The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Maximalism

In hindsight, the Dragon’s Den set the stage for maximalism’s emphasis on adversarial thinking – it is Bitcoin against everyone – where attack is the best defence. You need only look at how a Bitcoin maximalist comes armed with a set of derivative pre-packaged talking points about, say, Ethereum, to see the contemporary version of this preemptive narrative formation. There’s little to no reflection on Ethereum per se, but there is a deep well of sanctioned generic Ethereum memes that are mindlessly trotted out. As someone who researches both Bitcoin and Ethereum, the degree to which the modern bitcoiner does not understand Ethereum is often shocking, although perhaps the solace of maximalism is you can just learn Bitcoin and never anything else. Relaxing!