'Does Not Matter One Bit': Ripple CTO Emeritus Schwartz Fires Back at Bitcoin Spam Purists

The article discusses a Bitcoin governance debate after the failed BIP-110 soft fork, which aimed to temporarily restrict nonfinancial data on the network. In response to criticism of NFT inscriptions and custom scripts filling block space, Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz argued that public blockchain usage should not be judged by whether others consider transactions valuable or spam. He frames Bitcoin’s fee market as the correct mechanism: if users pay the required fees, their transactions should be allowed regardless of content. The piece suggests the failure of BIP-110 reinforced Bitcoin’s neutrality and highlighted continued demand for block space from non-monetary use cases. Market impact is mainly sentiment-driven rather than price-specific, reinforcing the ongoing debate over Bitcoin’s long-term utility, fee economics, and network policy.