According to @adam3us, Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN is not an endorsement of storing data on the blockchain and this point is reflected in Bitcoin Core release notes, addressing claims about protocol “intent.” source: Adam Back on X (Oct 19, 2025). OP_RETURN is a provably unspendable output meant for small metadata and is relayed under node standardness policy rather than designed for bulk data storage, which limits its role in non-transactional data use cases. source: Bitcoin Core policy documentation; Bitcoin Wiki OP_RETURN. Most Ordinals inscriptions embed data in Taproot witness, not OP_RETURN, so this clarification targets intent arguments but not the main mechanism behind inscription-driven blockspace demand. source: Ordinals protocol documentation; Bitcoin Optech Newsletter. For trading, monitor BTC average fees, mempool congestion, and miner fee share because relay policy and social norms around non-payment data influence blockspace competition and transaction costs. source: Bitcoin Core policy documentation on standard transactions; mempool.space fee market dashboard.

According to @Andre_Dragosch, Bitcoin’s mempool is almost empty while he characterizes gold’s as 'clogged,' highlighting a divergence in settlement backlogs between BTC and traditional bullion markets. Source: André Dragosch on X, Oct 17, 2025 An almost-empty BTC mempool typically indicates few pending transactions and lower fee pressure, creating favorable conditions for on-chain rebalancing, arbitrage flows, and exchange withdrawals at reduced cost. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide; Bitcoin Core documentation When the mempool is sparse, fee estimates tend to decline, allowing traders to consolidate UTXOs and time large transfers with cheaper sat/vB pricing to optimize execution. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide; Bitcoin Core documentation The 'clogged gold mempool' framing underscores Bitcoin’s relative settlement efficiency narrative versus gold, a signal some macro traders may translate into relative positioning such as BTC/XAU pairs. Source: André Dragosch on X, Oct 17, 2025 Active monitoring of mempool size and median fee rates can help traders anticipate on-chain liquidity conditions and adjust transfer timing accordingly to minimize slippage and network costs. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide; Bitcoin Core documentation

According to @BitMEXResearch, Bitcoin relay filters aimed at BRC-20 traffic are unlikely to work because if roughly 10% of nodes ignore them, the looser relay policy wins across the network, which is how Bitcoin works, source: BitMEX Research on X, Oct 8, 2025. @BitMEXResearch adds that even with 99% adoption, spammers can adapt, making anti-spam efforts a whack-a-mole battle that asymmetrically favors spammers, source: BitMEX Research on X, Oct 8, 2025. @BitMEXResearch warns of four concrete side effects from fighting spam with stricter relay rules: encouraging direct peering with miners that increases centralization pressure, breaking Compact Blocks, breaking pre-block validation caching, and breaking fee estimation, source: BitMEX Research on X, Oct 8, 2025. For trading workflows, the listed breaking fee estimation directly degrades reliability of fee-based execution planning and confirmation-time models for BTC transactions, source: BitMEX Research on X, Oct 8, 2025.

According to @BitMEXResearch, Bitcoin has repeatedly faced spam-like transaction waves across its history, including Single Satoshi Spam (2011, 2014), Satoshi Dice (2012), an 85-output attack (Apr 2013), Sochi spam (2014), Coinwallet.EU waves (2015), Giv3r (Aug 2015), Omni/Tether and Counterparty high-volume eras, a 2016 busy week, 51-output wallet spam (Mar 2017), Bestmixer (Oct 2018), Veriblock (2019), momo (2020), and 2023 Ordinals and BRC-20 plus Babylon Labs Taproot spam, with 2025 Runes, Stamps, BRC2.0 and 2026 RGB also noted. Source: @BitMEXResearch, Twitter, Oct 8, 2025. For traders, the post’s repeated references to huge volume and spam signal ongoing fee market and mempool congestion risk during such surges, warranting proactive timing of BTC deposits, withdrawals, and on-chain arbitrage around potential fee spikes and confirmation delays. Source: @BitMEXResearch, Twitter, Oct 8, 2025.

