Thread by @muneeb

Bitcoin maximalism is limiting the growth of Bitcoin.

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1/ Bitcoin maximalism as a strategy for growing Bitcoin is failing.

The maximalist narrative has lost touch with reality. I say this as a Bitcoiner who started in 2013. I’ve held BTC through multiple bear markets & spent years building apps & protocols on Bitcoin.

2/ Bitcoin maximalism assumes a zero-sum world. However, we’re in an expanding crypto economy.

Attacking developers and new use-cases doesn’t help Bitcoin. It only encourages those developers and use-cases to move to other ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana.

3/ Let’s take stablecoins as an example. Tether used Omni-layer on Bitcoin at one point; now, almost all of Tether’s economic activity happens on Ethereum and other L1s.

NFTs started on Bitcoin (using Counterparty), and now almost all of NFT economic activity is on ETH & others.

4/ We need a strategy to attract more developers and encourage new functionality layers, e.g., for smart contracts or scalability. Instead, the maximalist circles make fun of every new use-case in the crypto industry.

Betting against devs is not what Bitcoiners used to do.

5/ Maximalists have called Ethereum a “scam” for years now. This has not stopped the growth of Ethereum. People who discover ETH or other L1s find a thriving community of builders and apps. They make up their minds based on their findings and not by an angry mob of maximalists.

6/ There are many shortcomings in Ethereum. However, Bitcoin currently has little to offer as alternatives. There are no major decentralized exchanges, liquidity protocols, stablecoins in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The answer to ETH growth is to build better products for Bitcoin.

7/ Maximalists spend endless hours attacking VC money, whereas the products they use on the internet, like Twitter, Google, Zoom, etc., are all funded by VC money. Sophisticated VC investors are allocating capital to devs building next-generation apps.

Free markets at play.

8/ Instead of painting VCs as evil, maximalists should spend time figuring out why Bitcoin-related projects are so underfunded and unable to produce working products, e.g., spacechains.

There are a few recent exceptions (like Stacks or Lightning) but Bitcoin lags in dev growth.

9/ Bitcoiners were attracted by the Bitcoin experiment. They’ve now turned into naysayers who laugh at every new experiment. 

Guess what? The new experiments are working, and the BTC dominance is dropping.

The only meaningful response is to build better products for Bitcoin.

10/ The counterargument is that Bitcoin doesn’t need anything; it’ll win as decentralized money. Sure, that’s a thesis, but what’s the harm in building decentralized use-cases for Bitcoin? 

The project in the #1 spot should never become complacent.

11/ This thread is not an attack on Bitcoin maximalists, the people. Several of them are my friends, and I understand why they focus on Bitcoin.

This thread is questioning the maximalist strategy. The maximalist strategy is ineffective, and we need to replace it.

12/ In summary, it’s time to build Bitcoin apps to make BTC a productive asset.

We should welcome devs & entrepreneurs. The maximalist strategy served its purpose in 2017 and no longer works; lets focus on the builders now.

Long BTC, long innovation. LFG 🚀