Topic: [2022-07-14] Nic Carter vs. The Bitcoin Maximalists (Read 554 times)

@johhnyUA. It could collapse, however, another currency will take over as the international currency of choice for international trade. However, if we do not move away from reality, we cannot be quite as certain as the maximalists that the next currency adopted for international trade would be bitcoin. But the maximalists will not tell you this. They will only continue the circle jerk and tell you everything will go to 0 and there is nothing else but bitcoin.

This funny point of view reminds me of soviet propaganda waiting for Western World and capitalism "to colapse". Bad is that USSR collapsed first. IN soviet times there was a funny joke about it: "Soviet magazines: Capitalism is near the great pit! Soviet people: Capitalism is just watching socialism at the bottom" 

This takes about "dollar collapse" sounds like russian sockpuppet propaganda. I think you can make it far better than the average low-IQ russian Z-ombie

I love bitcoin also, however, I also try to not be far removed from reality and try not to make very biased statements and impossible predictions. You say if bitcoin fails, nothing else will be cypherpunk money? There is Monero, Grin and Litecoin which can also be considered cypherpunk money. Are they successful? I reckon they certainly are successful alternatives to bitcoin.

Also much of the bitcoin maximalists appear to have the argument that bitcoin is successful because it has the highest market capitalization and therefore it is a good store of value. However, what if Ethereum begins becoming the most valuable coin in market capitalization? That certainly makes Ethereum a better store of value according to their argument.

This is bullshit, the guy has a wrong idea about what bitcoin maximalism is. I've always thought to be a bitcoin maxi but that's because I feel like all altcoins are inferior to bitcoin and centralized coins have a huge vulnerability. I had altcoins and there's nothing wrong with buying them. We are free to buy what we want which is why we're promoting a free, decentralized form of money.
I've never heard of people who think being involved with altcoins is a sin They must be a weird bunch.

Thanks.  Unfortunately, I will need to cut short what I was writing here—if I ever want to post this.  :-)

To answer that, we first must define “success”.  Is economic success the sole criterion?  Although that is important, I think that economic success is necessary but insufficient.

Bitcoin is freedom-money.  It is authentic cypherpunk-money.  It grew organically as a social phenomenon, in historical circumstances that cannot be artifically duplicated.

If Bitcoin were to fail, I think that “the whole cryptospace” would almost inevitably fail in the way that really matters.

I say this when I own altcoins, and I much like some altcoins:  If Bitcoin were to fail, then any independent altcoin would almost inevitably fail economically.  Bitcoin makes the cryptocurrency market.

If Bitcoin were to fail, I predict that the only “altcoins” that could still succeed would be those backed by massive capital from big banks and VCs.  But those are not legitimate “crypto” in the sense of cypherpunk-money.  Those are merely de facto centralized Fintech payment systems that use some cryptography, and that sell themselves under a veneer of fake “decentralization”.  Some are better in this aspect, some are worse—all of them devolve over time in the direction of giving big banks and insider whales the power that Bitcoin takes away from them.  Worst in this aspect is anything POS, a definitional plutocracy.

Thus, although I disagree with the “maximalist” purity-testing that treats people as sinners for (gasp!) touching a forbidden altcoin, I agree with the proposition that “Bitcoin’s failure will be the whole cryptospace’s failure without any other cryptocoin having to find and achieve success.”  Like it or not.  That is the reality.

I love Bitcoin.  I love it as if it were a living creature.  And I recognize on pragmatic grounds that attempting to replace it would be a fool’s errand, likely resulting in a Pyrrhic victory at best.  Accordingly, I am proud when altcoiners call me a “Bitcoin maxi”; and I tend to agree with them about that.  I say that when I own altcoins, I think that defi has great potential (excluding such garbage as Yield Farming, a classic HYIP scam), and I have some history on this forum of defending the good uses of NFTs.  (Not Bored Ape trash.  The basic idea now called “NFTs” is much older, and it has much undiscovered potential for future applications.)  There are multiple reasons why my signature or personal text has said since 2017:  “There is only one Bitcoin.”

Am I a Bitcoin maximalist?


