Tribe Vibe - The Knots 🪢 vs Core 🤖 Edition
Hello Tribe Vibers
This week we tread into the dangerous territory of the Knots vs Core debate and review the heated discussion that has been playing out on Bitcoin Twitter. We chat to Bam Alasi, Bitcoin Developer and founder of Bitcoin app Cypher Box, to get his take and understand some of the more nuanced technical details. We also kick off the first instalment of our new weekly Bitcoin 101 content with author and Bitcoiner Deanna Heikkinen who will be guest-contributing to this segment each week . Let’s dive in!
Editorial Note
Welcome to another exciting week in Bitcoin! Coming up:
🎓 Bitcoin 101: Your weekly resource to learn about Bitcoin
🗞 News: Trending News in Bitcoin
👩💼 Women in Bitcoin: Where the Bitcoin “Femergy” is happening
📆 Events: Bitcoin events online and across the globe
🎧 & 🎥Vibe of the Week: Our content recommendations
🎓 Bitcoin 101: KYC - Does it provide protection, or erode privacy? - with Deanna Heikkinen
As Bitcoin enters the financial mainstream, institutions increasingly require Know Your Customer (KYC) verification. These identity checks are promoted as tools for public safety and accountability. Exchanges, brokers, and payment platforms now enforce these rules as a cost of compliance, arguing that they prevent fraud, money laundering, and other crimes. Yet, none of this stems from Bitcoin’s protocol itself, which was designed for peer-to-peer use without intermediaries. The oversight comes from the infrastructure that surrounds it, not the network that powers it.
The debate of security through control, versus freedom through autonomy isn’t new. History shows that societies have long surrendered liberty in pursuit of safety, from Roman peace under the empire to the surveillance expansions of the modern era. The same question persists in digital finance today: how much freedom are we willing to trade for perceived protection?
Read more about KYC and the long-standing battle between the trade-off between safety and privacy in this post.
Connect with Deanna on X HERE
Buy her Bitcoin books for adults and children HERE
Learn about her Bitcoin Education organization HERE.
On Substack Deanna Heikkinen
The Safety Trap: How Regulation Is Reversing Bitcoin’s Promise
All through human history, the struggle between freedom and safety has shaped the course of civilization. The two ideals are inseparable yet irreconcilable; one expands only at the expense of the oth…
📈 Trending News
1. Luke Dashir “Saves” Bitcoin…Again 😉
The Scoop🕵️♂️: A heated debate recently emerged within the Bitcoin community regarding the removal of a long-standing, yet easily circumvented, spam limit in the OP_RETURN code. While large miners could bypass this limit, it negatively affected smaller participants.The removal, though technically logical, was controversial. In response, Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr promoted his alternative, Bitcoin Knots, which would reimpose a spam limit. This divided the community: some users, identifying as “anti-spammers,” supported Knots, while many existing node runners stayed with Bitcoin Core, prioritizing the network’s uncensorable nature over controlling its use.
The debate intensified when Adam Back, creator of the “hashcash” technology used in Bitcoin, intervened. He argued that to preserve Bitcoin’s permissionless quality, the network must not block spam that adheres to its consensus rules. This statement silenced many “anti-spammers” and resulted in several heated exchanges between Adam Back and Luke Dashjr, with Dashjr eventually claiming he was repeatedly having to “save” Bitcoin.
Why You Should Care🚨: None of this debate materially impacts Bitcoin, but it does show that Bitcoiners, who frequently see themselves as being above this type of petty political posturing, they are just as susceptible as anyone else to misinformation, virtue signalling and propaganda.
What does this mean for bitcoin?✨: Users can choose which code to run on their node, and bitcoin will keep mining blocks approximately every 10 minutes. The rest of us probably need to take a minute to reflect. Check out our conversation with bitcoin developer Bam Alasi, who explains the controversy in more detail below.
2. Dollar Stablecoins aren’t Genius
The Scoop🕵️♂️: The Trump administration signed the GENIUS Act in July 2025, regulating dollar stablecoins to prop up US Treasury demand. Stablecoins like Tether’s USDt ($160B market cap) are digital tokens pegged 1:1 to the dollar, backed primarily by US Treasury bills. Tether now holds over $127 billion in Treasuries, making it the seventh-largest foreign buyer. The government is pushing stablecoin adoption through new rules allowing banks and 401k pension funds to invest in crypto, potentially exposing $7.3 trillion in retirement assets.
Why You Should Care🚨: Stablecoins carry hidden risks similar to mortgage-backed securities before 2008. They face “run” dynamics if reserves prove inadequate. USDC de-pegged during the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank crisis, requiring FDIC bailouts. Banks warn of a $6.6 trillion drain from traditional deposits. Ordinary people, pensioners, depositors, and millions of small wallet holders—are being exposed to US debt risks without understanding the dangers, essentially absorbing Treasury debt that foreign investors no longer want.
What does this mean for bitcoin?✨: In this article, Sasha Breger Bush suggests that stablecoins are part of a US strategy to “domesticate” crypto markets under dollar dominance rather than let them compete. The GENIUS Act prohibits using cryptocurrencies as stablecoin reserves, separating Bitcoin from the government-sanctioned ecosystem. While dollar stablecoins become the official “internet-native payment rail,” Bitcoin remains outside this framework and may face continued regulatory pressure as an alternative that threatens US monetary dominance.
📚 Read the full article from
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💼 Women in Bitcoin
DJ Valerie B Love gives her take on the importance of running a node and her take on Knots. Source HERE
📆 Upcoming Events
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🎧 🎥📚 Vibe of the Week - Bam Alasi, Knots vs Core
AT98 - Bam Alasi, Knots vs Core
This week we chat to Bam Alasi, a Syrian Bitcoiner and our favourite Lightning and Systems Engineer about the increasingly political debate in the bitcoin community about a recent change the maintain…
Meme of the Week - Knots or Core?
📺 &🎧 check out our conversations with Bitcoiners HERE
👋 See you all next week for more Tribe Vibes!