According to @FarsideUK, Farside Investors posted the term OP_RETURN and linked to a BitMEX Research post on Oct 17, 2025. Source: Farside Investors on X and BitMEX Research on X. OP_RETURN is a Bitcoin script opcode that stores arbitrary data in transactions and makes those outputs provably unspendable, influencing blockspace usage and the UTXO set. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide and Bitcoin Wiki. Higher OP_RETURN usage increases average transaction size and can push fee rates higher, affecting short-term BTC transaction costs and miner fee revenue. Source: Bitcoin Optech Newsletter and Bitcoin.org fee market documentation. For trading, monitor mempool congestion and fee-rate bands to time BTC transfers and evaluate miner revenue sensitivity during periods of elevated OP_RETURN-driven activity. Source: mempool.space metrics and Bitcoin Optech analyses.

According to Farside Investors, the account drew attention to OP_RETURN by sharing a BitMEX Research post on X on Oct 17, 2025, without providing additional metrics in the post. Source: Farside Investors on X. The post links traders to BitMEX Research on X for the underlying OP_RETURN context and details. Source: BitMEX Research on X. OP_RETURN is a Bitcoin script opcode that embeds small pieces of data in provably unspendable outputs, which consumes blockspace and contributes to network load that traders track for fee risk. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide; Bitcoin Core documentation. When demand for blockspace rises, fee rates tend to increase as blocks fill, raising on-chain transaction costs and the fee component of miner revenue that can affect BTC settlement timing and costs. Source: Bitcoin.org Fee Estimation Guide; Bitcoin Core policy documentation. Traders should monitor mempool size and sat/vB fee bands to gauge potential changes in BTC transaction costs and settlement latency around OP_RETURN-related activity. Source: mempool.space data. For specific context on today’s reference to OP_RETURN, review the linked BitMEX Research thread to align trading decisions with any identified changes in usage patterns. Source: BitMEX Research on X.

According to @Excellion, the Bitcoin dust limit is just a relay filter and Bitcoin Core should remove it to reflect actual network usage, as stated in his post on X: https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1978656208560226566. In Bitcoin Core policy, the dust limit marks very small outputs as non-standard for relay to mitigate spam, with typical thresholds (e.g., ~546 sats for P2PKH at a 1 sat/vB min relay fee) derived from policy rules and cost assumptions, affecting what transactions propagate across the network; source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Dust and https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/policy/standard_transactions.md. Any change to remove or alter this filter would require a reviewed code change through the Bitcoin Core contribution and PR process, which governs how consensus and policy modifications are evaluated and merged; source: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md. For traders, relay policy directly influences which transactions reach miners and can impact fee pressure and confirmation times when blocks are full, affecting on-chain settlement costs and timing for BTC flows; source: https://developer.bitcoin.org/devguide/transactions.html and https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/policy/standard_transactions.md.

According to @danheld, Bitcoin block space has been full of 'spam' since inception, and transaction fees act as the network’s spam filters (source: @danheld on X, Oct 8, 2025). For traders, this frames fee spikes as congestion signals; monitor sat/vByte fee rates and the mempool backlog when timing BTC deposits, withdrawals, and on-chain arbitrage (source: @danheld on X, Oct 8, 2025). Operationally, budget for higher on-chain costs during peak demand and target lower-fee windows to reduce slippage when moving BTC to and from exchanges (source: @danheld 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 @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 @BitMEXResearch, Bitcoin transaction fees function as the network’s spam filter and have worked effectively for almost 17 years, underscoring the fee market’s role in curbing low-value floods of transactions. Source: BitMEX Research on X, Sep 30, 2025. This statement aligns with Bitcoin’s design where miners prioritize higher-fee transactions, making spam economically costly and preserving block space for market-rate demand. Source: Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System; Bitcoin Core documentation on transaction selection and mempool policy. For traders moving BTC on-chain, timely settlement typically requires paying the prevailing sat/vB market rate, especially during mempool congestion windows when low-fee transactions face delays or eviction. Source: Bitcoin Core fee estimation and mempool policy documentation. Elevated on-chain fees directly increase miners’ fee revenue share per block, reinforcing prioritization by fee and shaping block space pricing dynamics that traders must account for when planning transfers or arbitrage flows. Source: Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008; Bitcoin Core mining and fee policy documentation.

According to @deanmlittle, he posted on X that Udi is ruining Bitcoin by selling JPEGs on-chain, underscoring the ongoing rift over Ordinals and inscriptions on BTC that traders track for sentiment shifts. Source: @deanmlittle on X, Sep 28, 2025. Ordinals enable image-like data to be inscribed directly on Bitcoin, a design that has coincided with periods of elevated transaction counts and fee pressure during prior inscription waves, which are relevant to liquidity and execution costs. Source: Ordinals protocol documentation; mempool.space network fee and mempool charts. Higher on-chain fees directly increase miner transaction-fee revenue share, a dynamic that can affect miner cash flows and hashprice sensitivity that BTC and miner-equity traders monitor. Source: Bitcoin.org Developer Guide on transaction fees; Luxor Hashrate Index research. For trade planning, monitor three signals: mempool backlog and median fee rate for execution risk, inscription mint activity for NFT-on-Bitcoin momentum, and miner fee share to gauge miner revenue leverage to fees. Source: mempool.space for mempool and fee metrics; Dune Analytics Ordinals dashboards for inscription counts; Luxor Hashrate Index for miner revenue analytics.