I don’t follow the opinions of these types of pundits, so I can’t comment other than to say that [0] I think that it is very, very unlikely that all fiat currencies will go to zero against Bitcoin in the type of total “hyperbitcoinization” scenario that some Bitcoiners predict; and, [1] whenever fiat currencies crash, as not infrequently occurs, people need an escape hatch—a currency that is not controlled by corrupt governments and corrupt central banks.

Bitcoin was created to be such a thing.  See the headline in the Genesis Block.

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The Great Collapse

Quote from: NotATether on August 09, 2022, 03:41:14 AM

Quote from: bbc.reporter on August 08, 2022, 07:55:17 PM

I also want to hear your opinion on the comments of people similar to Max Keisler who said in an interview that all fiat will be going to zero against bitcoin. Is this right?

Completely unrealistic in the developed Western world. I know it's fashionable to peddle an impending collapse of economy, but the govts. simply don't allow that to happen.

Governments are not gods.  They cannot magically stop economies from collapsing.  The smaller big question is when the petrodollar scam will collapse.  The bigger big question is whether or not that will be a part of a catastrophic global collapse.

I know it’s fashionable to peddle the “this is fine!” belief that governments can prevent a catastrophic global collapse of civilization; but history shows that civilizations do collapse, inevitably so when they are infected by even the tiniest bit of today’s all-consuming rot.  I have remarked before on this forum that around A.D. 350–400, Romans must have believed that their civilization was invincible.

Only a knowledge of the mere past century, the blink of an historical eye, is needed to know that major economic collapses do happen.  Whereas only myopia, short time horizons, and a lack of historical education could lead anyone to believe that a civilizational collapse can’t happen here and now.

Today’s global economic system is altogether the biggest scam in the history of the world.  Its eventual collapse has been assured since the 1970s, at the latest.  And a technological, industrial civilization cannot reasonably expect to survive a catastrophic economic implosion.  The question is not “if”, but when?  Many commentators discredit themselve by mispredicting the “when?”—a question that no one can reasonably answer.

This does not necessarily mean that when some fiat currencies collapse, Bitcoin will just replace them.  To presume as much is a simplistic leap of logic in attempting to predict the outcomes of a complex scenario.  I think it’s more likely that as long as technical civilization exists, there will be a competition of currencies—and when this rotten civilization finally collapses in total, Bitcoin will not exist, because computers and the Internet will not exist.

N.b. that I have always consistently said this:

Quote from: nullius on October 16, 2020, 05:18:01 PM

I do think that the collapse is nigh inevitable, barring a drastic, radical global change that has negligible chance of actually happening.

[...]

This—n.b. the date before Covid, when exuberant faith in ever-increasing prosperity was more fashionable:

Quote from: nullius on February 08, 2018, 06:54:02 PM

[...]

By comparison, Roman society was a zombified rotting corpse for four or five centuries before the civil machine built by long-gone forebears ran out of momentum.  I can see how greater technology could have accelerated the ultimate downfall in various ways.

What’s left is to secure yourself, take care of your own, live by honour alone whereas law is meaningless, keep busy with something productive, and try to have some fun.

[...]

Quote from: Vod on February 08, 2018, 06:53:07 PM

I believe nullius has a more optimistic view of the future than I do. 

“Optimism is cowardice.” — Spengler (writing most of a hundred years ago)

@NotATether. I very much agree, however, watch Max Keiser in this video hehehe.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bh3ObPjcFE

Does really believe what he has said when he was tearing a dollar bill or is he continuing the circle jerk for bitcoiners? It would be very head shaking if everyone is taking him and Michael Saylor seriously.

Also, it will not only be the government who will not allow it to happen, I am quite certain it will be everyone.

Completely unrealistic in the developed Western world. I know it's fashionable to peddle an impending collapse of economy, but the govts. simply don't allow that to happen.

You should write and publish it in the forum, I reckon. I would also like to know your opinion on some bitcoin maximalists who appear to want everyone to believe that there is only bitcoin and bitcoin's failure will be the whole cryptospace's failure without any other cryptocoin having to find and achieve success.

I also want to hear your opinion on the comments of people similar to Max Keiser who said in an interview that all fiat will be going to zero against bitcoin. Is this right?

