scale back Bitcoin’s capability to be good cash. Others consider in a different way: both making use of those transaction kinds themselves – or are ambivalent, however really feel the notion of hurt is overblown, and the treatment could be worse than the illness.

For shorthand and neutrality I’ll merely seek advice from those that want to cease these sorts of transactions as Blue Crew, and people who want to maintain the established order as Pink Crew. For the needs of dialogue it doesn’t matter the explanations behind the motivations of both aspect, solely that they are motivated, and act to additional these high-level targets. This text will lay out a sensible play-by-play for the way forward for this battle, primarily based on these targets for every faction, and explaining the technical potentialities open at every step. It would try to stay scientific and talk about solely the mechanics, leaving out parts which have subjective interpretations. You may kind your personal opinions in areas regarding subjective value and values.

Background 

Some background: In early 2023, developer Casey Rodarmor printed his Ordinals and Inscriptions protocols, that are rulesets for different interpretations of information within the blockchain. This has led to elevated utilization of blockspace by individuals partaking in these protocols, which drive up charges – most notably huge spikes in Might and December. Since these are arguably not utilizing bitcoin as cash however for different functions, some voices advocate that this utilization should be stopped and argue this degrades bitcoin’s usefulness as cash. It’s essential to grasp technically what’s going on with these protocols, so {that a} reasoned debate will be had on whether or not that is potential and even fascinating.

Ordinals are merely an accounting technique by which to view common bitcoin transactions. This lens permits “monitoring” particular person satoshis as they transfer by the community, by which some is likely to be seen to have extra worth than others – for instance, satoshis that had been as soon as dealt with by Satoshi himself. It is a nonsensical fiction, indifferent from technical actuality – satoshis are a measurement of amount, and don’t exist as particular person objects – it’s like monitoring a selected ounce of water in a river. However so is bitcoin itself a fiction: a selected interpretation of a selected dataset by a bunch of people, who subjectively worth issues utilizing their widespread lens. Bitcoiners worth bitcoin, regardless that it’s all simply 1s and 0s, while nocoiners snicker at their foolishness – bitcoins don’t exist! Ordinals lovers worth particular person satoshis, regardless that it’s all simply bitcoin transactions, while bitcoiners snicker – particular person satoshis don’t exist!

Inscriptions are a method to retailer further non-monetary information within the blockchain, for instance, picture recordsdata. When utilized in mixture with Ordinals, the result’s very similar to a tradeable NFT as is widespread on different chains. Bitcoin shouldn’t be designed to help this utilization, and it occurs by exploiting its permissionless parts. If you create an handle to obtain bitcoin into, you might be defining a lock that have to be opened to spend the funds, and by extension additionally the important thing that’s required to unlock it. The tactic utilized by Inscriptions will be regarded as designing the important thing to appear to be a cartoon character (the picture, or no matter different arbitrary information the person needs). Doing that is extra pricey than utilizing a standard key and the person pays mining charges to take action, the identical as each transaction.

Battle for the mempool

Since Pink Crew are proud of the established order, the primary transfer comes from Blue Crew, who for some months in the neighborhood have been advocating “repair the filters”. This refers to increasing a algorithm utilized by every node, by which it decides whether or not to ahead a pending transaction in its mempool to its friends, or whether or not to discard it. Nodes every construct their very own native mempool selfishly, in an effort to pace up validating new blocks after they arrive, as a result of the transactions it incorporates have already been checked forward of time. Additionally they altruistically relay transactions they find out about to their linked friends upon request, to assist one another towards that aim. Every node’s operator chooses their very own mempool settings and isn’t obligated to set them in any explicit method, by any direct or oblique means.

Filters to discard pending transactions from the node’s mempool exist already for a lot of causes, primarily to stop its reminiscence from being overwhelmed, however have additionally been used so as to add friction to the usage of sure transaction sorts up to now, within the purpose of dissuading their use. There’s a substantial amount of confusion round what node filters truly do, and the way they immediately and not directly have an effect on totally different parts of the community.

