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.

According to @BitMEXResearch, economic user nodes and investors enforce Bitcoin protocol rules, while miners decide which transactions are included in each block. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 4, 2025. @BitMEXResearch added that miners should select transactions to maximize per-block revenue and adopt incentive compatible software, highlighting revenue-driven transaction selection as a key dynamic for BTC network activity and settlement. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 4, 2025.

According to @adam3us, Bitcoin miners are including 'spam' transactions and he directed readers to BitMEX Research’s article Removing Bitcoin’s Guardrails for context. Source: Adam Back on X, Sep 3, 2025 https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1963388838350360694; BitMEX Research blog https://blog.bitmex.com/removing-bitcoins-guardrails/ For trading decisions, this draws focus to monitoring BTC fee rates, mempool backlog, and miner revenue sensitivity when miner transaction-selection practices face scrutiny. Source: Adam Back on X highlighting miner inclusion of 'spam' https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1963388838350360694; BitMEX Research blog providing referenced analysis https://blog.bitmex.com/removing-bitcoins-guardrails/