New policy:  I present myself as a fearsome “Bitcoin maxi” to altcoiners, and I chat about my favourite altcoins to Bitcoiners.  Thus, I can discover who my true friends are.  This optimizes for the human element.  So does intransigent opposition to scams.

I have been intending to write an essay with my own take on Bitcoin maximalism, but I am not sure if this forum is the right place to publish it.

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That’s backwards.  All of the scams that you list made hardfork changes, while most of them accept post-Satoshi softfork changes such as P2SH (activated 2012-04-01).  Only Bitcoin has retained the status quo, with only backwards compatible changes since (IIRC) BIP 50/Bitcoin v0.8.1 (?) in 2013.  AFAIK, the only forkscam that even claims to be “exactly how Satoshi made it” is BSV—the perpetrator of which demands that Bitcoin make hardfork changes to seize coins.  I think that shows the nature of Faketoshi’s nonsense about Bitcoin being allegedly “carved in stone”:  He is upset that Bitcoin’s blockchain is actually carved in stone, never mind the consensus rules.

(I need not reach the rest of this discussion.)

I reckon that it is much worse because it is telling everyone that if bitcoin cannot succeed, no other cryptocoin can succeed. The arrogance of this type of thinking within some groups in the bitcoin community is what is causing to make it comedic and intolerable. This is very head shaking behavior. If you do not know what I am talking about, there are many Max Keiser videos in conferences.

In my experience.... ideology and principles are thrown overboard when profit is the new goal. We saw this with people like "butthurt" Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen ..... and "Circle" when they changed their business model and basically kicked Bitcoiners in the nuts.

Money can "cloud" people's judgement ....so they can do a 180 on their previous statements and/or principles, when they hunt for that. Let's be honest.... the world are ruled by "money" these days. 

I didn't think that he meant "no other project in the cryptospace should succeed" but that if bitcoin were to die, it would indicate some fatal flaw with crypto in general which would mean that no other crypto would succeed.  Perhaps it is a subtle difference, but that was the way I understood it.  :-)

@goldkingcoiner. So according to your argument, if bitcoin fails, no other project in the cryptospace should succeed? Is this not very much removed from reality?

I am also not saying that bitcoin will die. I am only asking if the people would reconsider using bitcoin as a store of value if it has been overtaken in market capitalization by another coin and if bitcoin's value falls continuously.

Thats a very hypothetical question. I see it as this: If Bitcoin died while some other coin was rising, then there is no more reason to believe in cryptocurrency at all, as the fall of Bitcoin can only mean one thing: Blockchain technology has developed a fatal flaw. At that point I would be buying gold and turning my back to the blockchain world. Bitcoin would be just a failed, glorious experiment.

But lets save the boogey man stories for the kids. Bitcoin has become the pinnacle of blockchain technology to the point where countries are adopting it as legal tender.

Bitcoin won't die and nothing greater can be created from blockchain technology.

1 BTC = 1 BTC

You should not say that. The maximalists might remove you from their membership hehehe. There is no second best, only bitcoin. If you break the circle jerk, you are out.

Also, I give you an argument. What if bitcoin was overtaken by another coin in market capitalization because bitcoin has been falling in value. Would this cause you to reconsider bitcoin as a store of value?

I think not all altcoins are shitcoins. Although 90% of altcoins are shitcoins.

What I believe is that they are meant to compliment the larger Bitcoin ecosystem. But we do have a lot of shitcoins that are dragging Bitcoin down. We need to start clipping the sick parts off and we will see Bitcoin gain value in a short amount of time.

Although I say I am ok with some altcoins, I still see myself as a Bitcoin maxi. Why? Because I would not feel safe storing my money in form of any cryptocurrency but Bitcoin, long term. Maybe 5% into altcoins for the lulz and community and shorting Bitcoin with usdt whenever we are in a bear market. And even then I don't feel safe enough to short all of my coin. Maybe 25% but thats it really. I feel my money is safest in the form of Bitcoin.

The toxic maximalism going around is basically altcoiner hatred (I assume from bad shitcoin experiences in the past) and newbie snobs pretending they invested in Bitcoin 10 years ago.