The core thought on this case is that if sufficient nodes refuse to relay a pending transaction, it would fail to achieve a miner and thus is not going to be included in a block. It’s essential to notice that these filters don’t apply to transactions which are already mined in a block – the principles for rejecting a block are often known as consensus, which is far more highly effective, delicate and requires vital coordination to efficiently change. We’ll return to consensus later.

“Fixing the filters” is unlikely to attain Blue Crew’s aim of stopping sure transactions for a number of causes.

Firstly, bitcoin is designed to be strong towards malicious nodes: since operating a node could be very low price, it could be a fragile system if anybody may block your capability to transact simply by spinning up numerous nodes on a cloud server farm. Every node forwards each transaction it hears about (and considers legitimate) to all of its linked friends, which means it shortly floods the community, and even a small minority of cooperative nodes is sufficient for each transaction to make its strategy to a miner. This was demonstrated once more in follow lately by the “full-RBF” controversy in 2023, which you’ll be able to be taught extra about right here. In that case, the default node filters, already virtually ubiquitous on the community, had been discarding legitimate transactions that changed (spent the identical inputs as) one other pending, decrease fee transaction. If one among these replacements does attain a miner, it may be rationally anticipated it’s mined somewhat than the decrease paying model, since it’s extra worthwhile. As soon as solely 10% of nodes modified their filters to relay these, as an alternative of discarding, and it was seen that they had been getting mined with over 95% reliability.

Thus, to attain lively suppression of legitimate transactions simply utilizing filters, adoption have to be over 90% throughout the community. Contemplating lower than 40% of nodes even run the newest model of Bitcoin Core, which was not contentious in any respect, this looks as if a pipe dream. Even when the required 90%+ adoption had been to be achieved, like curtains on a window, filters solely immediately impression the person’s personal node. It’s after all not potential for a 3rd occasion to regulate what software program or settings you run by yourself laptop, nor for them to regulate who you talk with.

Blue Crew largely concede that attaining significant change with simply the node filters is unlikely, and hope to additionally use it as a way of social signalling. They purport that the Bitcoin Core software program updating its customary filters reveals Pink Crew that they’re unwelcome and will probably be actively resisted, hoping they are going to suppose twice about responding, even when the rollout itself takes a while. Word that probably the most vital motion right here is solely the general public inclusion of the filter replace to Bitcoin Core: no one is obliged to run the replace, nor can anybody know past doubt which model different nodes are operating, nor if these nodes even signify actual customers – the nodes you might be linked to may have been spun up en masse on a cloud server at virtually no price.

They argue it additionally communicates the community’s severe needs, within the hopes that miners take the trace and cease together with the precise sorts of transactions of their blocks. To take action is voluntarily declining earnings – since these transactions are legitimate, and bidding effectively for block house, and their inclusion gained’t get the block rejected by the community, no less than at this time. Lastly, if the miners are seen to not respect these needs, Blue Crew can confidently assume these miners are in reality hostile to Bitcoin, and really feel justified in escalating their response.

It’s value noting that every one the ideas laid out to this point are what additionally insulate all customers from censorious governments, for instance: if you may get your transaction to a miner by any means, and there’s no less than one miner someplace on the earth prepared to mine it, it is possible for you to to transact. In actual fact it’s a worthwhile counterweight to probably the most highly effective censors: the extra they do not want to incorporate particular transactions, the extra the fee stress builds because the transactors’ desperation and inside competitors will increase. In a severe government-driven censorship marketing campaign, we might even see unknown miners turning mothballed machines again on simply to gather all of the “black market” charges ready on the sidelines.

Given the low probability of success, Pink Crew seemingly don’t have to take any motion and their transacting will probably be unaffected. But when any of the Blue strikes did trigger any even non permanent mild disruption, there are quite a few small steps obtainable to make sure transactions can attain miners even when some nodes on the community are uncooperative. Libre Relay exists, a tweaked model of Bitcoin Core with its filter insurance policies loosened to extra carefully match consensus guidelines. Libre nodes want to attach with one another over regular Core nodes, and in doing so create a strong relay community that routes round obstructors. Operating Libre as an alternative of vanilla Bitcoin Core is a trivial change and a one-time resolution. The Ordinals group is already discussing migrating to make sure they haven’t any relay points – although they at present don’t expertise any.

