Bitcoin Maximalists Are Missing Out On Future Innovations

And that is not going well for a long period. Shutting down everything just to support one ideology is also shutting down improvements of any kind in the future. While many have taken advantage of Bitcoin's success rather than creating their own distinct brand and offering value, emulation is occasionally done in the hopes of perpetuating a concept or movement rather than with the malicious purpose of stealing credit (and market share) from the original.

Bitcoin Maximalists and How it Happened

Within cryptocurrencies, there is a strong belief that one coin and chain will rule them all. While Bitcoin was created with a revolution in mind, many of its users have forgotten that collaboration is at the heart of innovation in the ten years since its inception. In the early days of Bitcoin, users and developers were encouraged to post their opinions in public forums about the technology's future trajectory. Over time, the forums where censorship resistance had reigned became extensively monitored, and anyone who dared to disagree with the coin's core development team was asked to keep shut. 

Bitcoin maximalists blame their antipathy to Bitcoin-based technologies on a history of abuse. All attempts to improve Bitcoin's tokenomics or technology, they allege, have been thinly veiled coups aimed at centralization and rewarding Altcoin inventors. 

Indeed, Bitcoin forks have traditionally underperformed the core asset over time, but that doesn't guarantee they always will or that the forks' inventors intended to steal market share from Bitcoiners. Bitcoin forks have always been about boosting throughput and lowering transaction costs to keep the coin's utility alive; however, rather than seeing forks as attempts to preserve the technology that so many people fell in love with, Bitcoiners saw them as an assault. Forks and spin-offs of alternative blockchain systems are the same.

Early Ethereans have acquired the same maximalist impulses as the Bitcoiners who came before them, despite being incorrectly labeled as 'worthless Altcoiners' (their favorite token was ETH). Polygon was called worthless by Ethereum Maximalists in 2019 and 2020, however, it has helped keep more TVL locked within the Ethereum ecosystem than any other scaling solution. 

UniSwap maximalists claimed in 2021 that QuickSwap (a fork of UniSwap v2 on the Polygon Network) was a worthless clone, yet during the 2021 bull run, QuickSwap's users outweighed Uniswap's users multiple times. Furthermore, $QUICK, QuickSwap's utility token, outperformed $UNI last year.

Furthermore, Polygon had no intention of dethroning Ethereum, and QuickSwap was created to take Uniswap's momentum to a platform that was attempting to help Ethereum scale.

Maximalists Need to Understand the Potential of Projects Like NFTs

After years of making the same mistakes, one may expect the crypto space to evolve and its inhabitants to learn to work together. Many new chain-specific 'punk' projects are being discarded as 'copycats' or 'derivatives,' just as maximalists neglected the aforementioned crypto evolutionary tendencies. We believe that these maximalists are missing the point. 

Although this form of flattery may appear to be threatening to crypto-maximalists who believe their preferred coin or protocol is superior to all others, the fear that the imitation will supersede the original idea, what if accepting the concept's evolution can protect their ideas by bridging communities, movements, and technologies?

Polygon Punks and other these types of projects are an essential component of every ecosystem. Furthermore, for the first time in crypto history, anyone in the crypto-verse can use art on the blockchain to express themselves, showcase their personalities, and even create a fundamental crypto identity.

So Let’s Make Space For The New Ideas

We're all aware that crypto maximalists exist and contribute to the industry's advancement; however, many maximalists overlook future opportunities because they forget that crypto evolves at the speed of light.

Despite early Bitcoiners' claims that Ethereum was an Altcoin scam that would never work, Ether - the Ethereum chain's gas token - increased by over 10,000% in 2017, and after a sharp pullback in the crypto markets from 2018 to 2020, ETH increased by over 94% in the last year, whereas  BTC increased only 13% in the same period. Although many Ethereans claimed Polygon (and its native token $MATIC) were useless, $MATIC has grown by more than 4000% in the last year.

Because they allow their bags (and their insecurities about those bags) to cloud their vision, maximalists frequently miss the next crypto trend. Those who are more open to future trends have a better chance of spotting them when they appear, keeping doors open for collaboration, and, ultimately, remaining relevant.