Confessions of a Bitcoin maximalist
Have you encountered someone who:
- is bullish on Bitcoin but skeptical about “next-gen blockchain projects focused on distributed compute / dapps”?
- routinely describes projects like XRP as pre-mined shitcoins?
- laughs uproariously and uncontrollably whenever you say Tezos is interesting because it will create a “new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth”?
If you answered yes, then proceed with great caution. You are face-to-face with that rare and increasingly quaint breed, the Betamax of crypto; yes, I refer to the Bitcoin maximalist.
What follows are snapshots from the maximalist’s mind. We publish them here so you can help your local crypto-Luddite see the light and move past their myopic obsession with Bitcoin.
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~ The beauty of Bitcoin is that it launched without a slick website to promote its token pre-sale or a giant countdown clock to maximize FOMO-induced panic buying.
~The genius of Satoshi was that they never pre-mined 80% of the currency supply for themselves, their friends and their for-profit corporation and they also didn’t slowly drip sell it into the market as a monetization strategy.
~ Bitcoin is an alternative money system, first and foremost. It may also be a payment system, a protocol for new censorship-resistant applications, and more. But the first and most important thing to remember is that Bitcoin is a new kind of MONEY. Everything else follows from this key point.
~ Bitcoin does not compete with banks, it competes with central banks.
~Altcoins that tweak Bitcoin’s protocol or try to “enhance” it severely misunderstand just how many foundational decisions were made correctly for Bitcoin, either by luck or by design.
~Bitcoin is antifragile (in Taleb’s framing). Altcoins are not.
~It’s a close call, but saying “Bitcoin is untraceable and used only by criminals” is definitely sillier than saying “Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme”.
~2017 presented many LOLworthy crypto moments but the winner, by a long margin, was the claim that a Tezos investment was like “donating to PBS and receiving a tote bag in return”.
~HODL! It’s not just an article of faith, it is the only sensible Bitcoin trading strategy, coupled with not HODLing more than you are willing to lose entirely. Technical analysis is no better than astrology. Price predictions are nonsense. Warning: this might be a boring trading strategy, because it implies “DO NOTHING” in the face of volatility.
~Nobody really knows what altcoins are for, except to enrich their promoters and early investors. Actually, that’s a tad harsh on Ethereum. We know unambiguously that Ethereum is a platform custom-built for next-gen Ponzis and unregulated securities offerings (aka ICOs). And crypto-kitties, of course.
~ People that don’t understand Bitcoin is an experimental, alternative money system are nevertheless convinced that they know how to improve it already: Increase the money supply! Change the consensus algorithm! Add Turing-completeness! Make it a self-amending cryptographic ledger with “governance on the blockchain”! Why all these “improvements”? Because: INNOVATION! And: DEVELOPERS!
~ We will never forget Vitalik Buterin’s congratulatory tweet to the Bcash pumpers.
~Corollary: Bitcoin has never needed its backers to desperately pump its price to attract attention. Or prove that they are in fact alive.
~And finally: the more one learns about Bitcoin, the more one realizes there is to learn about money, economics, cryptography, and network effects. Stay humble, my friends.
