According to Samson Mow on Twitter, several experienced Bitcoiners are downplaying the importance of running nodes, which poses a potential risk to network decentralization and security (source: Samson Mow, Twitter, May 14, 2025). For traders, understanding the significance of nodes is crucial, as node participation ensures transaction validation and guards against network attacks. Reduced node engagement can impact transaction reliability and fee dynamics, directly affecting Bitcoin trading strategies and on-chain analytics.

According to @FarsideUK, the Bitcoin Core software repository has recently removed the policy limit on the size of OP_Return outputs (source: Twitter, May 6, 2025). OP_Return allows data to be embedded into Bitcoin transactions, and this policy change could enable larger data payloads on the blockchain. For traders, the removal of this guardrail may lead to increased use of Bitcoin for tokenization and data storage, potentially driving up transaction fees and increasing network congestion. These changes could impact Bitcoin's utility and trading volumes, as well as influence the development of new crypto assets and decentralized applications built on Bitcoin (source: @FarsideUK via Twitter).