Your logic is sound and solid. I think when Core apologists say that you are welcome to prune op_return they are being deliberately dismissive. Pruned nodes make up roughly 10% of nodes and are assuming that Knots enthusiasts will make up a similar proportion. I will disagree in that I am not entirely convinced that Electrum servers are entirely necessary. I proudly and intentionally run a pruned node because: 1) Thats the only way Bitcoin will last indefinitely on minimal hardware. 2) Pruning to save space is specifically outlined in the White Paper as an essential component. 3) The purpose of transactions are to verify the UTXO set and once verified, stored in a wallet file (wallet.dat, sparrow.db, etc). 4) Downloading the entire chain after several decades is repetitive, inconvenient, unnecessary and bloats the collective bandwidth. 5) It is easy to get up and running with a snapshot (a few GBs) verifiable up to a particular point in the past keeping a decade or so of blocks on relatively cheap hardware. 6) Full archival nodes' resource inensity is causing reliance on Electrum servers inhibiting users from decentralizing the network by running fulling validating (pruned) nodes. 7) If all nodes are pruned up to a certain point, then privacy is restored as people are incentivised to secure their scanned and verified wallet files and not depend on continuous scanning of the chain. 8) Pruned nodes encourage periodically combining UTXOs to stay current and reduce bloat of the set, which is exactly the opposite of what inscriptions and dust with op_return does. 9) Privacy and security benefits from running an Electrum server to connect with one's node seems overkill when Bitcoin RPC rests on port 8332 not exposed to the public internet. 10) Although rescans are not possible, it is easier and faster to bootstrap from a verified snapshot than to scan blocks or do an initial block download when data gets corrupted. 11) Bitcoin was never designed under a client/server model. It was always assumed that nodes/miners/users are all one in the same. Electrum, although essential for bootstrapping the network of bitcoin users early on, has lead to reliance on third parties to supply transaction relay inhibiting censorship resistance and pseudonymous/private transactions. Thank you for reading this lengthy piece. If I am completely off the mark please let me know what I am missing.

I guess the real bet is when will v30 surpass Knots 1010, 0903, and 0305 combined?

So glad you brought Bastiat's "Seen and Unseen" into the discussion. Great piece.

Excellent video. I run one node. It's a real node. It's a Knots node.

Digital land, labor, and capital. Great thesis.

I am not a developer but not a pleb either. I only interface with the commandline using bitcoind. I have switched to Knots (extremely easy migration btw) and node runners would do better to not to use bitcoin-qt at all. Basic Linux commandline education is more valuable than UX in my opinion.

Years ago, when people were discussing 100k bitcoin the thought was that every merchant in the world would be accepting bitcoin by then. We are north of 100k and there are not that many more vendors. Bitcoin is for property exchange not trinket sales.

But Lyn, this YouTuber told me I should just use a lot of leverage to harness passive income and make money while I sleep with no work on my part all while paying zero taxes just like "the rich". Your advice seems to adopt a "poor person mindset". What are going to tell us next... that we shouldn't be using cash value life insurance with paid up additions to draw tax free income for life?

Today's children will rebel against the radical wickedness of today. When all of today's popular poor decisions are reduced to bellbottoms or parachute pants, things will improve. We live in post "Friends" culture where people have big urban rent, massive student loans and no bitcoin because they are trying to be a paleontologist working at the Museum of Natural History. Today's kids will fight this downwardly mobile trend.

When bitcoin becomes the asset of choice for the American saver we will see many wishing they could have 0.1 BTC the same way people today wished they had bought 1 BTC a few years ago.