The Protocol: Beneath Bitcoin ETF Chaos, A Blockchain Drama | Currency News | Financial and Business News

Happy New Year! The mood in crypto markets has suddenly turned quite bullish with speculation reaching a fever pitch that U.S. regulators will finally approve a spot bitcoin ETF after years of denials. Based on one estimate, some $100 billion of capital might flow into the products.

One question might be how many of the incoming investors actually understand the nitty-gritty of how Bitcoin actually works – not just the technical details, but the governance. In today’s Network News, we dive into a well-known Bitcon developer’s proposal that would have severely curtailed a key source of recent traffic on the blockchain; over the past week the effort was abruptly ended by a maintainer of the open-source Bitcoin Core software project.