However relaying transactions by the node community is just one means. The goal is barely to get your transaction to an lively miner, which actually is simply delivering a chunk of information. Thus it’s predictable that different supply strategies could be utilised for these unwilling or unable to make use of the relay community – and be polished into companies that may command a premium from those that want to use them. Mining of even already-filtered transactions by “out-of-band” means has occurred all through historical past, however was definitively demonstrated by the Taproot Wizard oversize transaction in February 2023, the miner of which was paid externally (in contrast to common transitions). Then, to make a degree in a debate, the ”Consensus is King” transaction in January 2024 created mud – a 21 sat UTXO, too low in worth to cowl the charges required to ever spend it once more, a behaviour that’s at present filtered by all current nodes. That transactions’ charges had been paid in-band like another transaction, and it was despatched over a Twitter non-public message – by no means as soon as being proven to the node community. This course was then productized by Marathon pool’s new Slipstream service in March, which offers a easy net kind to stick a transaction to be fed immediately into their very own node, and will probably be mined so long as it’s consensus-valid and pays a premium over market price. It’s logical to imagine from right here that different swimming pools will be part of to compete for the additional charges these transactions can supply, ought to they ever even be efficiently blocked on the node degree, and it’s trivial for customers to make the most of them.

Consensus Warfare

Let’s transfer now into speculating on the long run, assuming that Pink Crew are joyful operating Libre nodes or utilizing miner APIs, and no less than some miners have continued to just accept their fee bids, as an alternative of altruistically declining them. How would possibly Blue Crew reply to their persevering with presence in blocks? Who is aware of how a lot time elapses first, but when the will nonetheless exists to rid bitcoin of those sure sorts of transactions completely, in the end the subsequent escalation is a fork to implement excluding them from blocks.

Altering your node’s consensus guidelines can see you rejecting some blocks as invalid while the remainder of the world doesn’t, which means your native copy of the blockchain doesn’t match everybody else’s. You now exist on a fork break up off from the unique chain: new blocks mined on the unique chain are incompatible with yours, so your node discards them. Anybody else that made the identical change on the identical time is on the identical fork with you. Upgrades to Bitcoin are made by coordinating forks: everybody agreeing to vary their guidelines in the identical method at a hard and fast future time. They’re severe undertakings involving a substantial amount of organisation to verify no one will get left behind. The historical past of Bitcoin fork activations is printed intimately right here, together with their issues, and is an illuminating learn.

The blockchain is progressed by miners expending real-world power to construct new blocks: that’s the unforgeable price proof-of-work which is what makes Bitcoin safe and worthwhile. Work can’t be utilized to a couple of block at a time: they have to resolve whether or not to construct on the unique chain, or the brand new fork. Builders of latest blocks have permission to problem themselves a hard and fast quantity of latest cash inside it as a reward, which after all is barely mirrored on the aspect of the fork the block is in. If they don’t correctly implement the brand new guidelines inside their blocks on the brand new fork, the nodes will reject these blocks as invalid, and they’re going to not obtain the reward – although the power they expended is gone regardless. Thus, customers through their nodes are collectively capable of pressure miners to guage which algorithm they suppose will probably be perceived as extra worthwhile by the market. No one can management the selections of others, however you’ll be able to current them with new choices for use their fastened assets, and cease “paying” them for his or her work in the event that they make the “incorrect” alternative, in your eyes. It’s a posh dance of decisions, incentives, and subjective worth judgements that spans a number of events with a wide range of pursuits. Forks will at all times have a level of uncertainty and so in Bitcoin they’re uncommon and vital occasions.

The important thing to a potential Blue Crew fork is that the goal transactions have to be recognized by some strong method in order that the block will be rejected, however with out being overzealous and catching too many “actual” transactions. There’s a entire spectrum of heuristics that may very well be utilized, individually over time, or many batched collectively in a bunch. It’s essential to notice that as a result of these are consensus guidelines, each change have to be extensively reviewed and communicated effectively forward of time to offer everybody an opportunity to opt-in, particularly miners, who’ve probably the most to lose by getting one thing incorrect.

