Bitcoin Miner Kent Halliburton Says BIP-110 Failed From Apathy, Not Rejection
Two weeks after Bitcoin's most contested soft fork attempt in years quietly died, Sazmining CEO Kent Halliburton joined the show to explain what actually happened, and why he thinks the real story isn't the fork at all.
WHAT BIP-110 WAS SUPPOSED TO DO
BIP-110, the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was a proposed one-year Bitcoin soft fork that would have restricted arbitrary data in transactions, capping most new outputs at 34 bytes, OP_RETURN at 83 bytes, and data pushes at 256 bytes. The goal was to choke off Ordinals, inscriptions, and the data-storage schemes that critics argue treat block space as a dumping ground rather than a ledger for money.
Miner support peaked at 2.53% against a required 55% threshold, and the chain enforcing it produced two blocks before stalling out entirely. Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back both publicly opposed the proposal, warning it could split Bitcoin and cause nodes to reject otherwise valid transactions.
HALLIBURTON'S TAKE: APATHY, NOT REJECTION
Halliburton pushed back on the narrative that miners rejected BIP-110 outright. Speaking from his own company's data, he said Sazmining reached a high watermark of just 15% of the hash rate under its management signaling for BIP-110, with the remaining 85% simply taking no action. His read: that default to inaction was the real signal. The proposal never convinced the market it was addressing an existential threat, so most participants did nothing rather than actively vote it down.
He also pushed back on a narrative that circulated after the fork failed, that miners had colluded against node runners. Halliburton said he saw no coordinated push in either direction inside his own customer base, and that Sazmining instead let clients lock in their own signaling choice and kept them on it until the fork resolved.
THE BIGGER THREAT HALLIBURTON SEES: MINERS SELLING OUT TO AI
Halliburton argued the more serious risk to Bitcoin's mining sector isn't a failed soft fork, it's public miners abandoning Bitcoin production for AI hosting contracts. The pivot represents a potential $40 billion revenue opportunity by 2026, with industry projections suggesting AI and high-performance computing could account for 70% of revenue for miners with executed contracts by year-end. The primary driver is competition for power grid access between Bitcoin mining and AI data centers, with landowners able to charge AI operators far more for the same electricity.
Halliburton called the current moment a "golden pocket" for mining, arguing that shrinking network hash rate combined with mining hardware makers selling below cost to compete against their own former customers' liquidated inventory has pushed hardware prices to a floor that won't last once the AI-driven supply glut clears. That is his own forecast, not an independently confirmed figure, and he was upfront on the show that he is speculating on the timeline.
THE GOVERNANCE TAKEAWAY
Halliburton's closing argument was blunt: anyone who wants a voice in Bitcoin's future rule changes needs to actually own hash rate, not just run a node or hold coins. He predicted the BIP-110 fight's lasting legacy won't be the failed fork itself, but a push toward alternative Bitcoin implementations outside of Core, built by a community that felt it had no real lever to pull the first time around.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