Nobody can vote what Satoshi created and gave his name to Bitcoin.

Maxilists see that. His work is conserved and set in stone by his own words

Now deal with it. Btc, bch changing all day, passing off is the result ending in sth else. Funny calling that still Bitcoin

What occured is an overreaction by some cultish maximalists within the bitcoin community which might clearly be very head shaking also for you. Nic Carter's venture fund invested in a seed round of a company who will develop a cryptocoin wallet. However, this wallet to be created is going to be a multicoin wallet. This has made some people in the bitcoin community see him as someone who has commited heresy hehehehehe.

Oh boy, I could write a whole book about this!


Perhaps the best way to explain it is by using examples and metaphors of the Republican party and its most notorious member (Trump).

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A few notes before I begin explaining:
[1] I am not in any way implying that bitcoiners and nocoiners are similar to one or the other groups, I'm just drawing a comparison between them.
[2] Apologies for digging the dead out of the grave, but I chose Trump & conservatives for this example simply because most people are readily familar with him.

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So you see Republican voters and conservatives, and you're a democrat/liberal and fundamentally disagree with their opinions. That's completely natural.

All bitcoiners who actively use bitcoins and altcoins are in a similar category. They are "moderates", people who don't mind what changes go inside the network as long as they don't adversely affect the way they use their money.

Of the maximalists category there are two different kinds, which I shall mention below:

The first is the "moderate maximalist". Politically speaking, there are similar to the republicans who (perhaps reluctantly) supported Trump, as opposed to, say, a rival republican, simply because they believed there was no better alternative in the red sphere - these are people who are quite horrified by some of his remarks, but they literally do not see another candidate who is more determined to fix the economy/country.

Most self-proclaimed maximalists fall in a similar category - they are happy with changes that improve the Bitcoin network, but care from little to none about what other people do on their own networks. Most likely they are against certain proposals for philosophical reasons, but not because their usage of cryptocurreny depends on them.

Because most maximalists are in this category, "moderrate maximalist" can be shortened to simply "maximalist".

Lastly, there are the fanatics. The people who would quite literally jump off a cliff if they saw Trump do it. In the bitcoin-sphere, I call these "extreme maximalists".

These represent people who insist the Bitcoin network be left exactly how Satoshi made it - with no soft forks that add rules & functionality of any kind [as a side note, this is how coins like Bitcoin XT/Gold/Unlimited/Cash/SV were made]. On the polar opposite, it also includes people who insist that a major archetectural change be made to the Bitcoin network at all costs. Like their political counterparts, it is very difficult to debate/negotiate with extreme maximalists as they have a tendancy to resort to personal attacks whenever their opinions are challenged.

Logically speaking, even people who exorbitantly denounce some coins in favor of others could be argued to belong in a similar category. The point is that, this category does not think in moderation with respect to the coins that they support (otherwise, they would be in the "moderates" category, but not in the "minimalists" category).

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Of course, unlike politics, the crypto-sphere is not dominated by two parties. There are in fact more denominations of moderates, moderate maximalist, and extreme maximalist for each crypto currency. [examples: ETH/Ethereum Classic, Monero/Most monero derivatives, Bitcoin Cash/Bitcoin SV (LOL!), and others...]. So, crypto politics should not be viewed in greyscale, because it is a fully colorized picture with multiple hues

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A similar case can be made for nocoiners - the "moderate", the "moderate maximalist", and "extreme maximalist" nocoiner with similar grades as those above for Bitcoiners (and the appropriate analogue for the political parties example).

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The point is that nobody's the same, and lumping some of these groups together in the same denomination is wrong - for example, lumping together the maximalist categories, or simply all the denominations representing a particular coin as "the anticrist", is going to cause more emnity than actual work being done, as the guy in the news article must've discovered by now [for example: I don't like Max Keiser's conclusions about the economy, as I believe them to be too extreme, but do you see me running around the forum trashing him in my posts?]

If someone turns against the very essence of what Bitcoin stands for, then it is only logical that the community will turn against him in one way or another. I don't think that we lose that way, but on the contrary that we defend those positions that come from everything that Satoshi left us.

