Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, is having none of it. In response to a viral thread that leaned on Satoshi Nakamoto's old forum posts to argue Bitcoin should have bigger blocks, Back answered with a flat “no.” His point: the creator's own quotes on scaling are contradictory, and they don't carry the authority that block-size maximalists have been claiming.
The contradictory record
Look at what Satoshi actually wrote. On October 3, 2010, he said on BitcoinTalk that “we can phase in a change later if we get closer to needing it,” rejecting a patch that would have raised the block size limit. But back in December 2009, he'd predicted Moore's Law would soon outgrow the chain, implying capacity would rise on its own. And in November 2008, on the Cryptography Mailing List, he wrote that “as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.” That line points away from bigger blocks, not toward them.
The Moore's Law call aged poorly. Satoshi expected download times to peak within eight months, but the chain kept outrunning hardware and now spans roughly 744 GB. Back traces the quotes to a defensive exchange Satoshi had with James A. Donald in 2008. In that context, he argues, the later remarks read less like a scaling roadmap and more like an early case for second layers — the off-chain settlement approach Blockstream has built its business around.
First principles, not forum posts
Back's broader argument is that developers should reason from first principles rather than mine old forum posts for permission. That's a direct jab at the practice of treating Satoshi's words as scripture. He's made the same point in other fights. In July 2026, he ridiculed the BIP-110 fork fight, a failed push to rewrite consensus rules through miner signaling. He's also called the case for lifting Bitcoin's 21 million cap a trap, and he's argued that Bitcoin was discovered, not invented.
His position puts him in a crowded field of conflicting takes. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has claimed that stablecoins, not Bitcoin, delivered Satoshi's payments vision. Craig Wright, meanwhile, has pushed the opposite line, insisting the base layer must never change. Back's stance sits somewhere between those poles, but he's clearly frustrated with the way old quotes get weaponized.
For Back, the lesson is simple: developers should reason from first principles, not mine old forum posts for permission. That's the conclusion he's landed on, and it's not likely to change.