According to @BitMEXResearch, Bitcoin development should be evaluated on a centuries-long timeline and node developers should not play whack-a-mole with spammers, signaling a conservative approach to protocol and policy changes that traders should incorporate into risk management, source: @BitMEXResearch. According to @BitMEXResearch, market participants should not expect rapid rule tweaks aimed at spam mitigation and should instead time BTC transfers and settlements around fee market and mempool conditions, source: @BitMEXResearch. According to @BitMEXResearch, the emphasis on long-term incentives and inevitabilities prioritizes the native fee market to ration blockspace, so execution plans should account for on-chain fee volatility rather than assuming quick protocol-level relief, source: @BitMEXResearch.

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, 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 @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/

According to @rovercrc, a solo miner mined an entire Bitcoin (BTC) block valued at about $340,000, indicating the combined block subsidy and transaction fees reached that amount at the time of mining, source: @rovercrc on X. Solo-miner block wins are rare but possible under Bitcoin’s probabilistic proof-of-work where block discovery follows a Poisson process, source: Bitcoin whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto 2008. For verification and trading context, check real-time fee rates and mempool congestion to see whether elevated fees contributed to the payout, source: mempool.space, and review miner revenue per TH/s on the Luxor Hashprice Index to gauge mining revenue conditions, source: Luxor Technology. Because the cited post does not include a block height or address, traders should seek corroboration on public block explorers before acting, source: @rovercrc on X and BTC.com block explorer.

According to @adam3us, only a narrow subset of rules is consensus-enforceable in Bitcoin-like systems; minimum relay fee rates and minimum fee bumps for RBF make transaction relay anti-DoS. Source: Adam Back on X https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1962089352739357036 Bitcoin Core implements these protections at the policy layer via minrelaytxfee and incrementalrelayfee defaults and BIP125, which requires replacements to pay at least the original total plus an incremental fee, increasing spam costs and stabilizing mempool relay under load. Source: Bitcoin Core bitcoind options -minrelaytxfee and -incrementalrelayfee https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/26.0.0/man/bitcoind/ and BIP-0125 https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0125.mediawiki For BTC traders, during fee spikes, low-fee or under-bumped RBF transactions can be rejected below the minimum relay feerate or evicted when mempools are full, extending on-chain settlement times; using competitive feerates or RBF fee-bumps (bumpfee RPC) raises inclusion probability. Source: Bitcoin Core mempool-limit policy https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/policy/mempool-limit.md and Bitcoin Core bumpfee RPC https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/26.0.0/rpc/wallet/bumpfee/

According to @adam3us, as Bitcoin technology improves, cryptographic fungibility should increase and the blockchain will converge to a cryptographic accumulator where transactions become indistinguishable blobs, making censorship and filtering impractical (Source: @adam3us on X, Aug 20, 2025). For traders, his view implies blockspace demand from any use case can still bid for inclusion, so fee dynamics are set by aggregate demand rather than policy-based filtering; monitor mempool congestion, sat/vB fee bands, and miner fee share of revenue as leading signals for BTC volatility and miner income sensitivity (Source: @adam3us on X, Aug 20, 2025). If filtering becomes ineffective as argued, attempts to exclude transaction types would not sustainably suppress fees, keeping attention on fee-market liquidity and on-chain throughput constraints when positioning around BTC catalysts (Source: @adam3us on X, Aug 20, 2025).

According to @deanmlittle, adversaries are spamming roughly 100k assembly-optimized transaction payloads to MEV other users to the back of the queue, signaling elevated mempool contention and priority fee pressure for on-chain traders; Source: https://twitter.com/deanmlittle/status/1957296880536502457 Such heavy orderflow competition increases the odds of failed transactions, slippage on DEX swaps, and unfavorable execution from front-running and sandwich attacks documented in peer-reviewed research; Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.05234 Traders can mitigate by routing through private or MEV-protected relays and batch-auction protocols to internalize MEV and reduce exposure to mempool sniping; Sources: https://docs.flashbots.net/flashbots-protect/overview and https://docs.cow.fi/ When bot activity spikes, monitor mempool congestion and inclusion latency, and raise tips/priority fees per your chain’s fee market design to maintain execution quality; Source: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/gas/

According to Samson Mow (@Excellion), the discussion around using filters to block spam transactions on the Bitcoin network, particularly those employing OP_RETURN, is more ideological than technical. Mow emphasizes that filters cannot guarantee complete spam prevention and that spammers may not necessarily rely on OP_RETURN. This ongoing debate signals uncertainty for traders regarding future transaction throughput and fee dynamics, as any changes to Bitcoin network filtering could affect mempool congestion and transaction costs. Traders should monitor developments closely as shifts in network policy or consensus could significantly impact on-chain activity and related crypto asset prices (source: Twitter/@Excellion, May 6, 2025).

According to @BitMEXResearch, data from bitcoin-data.github.io shows that between November 21, 2021, and April 15, 2024, there were 20,796 non-standard Bitcoin transactions, generating 11.63 BTC in total fees. For traders, this dataset highlights the ongoing relevance of non-standard transactions in network activity, which can impact transaction fee trends and mempool congestion. Understanding these historical fee metrics is essential for optimizing trading strategies and anticipating fee-related market movements. Source: @BitMEXResearch via bitcoin-data.github.io.