By Jim

A bitcoin-backed stablecoin has been in the works for years. For example:

Alpen Labs, founded in 2022, came out of stealth mode in 2024. They intend to enable a bitcoin-backed stablecoin called Bitcoin Dollar (BTD) on the bitcoin base layer ... by exploiting Taproot/tapscript and OP_RETURN. They're on Bitcoin SigNet now with plans to launch on mainnet.

IN LATE 2025 THEY DOCUMENTED THEIR INTENTION TO USE 100KB OP_RETURN.

https://github.com/alpenlabs/bitcoin-bosd/blob/main/SPECIFICATION.md

I wonder if Strategy is talking with them, or perhaps thinking of doing something similar on their own.

BIP110 would have hindered this.

Also:

Wences Casares (co-founding donor of both Brink and LocalHost Research who fund Core) is an angel investor in Alpen Labs.

https://prnewswire.com/news-releases/alpen-public-testnet-launches-offering-peek-at-bitcoins-own-financial-system-302520546.html

John Pfeffer (the other co-founding donor of Brink) is also an angel investor in Alpen Labs.

https://theblock.co/post/287629/bitcoin-scaling-developer-alpen-labs-comes-out-of-stealth-reveals-10-6-million-in-past-seed-funding

Wences Casares is also known as "Bitcoin's Patient Zero". In early 2013 at a Private Retreat/Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Tucson, Casares presented on Bitcoin to a gathering of tech/finance leaders. Attendees included Reid Hoffman, David Marcus, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Dick Costolo (Twitter), and others.

This spawned Blockstream, Xapo Bank and Lightspark, all significant funders of Core.

Blockstream has stated their desire to softfork Simplicity onto Bitcoin to support non-bitcoin assets, what they call Grantor Tokens.

And Lightspark recently announced their Grid Global Accounts, which supports stablecoins on the base layer.

A lot of this would have been hindered by BIP110.

Jameson Lopp is also an investor in Alpen Labs: lopp.vc

And, of course, he opposed BIP110.