For the needs of dialogue, let’s presume the fork is a bundle of latest guidelines aiming for broad-spectrum protection. These guidelines are on the aggressive aspect, however wouldn’t have an effect on regular customers in any respect, while forcibly stopping all present recognized protocols utilising Bitcoin which Blue Crew think about to be parasitic. They’re derived from ideas by builders and conversations with individuals who at present use such protocols.

A block will probably be rejected if it incorporates a transaction that doesn’t respect the next:

1. Mining charges have to be lower than the smallest output. This aligns with financial use, since no rational actor would pay extra to ship cash than they need the recipient to get.
2. OP_RETURNs, scripts, and taproot scripts will not be bigger than 80 bytes. This restrict was already enforced as a node filter however not at consensus degree. As such it is not going to have an effect on the overwhelming majority of regular utilization, which match inside this measurement anyway, however does scale back flexibility of Bitcoin’s sensible contracting on the extremes of technical chance. Word: the proper measurement to focus on in bytes will be debated; what issues right here is the precept of some laborious cap.
3. Taproot scripts might not have provably non-executable segments, similar to beginning with OP_FALSE OP_IF. Any code following this could by no means be run, because the directions are to instantly exit and discard the whole lot after, and so is simply extra information with no reliable use. The strategies in use will have to be recognized and particularly banned.
4. All keys have to be verifiably on the ECDSA curve. Since a key that’s not on the curve can by no means efficiently signal a transaction, there isn’t a reliable use for them.

Time estimates for Blue Crew to implement this suite of modifications may very well be 12 months at an unrealistic naked minimal, however extra seemingly a number of years. That is primarily based on historic forks, the tempo of improvement lately, the scope of the modifications, and controversy round them.

In responding to this transfer, Pink Crew can make the most of the truth that Bitcoin improvement is essentially within the open, and work on their counter while the fork proposal rumbles slowly towards activation. They don’t have to publicise it prematurely and may deploy it at any time, however could be wisest to attend till after the fork prompts, since that will end result within the longest potential response time from Blue. Because the Pink Crew protocols and networks are younger and extremely engaged, they will attain their inside type of consensus shortly, and should not have massive vested pursuits like miners, who should negotiate with elements like geopolitics and power grids.

The customers aligned with Pink Crew are a lot much less conservative than Blue Crew, shortly undertake new know-how, get pleasure from overcoming challenges, and have much less curiosity in constructing for the long run. They collectively have vital capital they’re prepared to spend, and appear to additionally get pleasure from annoying Bitcoiners. Historical past confirmed adoption speeds for the Ordinals and Inscriptions protocols of round 4 months, and that was right into a market that was not being attentive to Bitcoin as a potential supply of latest improvements or playing alternatives.

Methods to bypass the brand new consensus guidelines embody:

1. Inventing new methods to create non-executable Taproot script segments, which in the end solely entails producing a “0” by any means the designer can dream up. The Bitcoin code interprets this as an exit command like OP_FALSE, and something following the 0 shouldn’t be run to avoid wasting on computing, since this operate has already failed. However there are additionally many reliable causes for a script to generate a zero in some unspecified time in the future, and in some circumstances is significant to operate.
2. Defining methods to sign throughout a number of size-capped scripts that they need to be interpreted collectively as one massive merchandise, bypassing the caps. This may equally be completed an infinite variety of methods, because the metaprotocol is versatile and conscious of Bitcoin, while Bitcoin could be very inflexible and may solely reference metaprotocols manually and intensely not often.

It appears a completely cheap assumption that Pink Crew would monitor public improvement of makes an attempt to dam their transactions, design in parallel the strategies to bypass them, launch them to the market quickly after they turn out to be necessary, and inside weeks or months return to the same degree of utilization to earlier than.

It’s potential that the community merely by no means adopts or prompts the Blue Crew fork within the first place. Nonetheless, it appears a set of modifications like this might be interesting to sufficient individuals, with few sufficient obvious drawbacks, that it has an affordable probability.

