Jan3 CEO Samson Mow has said that comparing bitcoin to cryptocurrencies is like comparing “an airplane to a paper airplane.” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said: “It will be a multi-chain world.”
These opposing statements are the latest front in the longest running dispute in the cryptocurrency space: the battle between bitcoin (btc) and everything that followed.
To the crypto masses, those individuals who own only one blockchain are often called maximalists.
bitcoin maximalism is almost as old as bitcoin itself, and the phenomenon emerged shortly after its creation.
According to bitcoin educator and self-confessed bitcoin maximalist, Giacomo Zucco, maximalists hold four truths:
- Anything other than bitcoin is a scam.
- Every attempt to exchange bitcoin is a scam.
- Any attempt to pressure people to spend bitcoin is a scam.
- We shouldn't be nice to scammers.
Even in the early days of blockchain, altcoins began to proliferate. Most of them were low-effort bitcoin forks that offered little new. In 2010 the term bullshitcoin was born.
In 2011, Litecoin (LTC), a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin, except for some minor adjustments to its code base, was launched. At least, that's how it started. Litecoin remains a top 20 cryptocurrency by market capitalization to this day.
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Over the next few years, bitcoin developers and community members began to wonder what else could be achieved with blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
In 2014, bitcoin developers including Adam Back produced the “White Paper on Side Chains”, touted in some quarters as the “altcoin killer”. The Sidechains whitepaper was an ambitious document that addressed various topics such as contracts and zero-knowledge proofs. Today, these ideas are mostly discussed outside of bitcoin circles, not within.
That's a small indication that whatever bitcoin maximalism is, it can change and evolve.
Sidechains eventually led to the Lightning Network and Liquid. But whatever sidechains accomplished for bitcoin, they failed to kill altcoins. In reality, altcoins were about to take off, like a rocket to the moon.
A very Vitalik problem
In 2014, Vitalik Buterin described the concept of bitcoin exceptionalism in an extensive ethereum.org/2014/11/20/bitcoin-maximalism-currency-platform-network-effects?ref=blog.lopp.net” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>rehearsaldefining maximalism as “the idea that an environment of multiple competing cryptocurrencies is undesirable, that it is wrong to launch 'yet another coin', and that it is fair and inevitable that the bitcoin currency will come to take a monopoly position in the cryptocurrency. scene.”
Buterin called this “bitcoin domain maximalism” or “bitcoin maximalism” for short, and the label stuck. Buterin also explained his skepticism regarding sidechains and their potential, citing a number of issues, including the process of moving bitcoin to sidechains.
Buterin declared that bitcoin maximalism as an ideology was already “dead in the water.” Naturally, bitcoin maximalists disagreed.
A year later, Buterin launched ethereum, the layer 1 blockchain he had been working on since at least 2013.
Buterin's ethereum cleared the way for almost all of the altcoin nightmares that would plague Bitcoiners' dreams for years to come. ethereum-powered seed coin offering mania, decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and a thousand altcoins, food tokens, shits, and dog tokens.
None of these features (or were they bugs?) convinced bitcoin maximalists.
In the bitcoin corner
One of the biggest proponents of bitcoin is Jan3 CEO Samson Mow. Until January 3, Mow promotes hyperbitcoinization. For those unfamiliar with the term, hyperbitcoinization refers to the adoption of bitcoin by nation states.
Mow travels around the world as part of this work, acting as an ambassador for bitcoin on the world stage. Cointelegraph caught up with Mow during his travels to ask him what makes bitcoin special and find out why so many Bitcoiners continue to reject the rest of the industry.
“The best question people should be asking is, 'What is the 'cryptocurrency' industry?'” Mow said. “These are largely centralized groups and companies selling tokens and pretending to be decentralized. There are constant hacks and theft of funds from insecure and unviable technology. It is the claim that centralized blockchains are immutable. “It’s dog tokens, doggie tokens, JPEGs, and other random things.”
“bitcoin has nothing to do with these things. bitcoin is actually decentralized and immutable. bitcoin is the restoration of money and the foundation of a new financial system. The gap between bitcoin and the rest of the 'cryptocurrencies' is so enormous that it is like comparing an airplane with a paper airplane. “This is why Bitcoiners reject the rest of the 'industry'.”
