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The Blockspace Podcast: This New Bitcoin Proposal Would Steal Your Bitcoin

CoinDesk Podcast Network

CoinDesk

Business News, Tech News, Daily News, News

4.8689 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A new proposal suggests burning "spam" Bitcoin UTXOs. We explain why the "CAT" proposal is technically flawed, philosophically dangerous, and amounts to on-chain confiscation. Today, we break down the controversial "CAT" proposal by Claire Ostrom. This idea suggests snapshotting and burning UTXOs associated with Ordinals and Stamps to curb spam. We analyze the technical flaws, the failed game theory, and why seizing user coins—even "dirty" ones—sets a dangerous precedent for Bitcoin censorship and on-chain confiscation. Subscribe to the newsletter! https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com Notes: * CAT burns UTXOs under a specific threshold * 100 million inscriptions are likely junk * Proposal is a soft fork consensus change Timestamps: 00:00 Start 06:16 BIP text 08:20 Burning Bitcoin UTXOs 11:55 non-monetary UTXO? WTF? 13:10 BIP process 16:43 Coinjoined Chris' thread 21:14 Game theory 23:08 hard price floor - 👋The Blockspace Podcast is produced Blockspace Media, Bitcoin’s first B2B publication in Bitcoin. Follow us on Twitter and check out our newsletter for the best information in Bitcoin mining, Ordinals and tech! Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here. Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0

A couple days ago, a pseudonymous account put out a proposal that says,

0:04.7

Spammers have all this Bitcoin, and we're going to burn that Bitcoin so that spam becomes untenable.

0:14.2

There seem to be people who seriously consider seizing users Bitcoin, even if it is the dirty

0:19.9

spammers and gamblers.

0:21.5

Do they enjoy the same access to Bitcoin as the rest of us, high and mighty pure Bitcoiners?

0:27.8

It's almost like a reverse Jubilee.

0:30.3

So instead of everybody like their deaths being wiped away, we're going to seize everything.

0:35.8

I think they have a name for that, actually.

0:38.0

I think it's 1601, 1640, whatever that thing, Roosevelt.

0:43.0

Yeah.

0:43.3

It's basically like that, but for your ordnals.

0:48.2

Mr. President, a second filter has hit the timeline.

0:51.3

That's right.

0:52.2

They're still trying to filter your Bitcoin transactions. A new

0:55.4

proposal suggesting we burn users Bitcoin. And guess what? It is the worst proposal I've ever heard.

1:04.8

We're going to explain it.

1:19.1

A couple days ago, a pseudonymous account named Claire Ostrom, spelled Claire like the name, O-S-T-R-O-M,

1:27.1

Oström, put out a proposal called the cat, not to be confused with Op-Cat, but actually like the cat,

1:29.3

like an actual animal who is a cat.

1:41.1

That says, spammers have all this Bitcoin and we're going to burn that Bitcoin so that spam becomes untenable.

1:48.4

This proposal was denied from the Bitcoin developer mailing list, spicy we'll talk about in a sec, and then the proposal also kind of ham-fistedly tries to impose a cost onto the

1:55.8

spammers. Now, I'll explain how that doesn't really seem to be very effective.

...

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