Recent developments in CT regarding an ongoing battle for "the one truth and the one right mindset" motivated me to write this little piece here.

I see myself more as a paper boy observing some headlines of the papers he's carrying and every once in a while trying to make some sense of them. To some of you there will be a lot "stating the obvious" and "Jeez, he couldn't be more wrong than that" I'm afraid...

Anyways I'm prepared for some backfire - and that's absolutely OK! - just keep in mind I'm just dropping my ever evolving opinion here for this time and space. Go ahead and change my mind if you care in dropping a comment here!

If you're into crypto you most certainly came across these notions. "Bitcoin Maximalist", "Shitcoiner" and a little newer and most prominently narrated by Richard Heart "Maximalish".

So what are they?

Let's start with the Bitcoin Maximalists

A Bitcoin maximalist archetype is often somebody who was into Bitcoin for a long time. Some refer to themselves as "OG's" (original gangsters). They've seen a lot of so called "bad actors" and scammers in the space.

Say space one more time... I dare you!...

Some of their conclusions cover "there's only on valid Blockchain = Bitcoin", "other projects are taking away growth, volume and impact from Bitcoin and therefore hinder adoption" and "every other coin is a shitcoin that must be fought". They won't stop to call everybody out who collides with their dogmas. In their self-understanding they not only do this to protect Bitcoin and their Bitcoin holdings but even more so to protect other people in the ecosystem from falling for scams which again are all other coins besides Bitcoin.

Yep, It starts to get a little more confusing when you consider that Bitcoin maximalists have split up into different groups supporting different coins. Wut?

This manifested in 2017 with the Bitcoin cash fork followed by Bitcoin SV (Satoshis Vision) in 2018. All three groups claim that they are supporting the one and only, the true Bitcoin. All three proponent groups would also claim that they are maximalists. To me the only "true" Bitcoin maximalists are the Bitcoin core (original Bitcoin) supporters. However, I won't get into the detailed history of what went down here to lead up to this situation, this would easily need a few hundred pages packed with dates, facts, arguments, counters, failed consensus'es and so on, but I think it is fair to say that the maximalists got divided by their dissonant understanding of needed evolutionary steps of Bitcoin and different interpretations of the original Bitcoin whitepaper.

On a more serious note tho... what was really disturbing to me was to watch some discourse between maximalists and in their view aberrent people go violently so far south that it reminded me of witch hunts and dictator style ethos climaxing in trying to censor what one should be allowed to say and who to talk to and who not to talk to.

Disturbing especially because a lot of the (admittedly) projections into "Bitcoin as more than sound money" and as means to change peoples life's and the whole world for the better... up to - full blown anarchist level - collide with most of the attached catchwords like "censorship resistant", "unmutable" and so on.

To me as the observer it seemed that the end justified - no matter how unethical, brutal, or lifelyhood endangering and reputation killing these attacks were - the means.

On the other hand this comes to a certain degree with the territory and the general environment in social media. If you put your neck out you got to live with this no matter on which side you stand I believe.

But to me even more surprisingly.. all that happened - and still is going on like that - still in the self-conception of the loudest maximalist bullies, voicing they're dismissals of people and demanding not to talk to "bad actors" and to do the one and only right thing - "to do good for the general cause". OK...

Again there are different interpretations into what is the one and only good general cause and the group of people that must be blacklisted or whitelisted varies from maximalist to maximalist but there are intersections that seem to be generally accepted mostly regarding the "blacklisted people".

So again in short... if there are general Bitcoin maximalists in my simplified view they dismiss everything else but Bitcoin (but please keep in mind the different "style's" Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, Bitcoin SV) and act out loudly and violently against other groups, coins, views. ...also the Bitcoin maximalist don't differentiate between people being maximalish or full blown shitcoiners! They are all shitcoiners and scammers in their view.

Another thing would be sidechains or layer two solutions. They also are used by some maximalists for some target training. For example Lightning. But this again would go to far in this little piece here.

next the Maximalishers

I think a typical person in this regard is someone that "uses" other coins to grow their Bitcoin holding and that possibly have some other projects they support and even strongly believe in.

Bitcoin is still King here (mostly Bitcoin core but also the others Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin SV) but other projects are OK too.

This comes in all kind of different flavors. Keep in mind that there are ~ 4,300 coins in the market right now. There are pretty good reasons for this since picking the right small or mid cap coin can make your portfolio explode straight to the moon.

Even if things have cooled down a lot since 2017 in the era of ICO galore and moving Bitcoin and almost everything up very nicely these goals haven't changed for most in this group. I guess people that I see in this group wouldn't even refer to themselves in that way however.

But I think Richard Heart - ex Bitcoin maximalist - going maximalish has gotten this one pretty right.

and then there are the "full blown shitcoiners".

For them Bitcoin is just another coin and they use everything they can get into their portfolios to "get rich quick"(?).

They don't stand on a foundation of the first Blockchain and other important developments in the ecosystem and don't want to hear warnings from Maximalists or anybody else.

Before I go to deep into this group please use this

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@generalizethis/a-shitcoiner-s-guide-to-shitcoin-logic

wonderful post from @generalizethis. I highly recommend this fun read!

So... you might ask where do I stand in all this. I guess I was "maximalish", like a lot of other people, even before this became a thing.

If you're interested to check if I put my money where my mouth is feel free to check this pinned tweet

https://twitter.com/do_i_feellucky/status/1109006319535706112

- do_i_feellucky

Weirdly enough I'm feeling a certain growing tendency toward being a Bitcoin maximalist at least to a little degree but I also must admit I'm no trader and I know the successful ones tend to make quite some money with trading not only Bitcoin (wink, wink). I'm also OK with being called a shitcoiner by the maximalists.

The stuff I invested in was all researched by me beforehand and carefully bought. But some of my bags I'll lose with the wink of an eye as soon as I'm in the green again with them. ;-)

In retrospect I would have done my portfolio a big favor if I would have invested even a higher percentage into Bitcoin rather than into some of the other projects I'm now stuck with.

You only lose money if you sell lower than....blablabla...

So, where do you stand in this? I would be very interested to see your thoughts and comments about this and please don't hold back I'm used to trouble!

Cheers!
DoIfeelLucky