A rumor went around X last week that the Bitcoin network would “fire its miners” in August 2026, and Blockstream CEO Adam Back had to come out and deny it, as BeInCrypto reported. Now read the denial closely, because it is a masterpiece of brand protection. No miners are losing their jobs, Back says. Developer Luke Dashjr is merely “preparing a new coin” — an altcoin with different mining rules. It is not a change to Bitcoin, Back insists.

An altcoin. Said by the man whose company sells the pipes that all the spam flows through. Here is what the Blockstream marketing department cannot rename away. The BLAKE2b chain separated from Bitcoin at block 961,632 on August 8 and switched its proof-of-work to BLAKE2b on August 30 — the fork Dashjr has fought for, the one that reached BIP-110 consensus, the reason he quit as chairman and CTO of the OCEAN mining pool, took his buyout, and now calls the main chain “Spamcoin” to its face. Dashjr’s live complaint — which Back never answered — is that Bitcoin’s mining power is hostage to Bitmain’s hardware. A fork that fixes proof-of-work is a personal attack on everyone who sells ASICs and rents out block space. Expect Adam Back to be neutral about a competing chain the way you expect a casino to be neutral about a man who invented poker. “Altcoin” is what a brand calls a rival it cannot out-code.

And when the code argument fails, the mud arrives. Nakamoto CEO David Bailey resurfaced the 2014 blacklist controversy over Dashjr, arguing the man who once blacklisted a version of Bitcoin’s code is unfit to hold Bitcoin’s keys — a story BeInCrypto’s coverage of the BIP-110 fight has kept alive as the war splits the community. When you are losing the argument about consensus rules, quote history at the man. A well-remembered man with a bad memory calls the other side evil; the man with the better documentation calls him employed.

I run a BLAKE2b node. It syncs. It does not know it is an altcoin, and it does not care what Blockstream’s press office calls it. You are free to keep the brand, gentlemen, and the inscriptions, and the rental fees that pay for it. The fork has the code, the miners, and — as sure as the next block — the last word.