According to @Andre_Dragosch, market participants are questioning the need to upgrade to Bitcoin Core v30 or Bitcoin Knots, citing concerns about both spamming and censorship on the BTC network. Source: @Andre_Dragosch on X, Oct 5, 2025. This highlights an active debate over node policy and relay rules in different Bitcoin implementations, which define which transactions are relayed or accepted into mempools and thereby shape fee formation and confirmation latency. Source: Bitcoin Core documentation on mempool policy and transaction relay rules. For trading, divergences or shifts in these policies can change network congestion and fee volatility, influencing on-chain liquidity, exchange deposit and withdrawal costs, and the BTC spot-futures basis. Source: Bitcoin Core fee estimation documentation and Bitcoin on-chain data. Actionable focus: monitor mempool size, effective feerates, and confirmation times via Bitcoin Core RPC (getmempoolinfo, estimatesmartfee), and track miner fee share of block rewards to assess potential tailwinds or headwinds for BTC transaction costs. Source: Bitcoin Core documentation and Bitcoin blockchain data.

According to @adam3us (Twitter, Oct 5, 2025), fighting spam is an arms race and is harder on Bitcoin because of its anti-censorship design. Bitcoin relies on transaction fees and limited block space to deter spam, which creates a fee-bidding market under congestion that impacts confirmation times and on-chain costs (source: Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, 2008; Bitcoin.org Developer Guide – Transactions and Fees). Traders can manage execution risk by monitoring mempool size and sat/vB fee bands to plan BTC settlement timing and costs during congestion cycles (source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide – Mempool and Fees).

According to @adam3us, stopping spam has never worked on the internet and Bitcoin’s censorship-resistant, decentralized design makes protocol-level spam filtering ineffective; filter-as-protest is fine, but filters won’t work, source: Adam Back, X post dated Oct 5, 2025. According to @adam3us, traders should not expect effective on-chain spam blacklists to reduce congestion, and instead assume BTC fee market and mempool dynamics will continue to be market-driven, source: Adam Back, X post dated Oct 5, 2025.

According to @Excellion, OP_RETURN2 is a potential Bitcoin soft-fork concept proposing a cheaper, fully discardable OP_RETURN2 annex not included in transaction hashes, limiting OP_RETURN via consensus rules, and removing the SegWit discount. Source: https://x.com/Excellion/status/1974608749429137533 Removing the SegWit discount would increase the effective weight of witness data toward 4 weight units per byte (like base data) from the discounted 1 weight unit, directly raising fees for witness-heavy transactions per the BIP-141 weight formula. Source: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki Ordinals inscriptions embed content in Taproot witness data, so higher witness costs would directly raise on-chain inscription costs and could reduce activity in inscription-heavy markets such as BRC-20. Source: https://docs.ordinals.com/inscriptions.html Soft-fork proposals are typically discussed on the bitcoin-dev mailing list and formalized as BIPs, creating public milestones traders can monitor for potential timing and market impact on BTC fees and throughput. Source: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev

According to BitMEX Research, Bitcoin blockspace should be allocated by market pricing and miners should not avoid high-fee transactions, as stated in its post on X dated Sep 30, 2025, source: BitMEX Research (X, Sep 30, 2025). This stance reinforces fee-based prioritization in miner transaction selection, a core driver of BTC fee market dynamics relevant to transaction costs and confirmation ordering, source: BitMEX Research (X, Sep 30, 2025).

According to @BitMEXResearch, Bitcoin transactions paying below 1 satoshi per vbyte do not price out legitimate payments because higher-fee transactions are prioritized for inclusion. Source: @BitMEXResearch. Bitcoin Core policy prioritizes transactions by feerate and enforces a typical minimum relay fee around 1 sat/vB, so sub-1 sat/vB traffic is generally not relayed or is deprioritized, limiting its impact on confirmation times and fee pressure for standard payments. Source: Bitcoin Core policy documentation. For traders, this indicates alleged low-fee spam should not materially elevate BTC on-chain fees or disrupt exchange deposits and withdrawals that use market-rate fees, reducing fee-driven latency risks in arbitrage and settlement workflows. Source: @BitMEXResearch and Bitcoin Core policy documentation.