Did our community lose important people in the form of all those who were pro-Bitcoin and then a few years ago decided to try to destroy it by creating their own version of Bitcoin? Roger Ver, Faketoshi (CW), Jihan Wu, and many others who once meant something are now despised by the community, as well as some new traitors like Mr. Mars, who also did us great harm with his childish moves. We do not push anyone away from us, but we cannot be irresponsible and pretend that some people should have the status of gods and that they can do whatever they want.

I very much agree. I am only saying that the bitcoin community has lost a very intelligent man who has been making good arguments for why bitcoin should adopted by much of the people in the world. Many of his arguments are very much similar to Andreas Antonopolous.

It also appears the bitcoin maximalists are pushing away some of the smart people and support those people who are willing to continue the circle jerk. We should be more careful because this might be the community's own undoing.

This is funny, an article on Coindesk, for which Carter is an author and investor describes his fight and why maximalists are wrong.
Nic carter was a shitcoin lover from the start, and his Dynamic investors have nothing to do with anything related to bitcoin, he tried to enter a war on Twitter and tried to debunk stuff only digging his hole deeper when it turned out that most of his investments had only to do with hype and centralized solutions.

Seriously, he acted like a kid who was losing subscribers on Twitter, having that kind of attitude while bragging about millions of investments sounded to everyone like the last moments of Do Kwon.  If you're preaching how you love bitcoin and cryptos and what they stand for and you deal with Palantir...


The problem is labeling people, and you're doing the same here.
I'm a bitcoin maximalist and a hardcore shitcoin hater, and I don't think there was a week in which I didn't make a fund of Saylor laser eyes or about how Bukele is buying the dip every single time, only for the price to go down after. Real bitcoin maximalists don't give a damn about individuals, you've mistaken a horde of wanna-be millionaires who don't care what and how it makes them rich for bitcoiners.

@bbc.reporter, I don't think that such individuals are important for Bitcoin, at least not in the long term and in the big picture. What they say or do can have a short-term impact on people who think that Bitcoin needs central figures and that its fate depends on them. This has never been the case, nor will it be in the future, and we really do not need to have any kind of leaders - and even Saylor should not be placed in that role, because he is first and foremost a businessman, and not any kind of leader who should have an influence on that whether someone wants to invest in Bitcoin or not.

I don't listen to any of them in the sense that I'm obsessed with what they say, and everything I see and hear comes from this forum. People should be a little more intelligent and think for themselves, not just rely on the opinion of other people, regardless of who it was.

@Lucius. Yes this is a problem because much of the community only knows and listens to Max Keisler and Michael Saylor and consider them as something similar to leaders of the community. However, when you listen to them speak, they only extend the bitcoin maximalism circle jerk preaching like this is a religion. It is head shaking why many people listen to them.

In any case, I am not saying you are part of those people.

This is the first time I'm hearing about this man, and by his appearance I would say that he is a young person who, like many others like him, is just trying to profit by pretending to know something more than other people. If he is some kind of intellectual who abandons the ship, let him feel free to take other like-minded people with him - because Bitcoin survived without its founder and people like Hal Finney, and I'm sure it can survive without one philosopher who should stick to what he studied at university, which is Philosophy and International Relations.

Maybe this man means something to you, but for 99% of people on this forum, he is completely irrelevant, as are the projects in which he participates.

How is bitcoin maximalism presently taken by everyone in bitcointalk? Is it still strong or is it beginning to become weaker after 10 years?

In any case, the bitcoin community lost a smart man when it went against Nic Carter. I do not agree with all of his arguments, however, he is certainly one of the best representatives for bitcoin with arguements based on reality. Many people might disagree but he is certainly smarter than Max Keisler.



The fight began when Carter and his fund, Castle Island Ventures, announced an equity investment in a start-up called Dynamic. Dynamic is building a wallet-based platform with decentralized identity features, one of the most interesting applications of Web3 technology.

The problem is that Dynamic is multichain. For self-declared bitcoin maximalists, this amounts to heresy. That’s almost literal, as we’ll get into, because bitcoin maximalism possesses many features of a religion – and maxis were under the impression Carter was one of them.

Source https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/07/06/nic-carter-and-the-case-for-bitcoin-mediumism/