You may have noticed some unhealthy internal drama lately that is swallowing up bitcoiners.”communityin particular who is—and who certainly isn’t—a “maximist.”
A bitcoin maximalist, in the widest possible definition, is a person heavily invested in bitcoin who believes that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that matters and that all other cryptocurrencies are, if not scams, worthy of this, earth-shattering. The project is distracting.
The purpose of that project remains a subject of intense debate within the maximalist world: there are monetary theorists who believe that bitcoin is “natural”.hardness“guarantees its future status as a global reserve currency; others who believe that it should only serve as a buffer against government interference in the money supply; others who make killer use of the cyberpunk ideal of censorship-resistance.” Treats as the case and dislikes other cryptocurrencies mainly because they rely on inferior security architecture.
It is the first group, the hard money theorists – known as “toximaxis” because of their tendency to be aggressive towards anyone who does not share their views on Twitter – who are currently in trouble.
Recently he was harassing an alleged former colleague, VC and essayist Nick Carter, when he revealed on twitter That their funds, Castle Island Ventures, had invested in a company developing wallet-based login functionality that had nothing to do with bitcoin. Maximists erupted at the apparent betrayal by a prominent supporter. Carter a. reconnected with middle rank Praising maximism as a “disease”, then seen jokingly with a dangerous “no-coner”. It was all very childish and embarrassing.
Diamond dust is doing great as a flipside
I unblocked you though because I’m basically a nocoiner now
— Nick Carter (@nic__carter) June 29, 2022
But it wasn’t the first time a major bitcoiner—Joe Carter Definitely Still is – has actively sought distance from a movement whose passion for holiness has to pay the price for the support of influential people who would otherwise be natural allies.
Group permanently isolating potential fellow travelers: Twitter Udi Wertheimer And laugh A long time ago ran in disgust, and former bitcoiner hero Naseem Taleb went even Withdraw your preamble from a fundamental maximalist economic text,
Others have softened their rhetoric. Alex Edelman, CEO of bitcoin-only shopping rewards app Lolli, now Call himself a “Bitcoin optimist” and admired the NFT culture in NFT NYC, and Dan Held, the first enthusiast maxi, says he is a “bitcoin mostmalist,
This is not to mention the string of bitcoin pioneers who long ago went on to adopt a multi-sectarian approach to cryptocurrencies, such as Eric Voorhees, Roger Ver and Jesse Powell. And then there are pragmatists like Carter and Anthony Pompliano, who see the alpha in egging on the staunch vanguard of bitcoin—until it turns against them.
There is also a clear sense that the project of hard-money maximalism is cannibalizing itself, that there is a rot among its core adherents. It is noteworthy that many in the core group itself, unable to resist the lucrative market opportunity, have embarked on projects that once defame the virtuous.
For example, another former maximalist, Eric Wall, told me that when influential voices became “increasingly hostile” to his interest in a bitcoin Layer 2 chain called “drivechain”, he left the movement, which is focused on smart contracts and decentralized transactions. Like there was a way to search for “altcoin functionalities”. Exchange via bitcoin. Drivechain plans were eventually mothballed for technical reasons, and Wall looked elsewhere.
“That’s how I got out of maximalism,” he said. It was “the realization that Bitcoin BaseLayer would not power these interesting functionalities that we see on other chains, such as ZK Proof For example technology for scalability and privacy.”
The irony was that the same people, mainly employees of influential developer Blockstream, later launched Liquid, an Ethereum-style “sidechain” network that enables token sales and decentralized finance on the bitcoin blockchain, as described by Wall. expected to see. When Ethereum was exploding last year, Blockstream clearly wanted a piece of the action, marketing a series of NFT launches on the platform. That’s when the NFT market really started to sink.
