I was introduced to the idea behind maximalistic philosophy (there should be only one global currency) by following Craig S. Wright's tweets. Craig is a legend in the crypto sphere and I agree with everything he says ... but this. You are thinking who am I to judge Wright, but let me elaborate a bit. I've heard of the "agoristic" mindset when I first heard of Bitcoin.
Agorism is a philosophy that can be summarised in the sentence "Surely it is I who will decide on my own what the F*CK my money is to pay for goods and services as long as others accept it too".
This looks so obvious but yet in the current system we are used to pay with only one (state) currency. And almost nobody seems to think anything is wrong with this. The history tells us that the idea of freedom in choice of money has been criminalised since Jesus came about and probably even before. And it has been going on ever since.
You think what happened to Gaddafi was because he was an "evil person" and US "saved the people" from his tyranny?
Gadaffi's fate was decided when he revealed he wants to trade Oil for Euro or even his own currency instead of the enforced US Dollar.
So the real revolution with all the crypto craze (besides the blockchain tech which is nothing special IMO - Git has had the technology since 2005) is the opportunity for the agorism to finally manifest itself. What's more, money used to be neutral, colorless, cold, boring... With the rise of crypto currencies now you can not only transact more efficiently, you can also make a statement by paying with or accepting a specific coin. Are you selling honey? Accept $BUZZ and you help preventing the bees going extinct. You want to pay for something but at the same time express your true opinion of it? Pay with $F*CK token. Far from neutral eh?
What's more, the blockchain is not just a data structure. It is a replicator in the Dawkins' Selfish Gene sense. It can also be seen as a creature living in the world of 0s and 1s. The blockchain is a genome and the addresses in it are the genes. Saying "there should be only one blockchain" is like saying "there should be only one species". Who are we to judge? Why should it be only Homo Sapiens? Why not Proteus Anguinus?
I know Metcalfe wants maximalism. But people. Do you actually think it is a sound plan to spread through our galaxy using money that has this kind of distribution:
- Satoshi 5%
- 10 Anonymous cypher punks 5%
- 100 Anonymous anarcho capitalists 5%
- 1000 Anonymous lucky basement geeks 5%
Wake up.
Bitcoin Cash was a test for the Bitcoin investors. You can ignore it / believe the FUD / whatever and dump it for $400, enjoying your free extra Bitcoins. I belive a lot of whales did that, and it is fair they end up like they will HODLing Bitcoin till the bitter end. And I do believe Bitcoin Cash will be worth $100k sooner than expected. But why diss other coins? Because your net worth wont go total_crypto_user_count_squared but only a fragment of it? Isn't this a feature not a bug? Allowing many creatures to emerge from this, but no single one being the dominant one.
You have to agree Bitcoin nowadays is outdated tech. The only reason I hold it is because of the respect for Satoshi and the original chain. PoW has a place under the Sun, but surely it is not the one solution for everything.
STEEM's witness system is a great example of an alternative that works much better than PoW for the purpose it was built. And yes, STEEM is by far the most undervalued tradable on the crypto market right now. I've recently heard of a new venture that will use the steem technology to try to make an even better platform (not so susceptible to whale manipulation), but steem's original blockchain being the first of its kind has a place reserved in the legacy of mankind.