CoinDesk Podcast Network - BITCOIN SEASON 2: Bitcoin Isn’t Changing And That’s A Bad Thing

James O'Beirne discusses Bitcoin development challenges, the CTV soft fork controversy, and why protocol upgrades have stalled. He explains the community response to his developer letter and Bitcoin's ossification risks.


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Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne joins us to talk about the current state of Bitcoin development, the controversial CTV (OP_CheckTemplateVerify) soft fork proposal, and why he organized a letter signed by 66+ prominent Bitcoin developers requesting Bitcoin Core focus on protocol upgrades. We dive deep into Bitcoin's development culture, the post-SegWit era challenges, and the growing concern about Bitcoin's ossification.


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**Notes:**

• 66 developers signed CTV support letter

• 96% of Bitcoin value uses non-taproot outputs

• 19% of global hashrate supports CTV proposal

• 5+ years of CTV development and testing

• 5 Bitcoin bounty offered for CTV bugs found

• 16.5 years since Bitcoin's initial release


Timestamps:

00:00 Start

01:55 Jame's work

08:33 History of BTC development

12:37 Culture & the block size war

16:34 Code change process

24:29 The CTV letter origin

33:53 Reception of the letter

38:33 Why is there resistance?

40:53 Alternative proposal

48:20 Upgrade Hooks

50:36 Future outlooks for changes

54:49 Reasons for optimism



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