Mow's views reflect a long tradition of bitcoin exceptionalism. It is not uncommon for Bitcoiners to regard every blockchain project launched after 2009 with little respect or consideration.
Those on the other side of the equation are no less critical of Bitcoiners and anyone who holds a single-chain vision of the future.
In the multi-chain corner
Mow's statement is in stark contrast to recent comments from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse. The two men are as diametrically opposed as any two figures in blockchain could be.
While Mow despises the industry, Garlinghouse praises it. Last week at the Ripple Swell Conference in Dubai, Ripple's founder took a shot at bitcoin-only proponents when he proclaimed that the future would be multi-chain.
From Toronto in 2017 until now, we have taken #RippleSwell worldwide. I closed this year's event with a fireside chat with CNBC. @dan_murphy talking about how we will get to the next phase of enterprise crypto adoption with regulatory clarity. 1/2 https://t.co/kXLxeAGaEk
—Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) November 11, 2023
“I'm very optimistic about a lot of different things happening in cryptocurrencies,” Garlinghouse said. “I'm certainly active in trying to discourage people from being maximalist about any particular crypto. “It will be a multi-chain world.”
Garlinghouse will be aware that while maximalists exist for many chains, including ethereum, by far the most common form of the phenomenon is bitcoin maximalism.
Wallet tracking company Cielo is among them bet in a multi-chain future, offering tracking services for over 250 wallets on 20 separate blockchains. Cielo Finance co-founder Matt Aaron told Cointelegraph why, in his opinion, blockchain is not a zero-sum game.
“Blockchains are designed for different use cases,” Matt said. “Right now, bitcoin is the store of value; ethereum hosts NFTs and DeFi; and layers 2 are proving their value for things like criminals, games, and prediction markets. There are also a lot of experiments going on with Solana and Cosmos that are building blockchain ecosystems, and I expect there to be multiple winners.”
Even with blockchains specialized in different areas, the industry can still offer some surprises. An example of this is Ordinals, which allow NFTs to be placed in bitcoin.
“The permissionless nature of public blockchains means they can be used for anything you want, of course, which is what we've seen with Ordinals in bitcoin. While it was never imagined that NFTs and subtokens would flourish on the bitcoin network, it is fascinating to see a nascent multi-token ecosystem taking shape. However, the success of Ordinals has skyrocketed network fees, further proving that the future of cryptocurrencies will be multi-chain.”
Nobody corners Carter
While many Bitcoiners present themselves as punks, renegades, and revolutionaries, bitcoin maximalists are also quite cautious and conservative as a group, preferring not to stray too far from Satoshi's light. This dichotomy is at the heart of absolutely everything related to cryptocurrencies.
For maximalists, bitcoin is an ideological line in the sand. It is where the revolution begins and ends. For the rest of the cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is just the beginning.
For individuals in that second group, ostracism is a real possibility. Last year, prominent bitcoin advocate Nic Carter failed a bitcoin purity test when his venture capital firm invested in a non-bitcoin project.
Following the backlash, Carter quickly dispelled the myth of his maximalist status, saying, “Everyone who piles up, each one, contrasts the real me with a fictional, artificial version of me that they made up in their heads. “I'm not a 'bitcoin maximalist', I never have been, I never will be.”
Carter called the moment a praise of maximalism. He now believes that bitcoin has “sacred” principles and “profane” things. The use of religious terminology is no coincidence.
Carter claims that bitcoin should “mediate monetary transactions exclusively.” Between profane The elements are the aforementioned ordinal inscriptions for placing NFTs in bitcoin.
Two divergent philosophies
The Taproot update in 2021 was the last major update to the bitcoin network, designed to facilitate quick verification of transactions. Taproot was also designed to help scale the number of transactions on the network.
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It's unlikely that Bitcoiners will take a more cavalier approach to upgrades in the future, given that Taproot also inadvertently gave rise to “unholy” Ordinals and nft inscriptions in bitcoin.
Taproot is just another small battle in the long war for the soul of blockchain: the battle between the maximalists and everyone else.
