- Despite the altcoin market growing to become collectively bigger than Bitcoin, BTC maximalists believe it’s a shitcoin-infested market full of gamblers.
- A number of leading BTC maxis have had their say on why they stick to Bitcoin, with most reiterating that they are not in it for the quick bucks but to change the world.
Have you been accumulating Bitcoin (or stacking the sats in BTC lingo) or are you a believer in Ethereum and the other newer generation altcoins? The crypto community has always been divided on the value of altcoins and if they are good for Bitcoin or take away from BTC’s targeted market. BTC maximalists have always held that every other coin is ‘trash,’ and as some revealed recently, their view hasn’t changed one bit.
Today, Bitcoin accounts for about 42 percent of the $2 trillion cryptocurrency market, with an $845 billion market cap at press time. Ethereum remains the biggest altcoin at $376 billion, with Tether at $81 billion, Binance Coin at $68 billion and USD Coin at $52 billion completing the top five.
And while none of the altcoins can singly compete with Bitcoin, combined they are worth more than the king of crypto.
Despite this growth by altcoins, the BTC maximalists have remained just as devoted to their hatred for altcoins as they are to their love for Bitcoin.
The maxis attack altcoins for various reasons. For some, it’s that most altcoins have some element of centralization. Even with the major projects like Ethereum, there are leaders like Vitalik Buterin who are quite influential in which way a project goes.
Julian Liniger, the CEO of Swiss BTC-only investment app Relai explained:
It is the only asset that is truly decentralized — i.e., has no leader or leading team — and, therefore, truly uncensorable and unseizable.
Bitcoin maxis: We’re not here to take easy money from gamblers
The debate on BTC vs. altcoins takes many shapes and directions. For some, it’s philosophical. They argue that since Bitcoin already existed from 2008, the other cryptos weren’t necessary. Of course, this debate is watered down by BTC’s inefficiencies in a number of areas including its high fees, slow transactions, and lack of smart contracts.
Ruben Waterman, the CEO of Bittr, an exchange which describes itself as ‘the sweetest way to stack sats,’ says, “…digital scarcity can only be created once — i.e., the state of the world where no working cryptocurrency existed in 2008, can never be recreated, simply because Bitcoin exists today.”
To him, the world only ever needed a cryptocurrency once, and that was pre-2008. After Satoshi launched Bitcoin, there was no more need for cryptocurrencies as one already existed.
There are other maxis who are much more direct in their attack on altcoins. They believe that altcoins are only meant to be a get-rich-quick scheme where people seldom care about the impact the project has on the world.
This belief has been vindicated over the years. Hundreds of altcoin projects have sunk after their developers took off with investors’ money after at first posing as genuine people who wanted to change the world. In recent times, rug pulls have become the order of the day, with DeFi platforms making it super easy for developers to siphon funds and vanish.
On the flip side, there are several projects that are changing the world. Ethereum has become the global blockchain of choice for developers to build innovative applications. Some like Terra and Fantom have focused on DeFi, with others like Flow blockchain making it big through NFTs. Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche and more are giving developers more efficient and cheaper ways to build on the blockchain.
But to BTC maxis, all altcoins are the same, and they are for speculative trading.
Danny Scott, the CEO of UK-based BTC-only exchange CoinCorner commented:
Bitcoin will be for the greater good, for ourselves and others in the long term. We’re here to change the world, not take money from gamblers.
Scott revealed that his exchange would never offer the thousands of altcoins and took a shot at leading exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken for listing almost every other altcoin project. He says that they care little about changing the world and just want to make money through trading fees. Scott, however, adheres to the principle of forfeiting short-term revenue for the greater good, he says.
Danny Brewster, the CEO of yet another BTC-only exchange, FastBitcoins, summed it up:
We are also willing to forgo early and somewhat easy profits that we could make by providing customers with yet another altcoin/shitcoin casino, that distorts the public understanding of what Bitcoin is and why it even exists.
But for Danny, it goes much further than just simply being against altcoins. He is a firm believer that Bitcoin will be humanity’s salvation.
Bitcoin is our only hope of separating money and state; it is the one opportunity that we will have to accomplish such a feat.” It’s a once-in-a-generation — perhaps, lifetime — opportunity to pry the money printer from the government’s hands.
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