Are We All Bitcoin Maxi's? - Issue 68

The obvious question is why would I say that? I often baulk from the Maxi mentality. I don't like it and I think that more often than not it creates echo chambers, as well as islands or silos. I think it encourages a them against us mentality to the people involved in those communities. To me Bitcoin Maxi means more than someone who only supports or holds Bitcoin. Today, I am going to explore that.

What is a Maxi, or a Maximalist in the world of Crypto? It's always been used as a term for an ardent supporter of a specific chain or protocol. And by ardent I mean people that believe in that chain or protocol to the point that they wont overly, or at least publicly, support other chains or protocols.

We have seen many people who call themselves Maxi's talk down about the things they don't agree with (or maybe understand). As an example, take a look at a section of the Bitcoin Maxi crowd, they do not like any other chain and that leads to be dismissiveness at best. If you were playing with Polygon NFT's in 2021, you will understand being on the receiving end of this mentality more than most, only it came from Eth Max's, not Bitcoin Maxi's.

I have come to the conclusion that Bitcoin Maxi should be redefined. In line with why they believe that Bitcoin is the difference, the change maker, the way humanity progresses away from fractionalised banking and the magic money trees that central banks have been growing. Before I go there, I wanted to confirm the perception of the definition for a Bitcoin Maxi and I used Chat GPT 3.5. I asked what it's definition of Bitcoin Maxi was, I got this response.

'A "Bitcoin maxi," short for Bitcoin maximalist, refers to someone who strongly believes in the superiority of Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin maxis typically advocate for Bitcoin as the one true cryptocurrency and often dismiss or criticize alternative cryptocurrencies (referred to as "altcoins") as inferior or unnecessary. They believe that Bitcoin's decentralization, security, network effect, and store of value properties make it the best choice for both digital currency and as a long-term investment.'

It's the last sentence from Chat GPT that is important. The first two sentences confirm the broader understanding of what a Maxi is, certainly in terms of Bitcoin and Crypto. And those first two sentences is how most people in this industry would describe a Maxi, from any chain or protocol. Why is the last sentence important? How is it relevant?

I have been in the Blockchain, Crypto and NFT industry for nearly 3 years now. A lot of that time has been spent interacting with people. People that are using this technology to take their moon shot. To try and create financial freedom for themselves, to own their own money and more. Including their dreams. To take out the middle man. And to protect their financial privacy and/or assets. There are a huge number of other reasons, but I think most of them link back to that core group of reasons.

I am a firm believer that the values Blockchain technology can promote is the difference maker. If Blockchain technology is accessible, decentralised (over time), immutable, means actual end user ownership and is transparent, then everything else is possible. Until that point, where the end user has the choice, privacy is a non starter (if you have converted currency to crypto, or taken crypto of chain, you are findable by people with the right skills). To my mind Bitcoin is the instigator that allows all of these things.

Why does Bitcoin allow for those things? An understanding of the difference between money and currency is important. Currencies - Dollar's, Pound's, Euro's, Yen, Yuan etc. are a type of money. Most currencies are issued by governments and they allow for payments of goods in sensible ways. Money is our global system of perceived value. That perceived value allows for broader exchanges of goods and services, on a global scale.

Sound Money is a term used to define things that can't be easily inflated, often things that are seen as commodities. Gold would be the shining example of sound money. And gold v dollar is a very interesting way to look at the relationship between money and currency. It highlights the impact that inflation has had on purchasing assets such as property with currency.

Financially, Bitcoin is giving people a way to hedge against inflation. A decentralised way that anyone on the planet can use to make that hedge, which I believe is incredibly important to push equality of opportunity forward, on a global scale. Not only that, it has highlighted the issues with central banks/governments printing money and fractionalised banking to more people. Fractionalised banking means banks only need a percentage of the deposited money to be available for withdrawal, there is more to it than that and you can find out more on Investopedia here.

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. No one will ever be able to make more (they may try to copy it, but that's different). Even gold doesn't play to those rules. There is more gold in the earth to be mined, let alone the gold in the rest of the universe. If we mined an asteroid full of gold and doubled the supply of gold overnight, it would have a drastic impact on the price of gold. Globally we have printed a huge amount of money in the last 4 years, and national debt is the highest it has ever been for the US, as a percentage of GDP.

We are seeing that reflected in price increases in energy, food and much more. The day to day living costs for people globally have increased far more than the inflation figures would suggest. Bitcoin can drive change to the systems that have allowed our currencies to be so easily devalued. This change is not overnight, and the decentralised nature of Bitcoin is a key driver to those changes.

If, and it is a huge if, we can move from a Global Reserve Currency that can be inflated (currently the Dollar), to a Sound Money Reserve Currency (Bitcoin, more like the gold standard), then there are some major potential wins for society. And not enough time to go into them all now...

Regarding decentralisation, immutability, ownership and transparency. Bitcoin is the leading Blockchain light and it works to all of these rules. If people see that having a positive impact it can only drive more of the same behaviours and we start to use Blockchain Technology for more than just money. That's when we can start to own things like our own data, among many, many other things.

I find this topic fascinating, especially the money v people aspects, but then I studied economics when I was younger. I fully understand that not everyone will have the same fascination for Bitcoin that I have, in terms of it driving a different direction for the global economy. However, I think a lot of people want the outcomes that Bitcoin potentially offers. Ownership, control and immutability are things most people want when it comes to their assets/money. That's one reason why I think we are all Bitcoin Maxi's.

I haven't got much further with the AI images for my poem about sugar. Mainly because I am coming to the realisation that I will not be able to prompt the images I want from my prose alone, I need to tinker and play with the prompts a lot more yet. I have written another poem in the meantime, and it was untitled for a moment. Thanks to Polleyovski, I got a wonderful name for it. You can read Defrag the Hard Drive above. Our brains are our hard drives and sometimes they need a reset or at least a good defragging.

I am playing with a new content format with a friend and really enjoying the creation process. I can't wait to share but I am sworn to secrecy for now. You will have to watch this space (or at the very least my X account) to find out more. Remember to ask questions and explore, it's how we learn and progress. Individually and as a species.

I have a couple of article ideas floating around my head. One about security, another about AI. And I want to catalogue some of the information I have found, whilst looking for and using free AI art engines. I have even had my poem above turned into music by Suno - listen here, it's rather insane.

You can collect this issue for 3 $Matic plus the platform fee (I believe), there are only 10 available to collect and I intend to get one with my NFT wallet!

This was an enjoyable write, but my format is too short to properly get into it. I feel like I could write a much longer essay on Bitcoin and my thoughts on it. However, there are still more qualified people to do that! Thank you for your time and thank you for reading, I have no idea what my next blog will be about but it will be out in 2 weeks.