Michael Saylor says Bitcoin’s biggest risks are limiting integration and changing core rules

Michael Saylor sharpened his warning that Bitcoin’s main long-term threat is internal pressure to rewrite its consensus rules, arguing that proposals such as BIP-110, covenant mechanisms and larger blocks would let factions impose their preferences on the wider network. He said Bitcoin’s rules function as a constitution that protects scarcity, settlement and property rights, and that altering them for one group’s convenience would undermine the economic rights of all participants. The latest dispute has kept BIP-110 at the center of one of Bitcoin’s most divisive policy debates of 2026. Supporters say the proposal would limit arbitrary data attachments that bloat the chain and crowd out ordinary payments, while opponents including Saylor argue it would censor valid fee-paying transactions, damage neutrality and weaken the fee market that miners increasingly depend on as block subsidies continue to halve every 210,000 blocks. Saylor said undermining that fee market would amount to disarming the network’s security budget. The signaling window for BIP-110 is approaching around August 9. Dayton Ohm and other backers present the proposal as spam protection rather than censorship, while Blockstream CEO Adam Back has also opposed it, focusing on the low 55% activation threshold and the risk of a hard fork. The broader fight underscores how protocol changes in Bitcoin, which has no formal central authority, can become disputes over governance, miner incentives and what kinds of activity the network should permit. Saylor’s comments came as Strategy paused bitcoin purchases. A July 27 8-K filing showed the company added $525 million to its dollar reserve, bringing the total to $3.75 billion, enough to cover about 2.1 years of preferred-share dividend obligations running at roughly $1.76 billion annually. Strategy still holds 843,775 BTC, leaving it 156,225 BTC short of its stated goal of reaching 1 million BTC by the end of 2026. With about 22 weeks left in the year, closing that gap would require purchases of roughly 7,000 BTC a week, but the company is not currently buying.