In 2018, Bitcoin maximalism was truly punk rock

All about sticking it to the man, telling nation states and VCs that they can’t invent a better Bitcoin

We have this immaculately conceived money network and we’re gonna turn it into the default currency of the internet

The cool features from altcoins? We’ll take them and make them work with the 21 million BTC. Your experiments can’t hold value and there’s nothing you can do about it

The forks? You can make 1000 of them and most of us will stick with the original chain, with the largest amount of Proof of Work!

But somewhere along the line, the movement got diluted and lost its meaning or legitimacy.

The big influencers sold out and now they’re wearing suits to talk to the bankers, heads of state, and the VCs they used to pretend to hate.

The educators focus on propaganda and go as far as telling their students to invest in bitcoin reserve companies – a far cry from the “not your keys, not your coins culture”, but a safe proxy for the culturally taboo “shitcoining”.

The Lightning network, which was supposed to be the scaling solution that enables the medium of exchange function, took too long to build and still doesn’t live up to the hype or expectations. Low volume, a diminishing number of user nodes, a reliance on central services and custodians made it “efficient” but ultimately pointless. If you’re gonna have trust, might as well reinvent banking.

We never got the sidechains we were promised. Blockstream delivered a federation, and drivechains were always discouraged by the devs. In theory, Bitcoin could have every altcoin’s features on dedicated sidechains that offer scaling, privacy & contracts. In practice, every time we came close to activating something significant we ended up not taking any action.

The community, which used to be smart and well read, became a lazy cult which worships a select clique of people while reciting the “don’t trust, verify” mantra. The only upgrades came from Blockstream and the same handful of devs. Stuff like CTV and CAT was regarded with skepticism because the builders didn’t pass all the purity test – the arguments against activation were never about the quality of code.

The same people who used to tell politicians and Silicon Valley investors to go fuck themselves are now celebrating when Microstrategy, Black Rock and the Trump family acquire amounts of bitcoin.

Talks about ossification are more serious than ever, with folks who act as if Bitcoin is perfect and will never need any more improvements.

It’s a depressing landscape, really. But the silver lining is that the shitcoins, that around 2017 were mostly modified forks of Bitcoin, have gotten incredibly good and not all of them are scams.

Today, shitcoining is the new Bitcoin maximalism. Because in principle, even though you admit defeat in regards to the 21 million coins for the entire world utopia, you go back to sticking it to the man and supporting subversive tech.

In the end, it all comes down to the question “why are you here?”. If you want to change the world, you won’t accomplish it with Bitcoin in its current state. It needs privacy, scaling, contracts & quantum resistance. It will probably only get the latter two, while the former will happen on suboptimal layers.

The good news is that Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, Litecoin, and a dozen others are still keeping the spirit alive. They still experiment with new tech, they push the limits of existing assumptions, and they make cypherpunk literature come to life.

Shitcoins are the new Bitcoin.

Shitcoining is the new Bitcoin maximalism.

The sooner you realize it, the quicker you will adapt to this paradigm.