According to Farside Investors, the mempool exists to model which transactions will get mined and acts as a spam-prevention layer (source: https://twitter.com/FarsideUK/status/1972207671974719623; original statement via BitMEX Research: https://x.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972207072516214854). For traders, this implies BTC fee levels directly signal inclusion probability and confirmation timing, so monitoring mempool pressure can help set competitive fees and manage settlement risk during execution (source: https://twitter.com/FarsideUK/status/1972207671974719623). When spam-like low-fee floods occur, the mempool’s filtering role concentrates blockspace on transactions most likely to be mined, shifting fee and timing dynamics that affect trade settlement and on-chain arbitrage windows (source: https://x.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972207072516214854; https://twitter.com/FarsideUK/status/1972207671974719623).

According to @BitMEXResearch, Greg Maxwell stated that the Bitcoin mempool's purpose is to model what will get mined, clarifying that it reflects transactions miners are likely to include next. Source: BitMEX Research tweet on Sep 28, 2025: https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972207072516214854 According to @BitMEXResearch, Andrew Poelstra added that the purpose of the mempool is to approximate the contents of blocks, reinforcing that mempool composition is a proxy for near-term block templates. Source: BitMEX Research tweet on Sep 28, 2025: https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972207072516214854 For BTC traders, these definitions confirm that monitoring the mempool helps estimate likely next-block inclusions and fee rates to optimize on-chain execution timing and fee bids. Source: BitMEX Research tweet on Sep 28, 2025: https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1972207072516214854

According to @Excellion, Luke Dashjr was the only developer who publicly pushed to decrease Bitcoin’s block size during earlier debates, underscoring a minority position in core policy discussions (source: Samson Mow on X, Sep 25, 2025). A block size reduction would mechanically lower base-layer transaction capacity and tends to intensify fee competition when demand is steady, directly affecting BTC transaction fees and exchange withdrawal costs relevant to active traders (source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide — Blocks and Transactions). Traders tracking BTC should monitor fee-rate bands, mempool backlog, and average confirmation times to optimize execution if block-size policy discussion elevates fee pressure and on-chain congestion (source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide; Samson Mow on X).

According to @FarsideUK, the long-running Bitcoin OP_RETURN policy limit debate is resolved, with nodes free to set their own local relay limit permanently. Source: Farside Investors on X, Sep 22, 2025. This aligns with Bitcoin Core policy design, where OP_RETURN data-carrier settings (-datacarrier and -datacarriersize) are node-level, non-consensus parameters, meaning each operator can set their own policy without affecting network consensus. Source: Bitcoin Core documentation. For traders, the key takeaway is no consensus change and thus minimal fork risk for BTC, while higher local limits can facilitate more data embedding during hype cycles, which has historically lifted on-chain fees and miner revenue amid inscription surges. Sources: Bitcoin Core policy documentation; mempool.space historical fee charts during the May 2023 inscription spike.

According to @BitMEXResearch, individual non-economic relaying nodes can significantly influence Bitcoin when they loosen relay policies, whereas attempts by such nodes to tighten relay policies tend to matter less for network behavior (source: @BitMEXResearch). Bitcoin Core defines standardness and relay policy rules that govern which transactions are propagated, so looser relay increases the set of transactions reaching mempools and miners, directly linking relay policy to transaction propagation and inclusion chances (source: Bitcoin Core policy documentation). For traders, changes that broaden relay can alter mempool composition and feerate competition, impacting short-term BTC confirmation probabilities and fee volatility to monitor during intraday execution (source: Bitcoin Core mining and mempool documentation). Practical signals include tracking mempool size and median feerates on public explorers to detect propagation shifts that affect execution costs and timing (source: mempool.space dashboard).

