20 July 2026
Michael Saylor’s attack on BIP 110, the ECB trying to stymie stablecoins, and the use of eminent domain for AI infrastructure are all problems powerful institutions who love “neutrality” and “public benefit” (right up until those principles interfere with their own incentives) cause.
Michael Saylor has published 110 reasons why BIP 110 is a bad idea, because apparently even his objections must conform to Bitcoin numerology. Still, beneath the gimmick, his strongest argument is legitimate: Bitcoin cannot determine the intent behind a collection of bytes. It cannot reliably distinguish an image from a proof, a contract, a privacy tool, or some future application nobody has invented yet. Once consensus rules are changed to prohibit a use that enough people dislike, the precedent survives long after the temporary restriction expires. Bitcoin does not need guardians deciding which transactions are pure enough. It needs rules that remain neutral when people disagree.
That does not mean Saylor’s motives deserve to be accepted without inspection. He specifically warned that the precedent could eventually threaten "novel" custody, stablecoin settlement, and token systems. That is an interesting list for a man whose company manufactures preferred shares, credit instruments, and increasingly elaborate financial products around its Bitcoin holdings. Perhaps he is defending neutral consensus as a matter of principle. Perhaps he also sees a future in which Strategy wants to tokenize some of those products or settle them through Bitcoin-adjacent systems. In Bitcoin, the correct response is to identify incentives and make sure the rules do not depend upon anyone’s purity (or stupidity).
Europe’s banking establishment is having its own crisis of control. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone has repeatedly warned that stablecoins could pull deposits away from commercial banks. He is as right as he is too late. They will and there is nothing he can do to stop it. He also worries that banks are losing payment fees and transaction data to mobile platforms. That second complaint is eye-watering and deserves some attention. Banks do not merely want to hold your money. They want to know where it went, when it went there, what you purchased and where. The digital euro is being presented partly as a way to preserve the role of European banks and payment systems as private alternatives gain ground. In other words, the institutions that failed to build the new rails now want a government-sponsored version that keeps them sitting under the troll-bridge.
The ECB frames deposit flight as a threat to lending, but lending will not disappear simply because old banks lose deposits. New institutions will collect capital, extend credit, finance homes, and lend to businesses. They may use stablecoins, tokenized deposits, or structures that do not yet have familiar names. Unfortunately, the replacement power brokers may be every bit as unpleasant as the old ones. Technology changes the owners of the machinery more quickly than it changes human behavior. Stablecoins are not freedom money, and a new financial intermediary is not automatically better because its application has cleaner graphics. This is why Bitcoin remains the exit rather than merely another contestant for control of the existing system.
The ugliest version of that struggle is appearing around AI data centers. Utilities need transmission lines to feed enormous new facilities' voraciousness, and landowners are discovering that refusal may not be the end of the negotiation. Eminent domain can allow property to be taken for public use with compensation, even when the owner does not consent. The phrase “public use” becomes dangerously elastic when infrastructure is built primarily to satisfy private data-center demand. A hospital, road, or genuinely public utility is one argument. Seizing someone’s land so a technology company can secure more compute is another. When government power and private capital join together to take property for a favored industry, “innovation” stops sounding like progress and becomes a threat.
Circle P:
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Michael Saylor BIP 110
Bitcoin network neutrality
ECB stablecoin bank deposits
AI data centers eminent domain
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