A lot of people think my interview with Roger Ver was a turning point when I left the church of Bitcoin maximalism
In fact, I started questioning it when the culture became obviously non-libertarian during the pandemic
Asking Gary Gensler’s SEC to label everything other than BTC as an unregistered security
Defending KYC & weird surveillance practices, by saying that at least the service is “Bitcoin only and doesn’t support any shitcoin”
Slaying guys like Andreas Antonopoulos who honestly is the reason many of us stuck around
Pushing idiots with nothing interesting to say to speak on conference stages just because they are “bullish”
Shitting on projects that have been nothing but nice and supportive to Bitcoin (Litecoin, Zcash) and others that do what Bitcoin cannot (Ethereum, Monero)
Replacing reason with dogma and enforcing everything with a weird sense of self-confidence that stalls progress
Acting like any network upgrade is an attack, despite intensive testing on other compatible networks
Vilifying developers to the point that they ragequit to build something else, while those who stay are incentivized to play along with the meme culture just to earn a paycheck
Worshipping Saylor, who is against the values of Bitcoin’s early days
Sucking up to politicians and selling out to government agencies because “everything is good for Bitcoin” and “Honeybadger don’t care”
Pretending that a federation like Liquid is decentralized and the L-BTC token is actually bitcoin (the market chose Ethereum for this use case, lol)
Repeating lies about Lightning Network’s success, when the project has been stagnating in terms of liquidity for years
Acting like bitcoin adoption in El Salvador (mostly custodial, surveilled by the state) is going the way it’s supposed to and other countries should copy the same example
Looking the other way while bitcoin payments get replaced by stablecoins and BTC adoption was in fact higher a decade ago
Changing history and erasing the contributions of OGs only to appeal to institutional investors that may make the number go up (who still remembers Gavin Andresen or Mike Hearn?)
Making up narratives on the go, manufacturing fake news in order to manipulate the market sentiment and get another pump
Suppressing conversations about serious improvement proposals, which would help Bitcoin scale to 8 billion people and offer monetary fungibility
Keeping builders away from Bitcoin with a hostile and cocky attitude which assumes victory before any significant battle has been won
Not giving a fuck about the disappearance of privacy products & research (Ethereum raised millions of dollars to defend the Tornado Cash devs, while bitcoiners simply shrugged when Samourai devs got arrested)
Normalizing a culture of complacency where you’re afraid of saying something wrong (or even remotely different from the social consensus) because you might just be excommunicated
Promoting sheepish mediocrity while pushing away radical reformists (Paul Sztorc, Jeremy Rubin)
Forgetting history (today was UASF day, does anyone still remember?)
Never giving the benefit of the doubt to other networks that build cool shit, only because they have tokens which compete with bitcoin
—————————-
I could go on all day, but I am sick of the hypocrisy and double standards.
Toxic Bitcoin maximalism is an inconsistent mess
A fucking death cult that leaves no true Scotsman standing
Though it may seem like a resilient culture, it ultimately leads to fragility via stagnation
————————
