In short, a Bitcoin maximalist believes with unwavering conviction that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency – in fact, currency – worth caring about. Most maximalists also feel strongly that altcoins (any cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin) are not just technically flawed, but are morally questionable. source
This is pretty much what I have been told about Bitcoin maximalists over the years, although the "morality" of it hasn't really come up, unless morality equals ROI in the eyes of a maximalist. But in general, there are people who believe that BTC is the one ring of power and all the other rings must bow down in its wake. This is not a bad call in the early days of crypto and still most of the market is tied to the fortunes and failures of Bitcoin, but I also think it is quite a juvenile view, as there is no way that Bitcoin can scale to serve all the needs of everything that will ever be tokenized in the economy.
Of course, they can look at it only from the point of view as a store of value thing that will go up in price - but this will always tie Bitcoin to the amount of money that can be pushed into it from fiat currencies. Meaning, that the people who will benefit the most from Bitcoin, will be the ones who already have a lot of Bitcoin or, have enough wealth to put into Bitcoin at this point. We are seeing the corporations and institutions starting to do this now.
Altcoins however, serve a largely different purpose than Bitcoin, as they are more practical in nature, even though there isn't a lot of "use" for many of them at this point. I see them as more of a bridge kind of token, where they are able to attach real-world activity to value, whilst maintaining security through code and decentralization of ownership, as well as reducing the cost of "doing business" itself, by cutting out unnecessary rent-seeking middlemen. It also provides ownership of value and brings a high degree of mobility to individuals who might not otherwise have the opportunity.
But, what I think is a huge part of the alt story, is that it allows for almost anyone, anywhere, to invest into businesses and projects to provide liquidity for them to build upon, giving stake-based share ownership in numerous ways, with the potential for very large returns on investment. But on top of the returns, it allows for us to pick and choose what we are investing into in ways that many have not been able to before, which fundamentally changes the way in which value flows through the economy, increasingly taking more into private hands and out of the grasp of government, bank and corporation directly.
Investing essentially is providing liquidity for a business to build upon, but because the gateways to do so are managed, most people in this world have very little opportunity to make the move and start to become an owner. Instead, most of us are renters, either because we own nothing that we actually control, or we are in debt of some kind. We pay fees on the debt, we pay in purchase power on the inflation of currencies we cannot affect.
So, decentralized finance (DeFi), while only in its infancy, is part of the bridge system that can bring the altcoins bought and earned on the various usecases, together into a collected pool to provide liquidity for activity, which can then be used to build new businesses upon and perhaps the foundation for new tokenized products, that can be invested directly into, earned upon and have those earnings be used to go back into a pool in a rinse and repeat cycle. The potential for astronomical collective growth is huge, with the difference from normal banking systems being that all of this is done through a myriad chains and tokens, all owned and spread by millions of users globally, none of them owning enough (hopefully) to commandeer value for themselves alone. The value created gets spread back through the system.
Perhaps an example of the way this works is my own bullishness on Hive, where for over four years I have been able to build my stake and hold a fair bit through my own activity and purchases. Built on Hive is Leo Finance, which has its own set of tokens and products and has been around for about two years. If we are going to look at the total value of holdings, there are quite a few people who now have far more worth on Leo, than I have on Hive and they are able to use that to further the Leo project a well as diversify into other projects. Now, I had the opportunity to convert Hive into LEO but didn't do too much, as I am (for the purpose of this paragraph, but not true) a "HIVE maximalist". Did I miss an opportunity? For current ROI, yes, but in the terms of the ecosystem that Leo is built upon, definitely not. We are building an economy here, which requires many healthy businesses.
However, what does that simple example look like if we only had Bitcoin to play with, does it work? Not really, as if I had a lot of Bitcoin and Leo started with Bitcoin, their is no room for growth, there is no reason for me or others to get into LEO, as holding Bitcoin is all that is required. My point is, that while Bitcoin is struggling for use case, the tokenization of experience is expanding rapidly, generating value that didn't exist earlier, practical vehicles that anyone can opt into and use to support the growth of activity they like, for example,, the social and content activity on Hive.
What I wonder is, how many Bitcoin maximalists are left?
Obviously, Bitcoin is a fantastic investment opportunity and will be for a long time to come, but the more that the altcoins attach their value to real-world activity, the less need for Bitcoin to move anywhere, as it becomes a store of value. However, what this means is that Bitcoin can be used to enter into pools to generate altcoins, effectively providing the liquidity for more altcoin tokenization to exist. Bitcoin can't mine Bitcoin, but it can mine an altcoin.
Where does this leave the mind of a Bitcoin maximalist who doesn't believe in altcoins?
It is interesting, don't you think? As going forward, the largest likely use case for Bitcoin isn't that it can be used to purchase Lamborghinis, it is that it can underpin the creation of new tokenized products and services through the generation of inflation using DeFi. It is in this that it truly becomes the "Gold 2.0" of the world, as it is lumped together in decentralized Fort Knox environments to help back the value of everything else.
What I think a true maximalist (if they still exist) is missing, is that Bitcoin is an important piece of the crypto economy, but without the altcoins, its own reason to exist is greatly diminished. The tokenized ecosystem requires a very large range of tokens and usecases in order to bring practical usability to it in order to attract the addition, creation and generation of value within it. Through this, there is the security of diversity and the ability for investment and activity to become opt-in, without having to tie oneself to a single source ever again.
I think that what we are slowly embarking on now is the next phase of blockchain and crypto, where we are further creating a mesh of assets that combine to become far greater in value than when they are stand alone. Hive is doing this on its own chain in many ways, but it will also have to increasingly connect in with the larger ecosystem to create more bridges between use cases. DeFi is a way for it to do this and in time, the entire crypto-asset industry will be plugging into decentralized and digital versions of Fort Knox to build a network economy that all participants own globally.
Instead of being subjects of a king, there are no kings.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]