Survey of 25 Institutions Shows 82% Ignore Bitcoin’s Core–Knots Dispute
A new poll from Galaxy Digital shows that, despite all the fuss in developer circles, most big-name Bitcoin investors are either clueless...
Quick overview
- A recent poll reveals that most major Bitcoin investors are either unaware or indifferent to the ongoing debate between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots regarding non-financial transactions.
- Only 18% of surveyed institutional players took a side, all supporting Bitcoin Core's stance against stricter filtering rules.
- The majority of respondents (82%) believe there is no significant issue, with concerns about network fragmentation outweighing worries about spam.
- Despite the controversy online, industry insiders suggest that the dispute is largely irrelevant to big players in the market.
A new poll from Galaxy Digital shows that, despite all the fuss in developer circles, most big-name Bitcoin investors are either clueless or just plain not bothered by the row brewing between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots. This bust-up centres around how the Bitcoin network ought to handle non-financial transactions – an issue that’s got some of the Bitcoin faithful worked up.
Alex Thorn, the head of research at Galaxy Digital, reckons the findings of a survey of 25 major Bitcoin-focused institutions tally with what he’s picked up from his chats with big players in the industry over the past few months: the controversy isn’t attracting much attention from the big market players – at least not yet.
The row has been heating up since the release of Bitcoin Core v30, which its critics claim could let too much non-transactional activity go through – often called ‘spam’. Knots fans have been arguing that stricter filtering is needed to stop people from embedding dodgy stuff into the blockchain. However, Bitcoin Core’s team reckon that imposing such restrictions could cause the network to fragment and undermine its core principles of neutrality and openness.
Most Investors Unaware or Just Not That Fussed
In Thorn’s poll, nearly half of the participants (46%) said they’d never even heard of the debate. Another 36% had heard about it but didn’t care one way or the other. It was only 18% who’d taken a side – and all of those were backing Bitcoin Core’s line that filtering rules would just cause confusion and weaken decentralisation.
Thorn says that despite all the noise this row is generating online, the people who actually bring in the big money think it’s either completely irrelevant or a hypothetical issue. “Real players, real investors, service providers – even government officials – just don’t see a problem,” he notes.
He added that some of the points made by Knots supporters are essentially scaremongering and bear no relation to what institutions actually worry about when it comes to blockchain risks.
Some key takeaways from Thorn’s survey:
- 82% of the institutional players he spoke to think there’s no real issue here
- Every single one of the supportive responses was in favour of Bitcoin Core
- People are actually more worried about the network fragmenting than they are about ‘spam’
- Government and service-provider views are lining up with what the institutions are saying
Small Sample, But the Message Still Comes Across
When Thorn was asked about the survey’s relatively small size, he acknowledged it was a limitation but stood by its accuracy. However, he noted that the survey’s findings align with what he’s been hearing from his chats with large miners, crypto investment funds, custodians, and policymakers.
Thorn pointed out that he didn’t actually do a formal poll of miners. Still, his informal chats suggest that nobody in the industry gives a hoot about this row. “Nobody’s really following what’s going on,” he says, which reinforces the idea that this dispute is basically a sideshow as far as the big players are concerned.
As for how all this might play out, Thorn reckons there are a few possible outcomes. The most likely one, he thinks, is that this whole thing just fizzles out – “no one cares, and it fades away”. The second possibility is more worrying – if the alarmist talk gets out of hand, it could actually do some damage to market confidence, even if the proposed forks don’t go ahead.
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