Bitcoin Just Split. BlackRock Priced It In. Michael Saylor Denies It Happened.

The Bitcoin chain split on August 8, 2026 was forced by miners holding 2.53% of hashpower. BIP-110 produced two blocks and stalled. Michael Saylor said Bitcoin worked exactly as designed. He had to.

Bitcoin governance came apart in public over one weekend, and the response from the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin on Earth was that the free market solved it. That answer is true and it is also the only answer available, which is the part nobody is pricing. Dana Love, PhD breaks down what the failed BIP-110 soft fork actually demonstrated: that a small group with commit access and one cooperative mining pool can put the Bitcoin ledger in play without a vote from anyone who holds it. Luke Dashjr lost his BIP editor role on August 10 and stepped back from Ocean Pool, the mining company he co-founded. The proposal shipped with no replay protection and produced a self custody phishing wave within 48 hours.

Then there are the two proposals nobody outside Bitcoin development is watching. BIP-361, the post quantum migration and legacy signature sunset drafted by Jameson Lopp and five co-authors, would make unmigrated coins permanently unspendable. The eCash hard fork, scheduled for block 964,000 around August 21, reassigns roughly 500,000 Satoshi linked coins to pre-launch investors on the new chain. Dr. Love walks the BIP-361 text, the eCash funding clause, and the iShares Bitcoin Trust prospectus language in which BlackRock pre-committed to permanently and irrevocably abandon anything a Bitcoin fork produces. Odds, falsifiers, and receipts throughout. Subscribe for more crypto policy discussions and forensic breakdowns of blockchain projects, existing protocols, and new ideas.

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CHAPTERS

00:00 Bitcoin Chain Split: The Weekend Bitcoin Came Apart
03:23 BIP-110 Failed: Two Blocks and Silence
06:30 Bitcoin Quantum Proposal: The Coins That Stop Spending
09:37 Bitcoin Hard Fork August 2026: The Funding Clause
12:43 Bitcoin Governance: No Board, Just Commit Access
15:37 My Take: Bitcoin Governance Risk Odds

SOURCES

Michael Saylor, “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed,” X: https://x.com/saylor/status/2086388338521497714

CoinDesk, “Bitcoin’s BIP-110 episode is free-market capitalism in purest form,” Aug 10, 2026: https://www.coindesk.com/daybook-us/2026/08/10/bitcoin-s-bip-110-episode-is-free-market-capitalism-in-purest-form

The Block, BIP-110 supporters split onto minority chain: https://www.theblock.co/news/ecosystems/2026-08-08-bitcoins-bip-110-supporters-split-onto-minority-chain-as-main-network-pulls-ahead-411213

Bitcoin.com News, rival blocks at 961,632: https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-news/bip-110-splits-bitcoin-as-rival-miners-clash-at-block-961632/

Start9, BIP-110 activation guidance and seed phrase warning: https://start9.com/bip110/

Simple Mining, BIP-110 signaling and chain state: https://www.simplemining.io/insights/post/bip-110

crypto.news, BIP-110 is dead: https://crypto.news/bip-110-bitcoin-fork-failed-governance-2026/

KuCoin, Dashjr removed from BIP editor team: https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/bitcoin-community-splits-over-bip-110-chain-fork-lasts-only-one-block

Saylor, “no spam problem,” July 9, 2026: https://news.bitcoin.com/michael-saylor-declares-bitcoin-has-no-spam-problem-as-bip-110-debate-escalates/

BIP-361 full text, bitcoin/bips repository: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0361.mediawiki

BIP-361 reader: https://bips.dev/361/

Hoskinson on BIP-361 and Satoshi’s coins, CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/04/16/cardano-s-hoskinson-says-bitcoin-s-quantum-fix-is-a-hard-fork-that-can-t-save-satoshi-s-coins

CoinDesk, inside the proposal to reassign Satoshi linked coins: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/04/28/bitcoiners-are-calling-ecash-a-hard-fork-theft-but-it-doesn-t-even-touch-satoshi-s-btc

The Block, eCash reassigned coins backlash: https://www.theblock.co/post/399054/we-dont-take-satoshis-bitcoin-ecash-fork-backlash-reassigned-coins

AMINA Bank research, Bitcoin fork August 2026: https://aminagroup.com/research/bitcoin-fork-august-2026-bip-110-ecash-covenants-and-the-quantum-clock/

iShares Bitcoin Trust prospectus, Incidental Rights and IR Virtual Currency, SEC: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1980994/000143774924012363/bit20240411_424b3.htm

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