On July 21, 2026, Michael Saylor, the founder of Strategy who has long been openly bullish on Bitcoin, once again positioned himself at the center of controversy: he publicly wrote against Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110, this time delving into the depths of values. One explicit goal of BIP-110 is to limit the storage of non-financial data on the Bitcoin chain; applications that have only recently taken root on the main chain, from inscriptions to Bitcoin-based NFTs, fundamentally rely on the writing and preservation of such data and are thus inherently involved in this rule dispute. In his statement, Saylor pointed out that attempting to "clean up" the network by modifying the underlying rules simply because one disagrees with how others use Bitcoin is a nationalist impulse and characterized BIP-110 as an imposition of so-called "monetary purity" through legal or coercive means, which contradicts the spirit of freedom, property rights, free markets, Austrian economics, and natural law that Bitcoin embodies. Thus, a simple technical proposal was raised to a question of values: is BIP-110 protecting the monetary attributes of Bitcoin, or is it tightening the space for users to freely use Bitcoin in the name of rules, which became the starting point for all subsequent discussions.
BIP-110 Limits Non-Financial Data Inscriptions and NFTs
To understand this "monetary purity" dispute, one must return to the public orientation of BIP-110 itself. Multiple industry media descriptions are quite consistent: one of the goals of this Bitcoin improvement proposal is to limit the storage of non-financial data on the Bitcoin chain. In other words, it does not directly deny a specific application but attempts to redraw a boundary at the protocol level—what kinds of data can, or even should, occupy block space, and what kinds of data are considered noise deviating from the "monetary standard."
Once this boundary is encoded, the first to be affected will be all applications based on data writing. The rapidly expanding Bitcoin inscriptions over the past few years, as well as NFTs that rely on the Bitcoin chain to record and preserve images, metadata, and other information, are based on the premise of storing non-financial data on the chain, which logically conflicts with the tightening direction of BIP-110. However, at this stage, key information surrounding this proposal is still lacking: public materials do not provide its specific technical implementation method, there is no clear identity of the initiator, and there is no visible progress in governance processes. We are also unable to confirm from existing information whether it has entered a voting or activation stage. In the current context where information remains vague, BIP-110 seems more like a controversial claim that has yet to be written into a block rather than an imminent established reality.
Saylor: BIP-110 is a Nationalist Impulse
Under the premise that technical details are still unclear, Michael Saylor, the founder of Strategy, immediately provided an unequivocal value judgment. He bluntly pointed out: trying to change Bitcoin rules simply because one disagrees with how others use Bitcoin is a nationalist impulse. In his narrative, BIP-110 is no longer just an attempt to limit "the storage of non-financial data on-chain," but rather a transplantation of the control logic that traditional nation-states exert over citizen behavior into a currency network that should be decentralized and permissionless—someone is trying to decide what ways of using currency are "legitimate" and rewriting the underlying rules accordingly.
Saylor then pushed this technical proposal into a larger value coordinate system. He emphasized that the spirit of the Bitcoin community should be based on principles such as freedom, property rights, free markets, Austrian economics, and natural law, while the essence of BIP-110 is to implement the so-called "monetary purity" through legal or coercive means. In this description, "limiting non-financial data" is no longer a neutral engineering choice but a power practice meant to forcibly delineate the boundaries of "legitimate" and "impure" behaviors at the protocol level. It is precisely for this reason that this discussion swiftly transformed from a technical issue of efficiency and load into an ideological debate surrounding Austrian economics and natural law: who exactly has the authority to set moral standards for Bitcoin, and whether code is a neutral tool or will be embedded with some stance on freedom and property rights.
Collision of Rule Intervention and Decentralized Beliefs
Following the logic of BIP-110, it is clear that it represents a definite direction: redefining "what data can be written to the blockchain" at the protocol level in Bitcoin. Multiple industry media have reported that one of the public goals of this proposal is to limit the storage of non-financial data on-chain, essentially modifying the rules for nodes' acceptance of transaction loads, placing applications that depend on writing and saving non-financial data—such as inscriptions and Bitcoin-based NFTs—on the edge of potential exclusion. In other words, Bitcoin is no longer just a settlement network that treats any valid script equally but will introduce value judgments regarding usage within the underlying consensus, directly touching the principle of "protocol neutrality."
This is precisely where the tension with traditional narratives arises. Bitcoin has long been described as a decentralized network, emphasizing user control over their own property and their rights to trade freely, highlighting its permissionless and open usage attributes. In contrast, BIP-110 attempts to distinguish "pure monetary activities" from "excessive non-financial burdens" through rules, resembling a top-down intervention approach in its governance framework. In Saylor's public statement on July 21, 2026, he named this impulse nationalism: attempting to change Bitcoin rules simply because one disagrees with others on how to use Bitcoin and imposing so-called "monetary purity" through legal or coercive means contradicts the value coordinates of freedom, property rights, free markets, Austrian economics, and natural law within the Bitcoin community. Current materials have not shown a clear stance from other leaders or miners, nor can the community's disagreements be quantified; however, it is clear that in this dispute around BIP-110, Saylor is opposing not just a single technical parameter but a governance path that writes moral standards into the protocol and shapes user behavior through rules.
Fork in the Road: The Inscriptions Ecosystem and Bitcoin's Future Narrative
If BIP-110 indeed moves towards "limiting non-financial data on-chain," the inscriptions and Bitcoin-based NFT ecosystem will initially face not immediate disappearance but the pressure of redefined usage. They emerged precisely because large amounts of non-financial data could be inscribed and permanently stored on the chain. If this ability is constrained by technical rules, creators may be forced to turn to lighter data structures, rely more on off-chain storage, or even rewrite the narrative that "Bitcoin itself is the work"—these are all possible paths rather than established facts that have already occurred.
Deeper disagreements lie in whether Bitcoin should only serve as "value storage and settlement layer" or accommodate a wider range of data and applications. Saylor, who has long emphasized the monetary attributes and value storage of Bitcoin, clearly stands on the former path, whereas supporters of inscriptions and NFTs are envisioning the latter path in practice. From the currently available public materials, this debate seems to dwell more on ideology and usage; the research brief has not provided any specific data regarding actual changes in the scale of inscriptions or NFTs, address behaviors, or on-chain metrics. According to AiCoin data, there is also a lack of quantifiable evidence sufficient to depict ecological development or contraction. Under these informational conditions, any extrapolation regarding Bitcoin's future narrative must be approached with caution and moderation.
Observing the Path of BIP-110 in Bitcoin Governance
After this public "braking" on July 21, 2026, the technical proposal BIP-110 has been entirely pulled out of the context of engineers and exposed to the value debates of freedom versus coercion and decentralization versus rule intervention. Michael Saylor, who has long emphasized the monetary attributes of Bitcoin, is now questioning the compatibility of a proposal aimed at restricting non-financial data on-chain with the spirit of Bitcoin's free market, described by the media as "once again publicly opposing," indicating that this is not a spontaneous statement but a continuous position. No clear signals regarding the voting progress or official timeline for BIP-110 have yet appeared in current public information; the proposal remains in the discussion and negotiation stage. What is truly worth continuous observation is its fate in subsequent governance processes: how core developers respond to concerns on a value level, whether miners and nodes are willing to write usage restrictions into consensus rules, and whether more industry participants will, like Saylor, lay the tension between "monetary purity" and free usage out in the open. This dispute regarding BIP-110 is likely to be revisited in the future, becoming a governance example of where the Bitcoin ecosystem draws lines with rules and where it allows freedom to remain open.
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