Nuclear Escalation

With Pink Crew having confirmed they’re resistant to filters, and prepared and capable of devise workarounds to even consensus guidelines blocking particular strategies, if Blue Crew needs to proceed the comb should get considerably broader. At this level they face some tough choices and should make actual sacrifices.

The primary query is whether or not there’s enough will to reply in any respect: the warfare may have been raging for a few years, their final transfer was a severe one over a yr within the making, and should have been totally neutered in a small fraction of that point. Although common customers wouldn’t discover, Bitcoin’s technical flexibility has been diminished – but this sacrificial lamb nonetheless did not rid them of Pink Crew, and subsequent steps solely comply with this path additional. Let’s think about that they do proceed, and a second, extraordinarily strong fork is proposed.

When blacklists don’t work, the one different is whitelisting, as beforehand thought of. In follow this implies solely a hard and fast set of script designs are to be permitted in blocks, designed to cowl all widespread use circumstances, such that common customers will probably be unaffected.

This stage can also see banning of OP_RETURN altogether if there was extreme utilization by exterior protocols deemed parasitic. Such protocols have already been designed at this time, with extra on the way in which, however not but been launched into the market. OP_RETURN serves no goal besides to hold arbitrary information, however is seen as comparatively benign and has discovered utilization for issues Blue Crew think about acceptable and even need, like privacy-enhancing instruments and timestamping (which has even been used to validate a nationwide election). Nonetheless, the quantity of information wanted to facilitate subjectively good issues can be sufficient for subjectively unhealthy issues, multiples extra in reality – efficient timestamps want a variety of house, while easy messages don’t. And if historical past is any information, Pink Crew’s utilization frequency of those options might outweigh Blue Crew’s utilization by a number of orders of magnitude.

Collectively these modifications shut off not simply the mechanisms which have traditionally been utilized by Pink Crew, however take away the design areas altogether. The tradeoffs to make these small modifications are vital. With whitelisted scripts, potentialities for improvements or just bespoke designs to go well with uncommon custody necessities are severely hampered. Any new script would require additional forks once more, inciting the detailed and prolonged scrutiny of the developer group, somewhat than being as much as the person truly utilizing it.

Much less apparent a tradeoff is the encroaching centralisation. The whitelist method is of course centralising: earlier than you should use a script you now want the opt-in consent of the community, which is tough to organise, with numerous customers and lots of conflicting pursuits. Social buildings organically self-assemble, and people have a tendency to decide on to outsource advanced judgements or service provisions to trusted sources, leaders and cultural figureheads to some extent. If there was a speedy neutralisation of the final fork by Pink Crew, there can also be a way of urgency – or easy bruised egos within the driving seat. All of those elements pattern towards an rising dependence on central our bodies for expedience, and complacency step by step builds, which erodes Bitcoin’s resilience to stylish social assaults.

If Pink Crew responds to the closing of the script and OP_RETURN design areas, the subsequent logical transfer could be turning their consideration to different free-entry transaction fields: addresses and quantities. An handle is only a string of characters, and characters can be utilized to convey information. The primary fork required that every one keys be verifiable, which makes it harder to “grind” out an answer, nevertheless it’s nonetheless basically only a computing process: discover a legitimate handle string that additionally incorporates your required information.

Quantities are comparable: they’re only a quantity, with no restriction on what that quantity is, besides that the sender has permission and enough capital. One distinctive component of this area is that utilizing extra digits requires extra capital – however the protocol ought to be designed such that the data-satoshis could be a self-send, and any possession is dealt with by one other output. That is already how OP_RETURN primarily based protocols are designed. Much like earlier than, protocols may very well be outlined for instructing that a number of fields are interpreted collectively as one.

Necessary to notice is that protocols to leverage addresses and quantities to hold information are already in improvement in 2024, and have existed in primitive kind for over a decade. Adoption is proscribed as different strategies are simpler and extra environment friendly.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Ought to Blue Crew nonetheless want to proceed, the one remaining transfer is to use whitelisting to the handle and quantity fields. Although extraordinarily unlikely to ever occur, let’s discover that world as a thought experiment.

