I just shipped the Adoption dimension to The Bitcoin Portal.
It measures the direction and pace of monetary use on-chain (velocity). Right now it’s lean, focused on Value and Breadth from blockchain data. Merchants and Lightning are visible but not yet scored.
You can already see the current reading and drill-down. Full historical Adoption scoring sits behind the new Analyst tier.
Speaking of which, I also launched the Analyst tier last week (€15/month or €135/year, paid in Bitcoin). It gives you:
- 6 years of historical data across the dimensions (including the Adoption one) and on-chain metrics.
- A dedicated weekly structural read on how the BMHI is moving
Free tier stays generous.
The goal is to keep the core dashboard useful while giving serious users deeper context.
Spam on Bitcoin — Last 7 days:
~70% of all transactions are non-monetary
473.95 MB of non-monetary data (50.8% of Tx vsize) permanently stored on every full node
Bitcoin is being bloated by non-monetary traffic. BIP-110 is the cure.
Run Knots + BIP-110
"BIP-110 catches almost no spam."
That's become the main argument against it.
By raw transaction count, it's not entirely wrong. But count is the wrong metric.
After decoding every OP_RETURN on Bitcoin for the last 60 days:
91% is now one funded protocol: Alkanes -> Millions of tiny mints BIP-110 won't touch (and shouldn't, that's relay policy's job).
But those mints exist because contracts were deployed for them.
- Deployment = a WASM binary in a Taproot reveal. 627 of them in 60 days.
- Every single one rejected by BIP-110.
You don’t stop a metaprotocol by filtering its mints.
You stop it at deployment.
"Filtering arbitrary data is censorship. It betrays Bitcoin's neutrality."
It doesn't. Every protocol is defined by what it refuses to carry. A voice codec dropping oversized packets is not silencing speech.
A monetary network that won't defend its scope doesn't stay neutral. It just lets whoever has the most resources define its scope instead.
New issue: why Bitcoin isn't a bulletin board, even when the bulletins are noble.
Foundry USA started mining large OP_RETURN data in May.
They likely 'just' upgraded to v30 and ran the default. The harm followed anyway.
New piece on what changed, why it matters, and why we need BIP-110.
Bitcoin Block Space Health this week:
- Decentralization: 61
- Security: 41
A 20-point gap inside the same dimension.
UTXO set is fine. Composition is slowly degrading. Large OP_RETURN payloads pinning Security to the floor.
Why a single score would erase the story:
Bitcoin's price is mostly a bet on its structure.
This week I launched v2 of The Bitcoin Portal, anchored by the Bitcoin Monetary Health Index, a 0–100 score across 7 dimensions of structural health.
Methodology versioned, transparent, opinionated.
SpiderPool's large OP_RETURN activity has been accelerating lately -> Five in the last 7 days.
Most recent one: a 10KB MP3 (royalty-free UI click sound from http://SoundJay.com) inscribed in a single transaction via three OP_RETURN outputs, using a 'pwm1:' file-inscription protocol.
New issue: The 45% Problem
30% (3-year avg) → 37% (6 months ago) → 45% today.
Bitcoin’s blockspace is getting flooded with non-financial data.
The fee market won’t fix it.
Miners won’t fix it.
Here’s what will.
Bitcoin ASIC supply chain: Bitmain + MicroBT = 82% of global output. Both Chinese.
Less known: most ASIC chips are fabricated at TSMC.
The chokepoint is Taiwan.
BMHI #22:
Bitcoin Block Space Weekly #11 is out.
BIP-110 is coming. The only question is: who signals first?
This week I break down the mining landscape: Who spams, who doesn't, who's most likely to make the first move, and my take on how activation plays out.
0.08%... That's the fee premium SpiderPool earns over Ocean by filling blocks with non-financial data.
Issue #2 is out. The data on who's filling Bitcoin's blocks.
“v30 won't change much - miners already bypass policy with direct submission anyway."
I tracked 3months OP_RETURN data to test that claim:
- Before Oct 10: Minimal large OP_RETURNs
- Oct 10: v30 is released
- Same day: F2Pool mines a 97KB OP_RETURN.
- After Oct 10: Clear increase.
Who's doing this?
F2Pool , Marathon, SpiderPool -> Combined 22-23% of the hashrate
23% of miners can turn 100% of nodes into large file (spam) storage devices.
v30 relay policy enabled this. Consensus rules will fix it.
Crypto sentiment back to Fear zone 😨
Bitcoin price is highly correlated with sentiment.
We could test $110k today…
Fear zones are usually good times to accumulate though.