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@ Sina 21st
2025-02-15 12:46:28
Reflections on altcoins and the Bitcoin maximalist movement
Bitcoin maximalism was a reactionary movement to the unbearable magnitude of fraud and grift that existed in altcoins.
Many are prior altcoiners who got burnt and learned a hard lesson.
Most maximalists I know have no issue with tech experimentation. The issue has always been the grift of selling tokens that eventually became a casino masquerading as a software business.
And when 99% of an industry is vaporware tokens, the whole category gets rejected.
Interestingly, this intolerant minority has been proven right time and again over the last 16 years.
Every single “next bitcoin” project has failed. Many high-profile anti-maxis (e.g., Mashinsky) turned out to be actual frauds. And most alts disparaged by maxis ended up underperforming Bitcoin over time.
You may not like maxi’s who “blindly” reject the value of the whole altcoin space. But you cannot deny that people who listened to maxis were saved from numerous scams in the space. And they outperformed most altcoins too.
Maxis decided to promote only the thing they cannot print or manipulate. By doing so they closed their own door to grift. When you cannot sell a token little incentive is left for nonsense. Maxis self-selected out of the shade and stayed clean (for the most part) in a dirty industry.
That is not to say everything is cool. As maxis were proven right on many issues, grifters adopted the label maxi to appear legit but are deep down the same old. Some are using the label for marketing without really understanding what Bitcoin is. There are many that I disagree with. I am myself blocked by several big mouth maxi-marketers.
But nonetheless the only safe space in this ocean of grift and fraud is Bitcoin.
I have studied this space since 2015, and I am yet to find a truly viable and sustainable idea in the 1000’s of token that have launched since except in stablecoins.
It has always been about the tokens not the software.
It has always been about the gamble not the tech.
No one cares about the fake use case and utility. Everyone is in for the get rich quick.
In the end, it has become clear to me that alts have always been memes. Memecoins masquerading as tech.
Which are now being replaced by pure memecoins.
In the end, the honest, value-adding, positive sum, incorruptible money wins. And I am happy to have been Bitcoin-only since day one.