The title of the latest post on Vitalik Buterin’s blog “In Defence of Bitcoin Maximalism” suggests it as an April Fool prank at its best. Though the blog post’s publish date sets a witty tone, his convincing arguments in support of Bitcoin say otherwise.
His narrative unfolds the bigger picture of the current situation of Bitcoin as it appears to outsiders saying– “Bitcoin is a boomer coin, and Ethereum is soon to follow; it will be newer and more energetic assets that attract the new waves of mass users who don’t care about weird libertarian ideology or “self-sovereign verification”, are turned off by toxicity and anti-government mentality, and just want blockchain defi and games that are fast and work.”
He then questions whether the habits, ideas and practices of Bitcoin maximalism are pretty close to correct or their actions and opinions on protocol design deeply reflect the survival in a hostile environment and uncertain world.
Considering Bitcoin maximalists broadly resist change to bitcoin itself while arguing that complex blockchain systems have fatal flaws.
The pioneer of the Ethereum Blockchain, Buterin has never been a fan of Bitcoin maximalism, let alone praising them in his private blog. Not long ago, he even criticized the forced adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador. Following the incident, he has also made controversial remarks saying “Shame on Bitcoin Maximalists who are uncritically praising him (El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele).”
Note that Ethereum itself has also been in the crosshairs of maximalists, presumably because of the complexity of its smart contract features.
The main highlight has been the comparison he made between “Team Blockchain” and “Team Bitcoin”. He called Ethereum folks “privileged people in wealthy countries enjoying the idea of moving beyond money and capitalism.” The ones who can’t keep themselves from being excited about ‘decentralized governance experimentation’ as a hobby.
On the other hand, he described “Team Bitcoin” as a highly diverse group of both rich and poor people, who are using the capitalist tool of free self-sovereign money to provide real value to human beings.
He went on mockingly defended bitcoin maximalists saying that they defend bitcoin with real ferocity, it is because they understand big risks associated with complex features and systems. He writes – ”it’s just not possible for a currency to ‘enable’ an ecosystem of highly complex and risky decentralized applications without that complexity biting it back somehow. Bitcoin makes the safe choice.”
He also pointed out that to fulfill their own needs maximalists are always ready to firmly reject changes that will introduce unnecessary complexity to the Bitcoin protocol layer.
He summarized the blog post quite ironically, taking the April Fools Joke too far stating – “Maximalism is not just Bitcoin-for-the-sake-of-Bitcoin; rather, it’s a very genuine realization that most other crypto-assets are scams, and a culture of intolerance is unavoidable and necessary to protect newbies and make sure at least one corner of that space continues to be a corner worth living in.”
For sure, Vitalik Buterin has put on a great show for the crypto community to watch. Even in sarcasm, he has made solid points and clearly succeeded in compelling readers to “Be a maximalist”.