Whitelisting quantities will not be as dire as initially seems – most individuals are acquainted with fixed-denomination payments and cash in fiat currencies. Although it’s a lot much less environment friendly to make use of Bitcoin this manner, lowering internet throughput since every transaction makes use of multiples extra inputs and outputs, it may very well be made to work.

Whitelisting addresses appears unavoidably to create a Bitcoin utterly captured by company pursuits. There’s to not my information any system design that’s permissionless sufficient for anybody to register an handle which couldn’t nonetheless be exploited by Pink Crew. Thus it have to be permissioned, which centralises Bitcoin to the purpose of absurdity, the place transactions can solely be between established gamers similar to massive companies and different vested pursuits. The ensuing system turns into one thing like a publicly-auditable Fedwire or SWIFT, with fastened provide: although nonetheless higher than the world now we have at this time, it’s a shadow of what Bitcoin may have been. With little sovereignty over their very own cash, only a few events exterior these whitelisted entities may have any motive to run a node, which opens the door to collusion and protocol modifications. With the inhabitants at massive having no direct voice within the system, there’s little capability to carry misbehaviour to account, and ultimately short-term revenue incentives dictate the establishments will replicate the gold and fiat eras by debasing the provision.

A brighter future: closing ideas

The first objection of Blue Crew to those transactions is that they’re seeing vital utilization however are sometimes not utilizing bitcoin as a financial asset. As an alternative they’re utilizing it as a substrate for playing, in a method that makes use of extra of the restricted block house than a financial transaction would. It’s unlucky that at occasions playing has extra demand than digital permissionless sound cash, typically far more, and the hope of profitable typically has the gamblers prepared to spend far more on charges than financial customers, making it uneconomical for many individuals to make use of Bitcoin how it’s supposed and constructed for use – as cash. In the long term, gamblers don’t want Bitcoin’s distinctive traits and dear decentralisation, and so they’re often content material with centralised platforms or pseudo-decentralisation of different chains. If gambler dominance of block house had been to be extended, the expense of utilizing it could increase the minimal wealth ground of who can justify utilizing it, sadly locking out the folks that want it most.

It’s tough to argue with a lot of the above, however Blue Crew have approached the issue from the incorrect course, one which step by step hampers and centralises Bitcoin till such time that Pink Crew resolve to voluntarily go away, if ever. As now we have mentioned, Pink Crew have a a lot simpler time adapting to Blue Crew’s strikes than the reverse. It additionally ignores a key truth: {that a} congested chain is the anticipated future anyway – in reality, it’s necessary for Bitcoin’s survival because the block subsidy falls away, halving by halving.

The one logical resolution is we have to enhance effectivity of block house utilization by rising the financial density of transactions, and within the course of, transfer increasingly more of the particular transacting off-chain. We’ve at all times recognized we had to do that, we simply thought we had extra time. Within the off-chain world, waves of charges and different shenanigans have an effect on financial customers more and more not often.

As a global-scale censorship resistant permissionless database, throughput is of course restricted by know-how and even physics. Lightning works very effectively, however solely shares a UTXO between 2 individuals at a time, and in present kind can require surprisingly frequent utilization of the chain to resolve points or shuffle liquidity, so it nonetheless can’t scale far with out sacrificing sovereignty. If sovereign utilization shouldn’t be obtainable to as many individuals as potential, Bitcoin shouldn’t be realising its fullest potential.

If a number of customers may share a UTXO, they will mix forces like a college of fish and maintain their very own towards even gigantic whales. If the Bitcoin community had been to activate one of many covenants proposals, many new potentialities open up for collaboration with out sacrificing sovereignty. It’s not good, and there’s a lot work nonetheless to be completed. However the foundations are rock stable, security issues have been glad, the scope of what they will enhance is amazingly broad, and the journey to activation is lengthy. We’re too late for this adoption cycle, however we may nonetheless be prepared for the subsequent one.

Let’s transfer previous the present distractions and construct for the long run, collectively.

It is a visitor put up by Owen Kemeys. Opinions expressed are totally their very own and don’t essentially mirror these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.