BITCOIN SEASON 2: Bitcoin Isn’t Changing And That’s A Bad Thing
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
James O'Beirne discusses Bitcoin development challenges, the CTV soft fork controversy, and why protocol upgrades have stalled. He explains the community response to his developer letter and Bitcoin's ossification risks.
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Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne joins us to talk about the current state of Bitcoin development, the controversial CTV (OP_CheckTemplateVerify) soft fork proposal, and why he organized a letter signed by 66+ prominent Bitcoin developers requesting Bitcoin Core focus on protocol upgrades. We dive deep into Bitcoin's development culture, the post-SegWit era challenges, and the growing concern about Bitcoin's ossification.
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**Notes:**
• 66 developers signed CTV support letter
• 96% of Bitcoin value uses non-taproot outputs
• 19% of global hashrate supports CTV proposal
• 5+ years of CTV development and testing
• 5 Bitcoin bounty offered for CTV bugs found
• 16.5 years since Bitcoin's initial release
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:55 Jame's work
08:33 History of BTC development
12:37 Culture & the block size war
16:34 Code change process
24:29 The CTV letter origin
33:53 Reception of the letter
38:33 Why is there resistance?
40:53 Alternative proposal
48:20 Upgrade Hooks
50:36 Future outlooks for changes
54:49 Reasons for optimism
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Transcript
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| 0:20.9 | Hey everyone. Charlie here. |
| 0:22.9 | We're running a quick survey. |
| 0:24.5 | We want to better understand who our listeners are. |
| 0:27.4 | Do me a huge favor and fill out that survey. |
| 0:29.9 | It takes under a minute and the link is in the show description. |
| 0:33.2 | This helps us make better content for you. |
| 0:35.5 | Thanks a ton for listening. |
| 0:36.8 | Link in the show notes. |
| 0:38.6 | You may have heard that Bitcoin is complete, but did you know that Bitcoin has |
| 0:42.9 | tons of developers currently working on trying to improve it? |
| 0:47.1 | I spoke to one of these developers, James O'Burn today. |
| 0:50.5 | He takes us through the history and the how-toes of how Bitcoin development has looked. |
| 0:55.4 | And then we get into some of the thornyer, more challenging discussion topics, |
| 0:59.9 | such as the latest Bitcoin software. |
| 1:02.4 | Surprise, Bitcoin developers are always arguing about something. |
| 1:07.3 | We get into it on Bitcoin Season 2. |
| 1:15.9 | Thank you. thing. We get into it on Bitcoin Season 2. Welcome back to Bitcoin Season 2. I've got James O'Burn, a well-known voice in Bitcoin |
| 1:22.0 | development. He is a self-described Bitcoin developer who has contributed to Bitcoin |
| 1:27.3 | Core. James, welcome to Bitcoin Season 2. contributed to Bitcoin Core. |
| 1:28.7 | James, welcome to Bitcoin Season 2. |
| 1:31.0 | Hey, Charlie, it's nice to be here. |
... |
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