The liquid hasn’t really stopped. Most Liquid blocks consist of one transaction on average: the miner paying for the privilege of verifying the block. The failure was caused by a “lack of understanding of humans,” Wall said. He said that Liquid’s developers, blinded by their allegiance to bitcoin, failed to account for fripperies such as user experience and market-product fit. “You need to understand humans to understand why Liquid isn’t attractive. Blockstream only cares about your own anal arguments, not how you impact the world.” (Blockstream did not respond to a request for comment.)
Similarly, over the years, Maximalist has supported platforms enabling bitcoin-based token sales, and many more. protect Centralized Stablecoin Like Tether, recognizing their role in ensuring the capitalization and liquidity of bitcoin. breathless help The introduction of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador was a particularly heroic spectacle for authoritarian Naib Bukele.
This all begs the question: Are extremists happy to betray their ideals only when the opportunity arises? Did the huge gains made elsewhere in the crypto market corrupt them so easily?
Pete Rizzo, a former coindesk The editor who now works for crypto exchange Kraken and actively identifies as a maximalist (though as a subtly different ilk), told me that none of the above was “rot” or in theory. Doesn’t constitute a betrayal: it was neither a token nor an NFT nor a stablecoin. were the problem. Instead, he said, the threat posed to retail investors is unregulated securities offerings on platforms such as Ethereum.
“The criticism,” he said, “is not that non-bitcoin tokens in themselves are bad, it is that they are structured in a way where the liability is forced on retail investors.”
NFTs actually originated on the bitcoin platform counterparty, they said (it is Truth!), and attempting to bring them to bitcoin is hardly a great tradition. “Bitcoin maximalism just suggests that bitcoin is the only decentralized cryptocurrency,” he said. “This is the only one where value accumulation and operations really happen equally, so it is better to try to build everything back to bitcoin (although this takes a long time) with the desired goal of bringing in as much as possible.” “
However, Rizzo’s verification of a deeper theoretical approach is difficult to square with the reality of many of the maximists’ side projects: their helpFor example, for the above Tether, which runs on Ethereum and has historically been less than honest with retail investors, or prime examples in which minimalists have explicitly stated No Whatever innovation they brought back to bitcoin. For example, who can forget the time last month when one of Carter’s big critics, former Blockstream mighty Samson Moe, endorsed — wait for it — a Ethereum Token!
Rizzo argued He The token was only accessible to accredited investors and was not at risk for low-end retail investors, but then you have to ask: where do these people draw the line? Is it about putting bitcoin’s use case at the top? Or how about making sure any crypto innovation runs only on bitcoin? Or that retail hasn’t been robbed? what about the whole country shave off By Bukele’s sterilized “Bitcoin Bonds”?
Then there are the plethora of high-pitched promises and Byzantine prediction models, which have been nullified one by one: Achieved “stock-to-flow” modelContinuously Promoted “Half” bitcoin as a “Inflation hedge” as “Digital Cash” Each is eventually discarded when predictions do not arise. Other alleged extremist theories, such as opposition to state intervention, are equally expendable: most recently, Maxis, including billionaire bitcoin bull Michael Sayer. called For regulators to shut down a network of competitors like Ethereum – even as they try to profit from the duplication.
You have to wonder what minimalism even means, if anything. In Rizzo’s view, the current strain of hard money maximalism shares little intellectually with the free-marketing anarchist-capitalist ethos, and Rizzo observed that more proudly liberal bitcoin fanatics such as Ver and Voorhees had left long ago. Clear intention to pursue other opportunities. The rest of the core has adopted a quasi-religious lifestyle brand version of the ideology that has completely stripped down to liberalism and its temptations, selling seed oils and keto diets and to conservatives. Clearly, they operate in the broader crypto markets as well—but only under an array of esoteric justifications.
Best of all, this particular brand of “maximalism” is now a threadbare weathervane ideology, selling itself and rebranding with every market improvement. like girl group Sugabab and its optional member, the principle is all form and void material. It is an empty ideal that is nothing lasting – rigid enough to evoke devotion, but strong enough to survive the inevitable betrayal of its most “toxic” adherents.
That’s why I believe bitcoin’s extremism will last forever.
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