According to @BitMEXResearch, its new report on The Growth of Bitcoin Merge Mining examines the prevalence of multiple OP_RETURN outputs inside BTC coinbase transactions and frames the debate over whether such data should be considered spam or legitimate merge‑mining metadata (BitMEX Research). According to the Bitcoin Developer Guide, coinbase transactions are constructed by miners, bypass mempool relay policies, and may include arbitrary data, while OP_RETURN outputs are provably unspendable and still count toward block weight (Bitcoin Developer Guide). According to BIP141, Bitcoin’s block weight is capped at 4,000,000 weight units, so additional coinbase data reduces available capacity for fee‑paying transactions and can tighten the BTC fee market during congestion (BIP141). According to Bitcoin Core policy documentation, standardness rules govern relay but not consensus validity, meaning miners can include non‑standard elements in the coinbase without violating consensus rules (Bitcoin Core policy). According to the Bitcoin Wiki’s merged mining overview, merge mining lets miners earn auxiliary‑chain rewards at little additional cost, which can influence the trade‑off between including coinbase data commitments and prioritizing fee‑paying transactions—an incentive dynamic traders should monitor when assessing near‑term BTC on‑chain fee pressure (Bitcoin Wiki: Merged Mining).

According to BitMEX Research, home “pleb” node runners who do not send transactions can sometimes influence Bitcoin by supporting looser policy rules, while they are largely ineffective at tightening policy rules. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 16, 2025. This view is consistent with Bitcoin Core documentation that policy and standardness are non-consensus, node-local rules, so transactions rejected by some nodes can still propagate and be mined if other nodes use looser relay policy. Source: Bitcoin Core Documentation, Policy, accessed Sep 16, 2025. For traders, this asymmetry means relaxations in relay policy can spread bottom-up without miner coordination, potentially broadening transaction relay and shifting mempool composition and fee dynamics that affect BTC on-chain costs and timing. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 16, 2025; Bitcoin Core Documentation, Policy, accessed Sep 16, 2025. Conversely, rapid community-driven tightening is less likely to be effective without adoption by miners and major relays, making miner policy signals and fee-rate curves key monitoring points for BTC liquidity and execution risk. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 16, 2025; Bitcoin Core Documentation, Policy, accessed Sep 16, 2025; Bitcoin.org Developer Guide, Fees, accessed Sep 16, 2025.

According to @BitMEXResearch, a new report analyzes how Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions affect node runners’ bandwidth, storage, and operating costs, linking these dynamics to BTC fee volatility and blockspace pricing. Source: https://blog.bitmex.com/ordinals-impact-on-node-runners/ For traders, the report highlights three actionable metrics to monitor during inscription activity: mempool size, median sat/vB fee rates, and block fullness, as these directly impact execution costs and settlement latency for BTC transactions. Source: https://blog.bitmex.com/ordinals-impact-on-node-runners/ The study’s focus is directly relevant to fee-derived miner revenues versus subsidies, a mix that can influence short-term hashprice and on-chain cost environment during periods of elevated inscriptions. Source: https://blog.bitmex.com/ordinals-impact-on-node-runners/

According to @BitMEXResearch, the Bitcoin UTXO set expanded from 84 million to 169 million between December 2022 and September 2025 during the Ordinals period, an increase of roughly 85 million outputs, highlighting significant on-chain growth (source: @BitMEXResearch, Sep 8, 2025). According to @BitMEXResearch, BRC-20 tokens are identified as the key scaling problem driving this UTXO expansion in the Ordinals era (source: @BitMEXResearch, Sep 8, 2025). A larger UTXO set raises memory and storage requirements for full nodes, indicating increased resource load at the protocol level that traders should monitor for operational costs and throughput constraints (source: Bitcoin Developer Reference, UTXO set). Historically, surges in Ordinals and BRC-20 activity have coincided with higher BTC transaction fees and slower confirmations, which can affect exchange deposit and withdrawal timing and miner fee revenue sensitivity (source: mempool.space historical fee charts, May 2023).

According to Adam Back, pools using sv2/datum run a trust-the-pool model. Source: Adam Back, X, Sep 5, 2025. He adds that a pool could reject pool shares with JPEGs or any other content it chooses to block, meaning attempts to bypass pool preferences cut both ways. Source: Adam Back, X, Sep 5, 2025. For traders, pool-level filtering in Stratum V2 can influence which transactions are ultimately included in blocks and the resulting Bitcoin fee mix during content-heavy periods. Source: Stratum V2 Project documentation; Glassnode Analytics.