If you ask 10 different crypto-enthusiast to define Bitcoin Maximalism — you will get 12 different answers. What is clear however is that Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency — and one that has been proven to be surprisingly resilient, at Internet scale, for almost a decade after its founding. While we may not agree with everything that every Bitcoin Maximalist has ever said, here are 10 of our favorites.
1. From Murad Mahmudov and Adam Taché
“Bitcoin [maximalists] envision an endgame where an implementation of Bitcoin will be a massively adopted cryptocurrency that is both a store of value and a medium of exchange.”
2. Evan Wagner, co-founder of Counterparty:
“The future of cryptocurrency depends on our ability to build real products that real people can use as soon as possible. Instead of reinventing the wheel and creating new blockchains from scratch, we, the cryptocurrency community, should be making evolutionary, tractable improvements to Bitcoin itself, whenever possible.”
3. Kevin Pham has an active twitter following
“In 2008, Satoshi ushered in the era of unstoppable money...”
4. Andrew Barisser of Assembly Coins:
“Make it modular. Make it lightweight. Make it on Bitcoin, or a two-way sidechain linked to Bitcoin. Simply put, we can do better.”
5. Jon Evans, Techcrunch columnist and Bitcoin purist, writes:
“The blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin is a major technical breakthrough that could, in time, revolutionize both the Internet and the financial industry as we know them, and the first steps of that potential revolution are now under way.”
6. WhalePanda puts it succinctly:
“Obviously you can’t fire an open-source volunteering dev team”
7. Milton Friedman possibly predicted bitcoin in 1999
“The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A...”
8. Nassim Taleb has commented on Bitcoin from a macro-economic perspective:
“Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative”
9. Tyler Winklevoss has been an early backer of Bitcoin:
“We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error.”
10. This is a tongue in cheek quote by yours truly that was meant to highlight that Bitcoin is in part, a “hedge” or insurance against policy error — in particular policy error rooted in dishonesty.
“Bitcoin will goto zero the day that all politicians become honest.”
To be sure, our admiration for Bitcoin can’t be understated. Bitcoin paved the path for blockchain innovation. With rare exception, we are highly skeptical that crypto funds and investment products being created for retail and institutions will outperform simply holding Bitcoin after fees over the long run. We are not aiming to replace Bitcoin or its use cases. Still, we believe that there are more blockchain innovations to come. At nCent we have ultimately decided for a number of different reasons to build our own protocol, a specialized chain for incentive markets. But our heart and soul will always be rooted in Bitcoin.
If you would like to learn more about the our very own crypto-revolution feel free to reach out to me: [email protected]. To stay in the nCent loop, hear me tweet and join our international telegram channel.