Michael Saylor, the executive chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and arguably Bitcoin’s most vocal corporate evangelist, has come out swinging against a proposed change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. His weapon of choice: a lengthy essay titled “110 Reasons BIP-110 Is a Bad Idea,” published on July 18-19, 2026.

The man whose company holds 843,775 BTC, worth roughly $54.31 billion at current prices, clearly has some skin in this game.

What BIP-110 actually proposes

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 is a temporary soft fork designed to restrict arbitrary data storage on the Bitcoin blockchain. The proposal includes seven specific restrictions on data storage methods. It also lowers the miner signaling threshold required for activation to 55%, down from the traditional 95% supermajority that Bitcoin soft forks have historically required.

The activation target is set for August 2026, though the proposal currently lacks substantial support to hit even that reduced threshold.

Saylor’s case against the proposal

Saylor’s core argument boils down to a single principle: Bitcoin’s value comes from its neutrality. The moment you start deciding which types of valid, fee-paying transactions are acceptable and which aren’t, you’ve opened a door that’s very difficult to close.

He frames Bitcoin’s existing “hard consensus” mechanism, requiring near-unanimous agreement for protocol changes, as a critical safeguard against governance overreach. Lowering the signaling threshold to 55% doesn’t just make this particular change easier to implement. It establishes a precedent that future changes can bypass the near-universal agreement that has historically protected Bitcoin from contentious forks.

Saylor also highlights a practical concern that often gets lost in the ideological debate. BIP-110 would invalidate transactions that are currently valid and paying fees to miners.

He isn’t alone in his assessment. Adam Back, the co-founder of Blockstream and one of the few people actually cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, publicly backed Saylor’s opposition. Back specifically flagged the risk of network splits.

The deeper ideological fault line

This debate didn’t emerge from nowhere. It’s the latest eruption along a fault line that’s been rumbling since Ordinals first appeared on Bitcoin in early 2023.

On one side are Bitcoin purists who believe the network should serve exclusively as a monetary system. They view inscriptions and arbitrary data storage as spam that bloats the blockchain, drives up fees for financial transactions, and degrades Bitcoin’s core functionality as sound money.

On the other side are those who argue that any valid transaction paying the required fee is, by definition, not spam.

What this means for investors

The block size wars of 2015-2017 ultimately produced a hard fork (Bitcoin Cash) and years of community acrimony. BIP-110 appears to lack the support necessary for activation. The reduced 55% miner threshold was presumably designed to make passage easier, but even that lower bar seems unlikely to be cleared by August 2026. Opposition from heavyweight figures like Saylor and Back further diminishes the proposal’s chances.

What investors should actually watch is whether alternative proposals emerge that try to address the data storage concerns without lowering activation thresholds. The fact that BIP-110 simultaneously picks a fight about transaction types and governance standards is precisely why it has attracted such forceful opposition from some of Bitcoin’s most prominent stakeholders.