Why cant people understand that its the brains behind BTC and Grin that makes them stand out? I have to be some kind of genius to recognise the great minds behind BTC and Grin and see the evolution from BTC to Grin. I will gift humanity with a scan of my brian for future study.
The main bit of the article that stood out for me:
âThe real reason bitcoin maximalists want to separate bitcoin from the rest of crypto is to create the illusion of scarcity in a world where there is none. CoinMarketCap now lists more than 21,000 different crypto tokens, which bitcoin maximalists call âshitcoinsâ. Of course they do â if there is infinite supply, how can there be any value? This is still the core problem of crypto, and bitcoin cannot solve it.â
As much as other shitcoins try, you just canât reproduce the brains behind BTC and Grin.
I have included the article if anyone wants to read it.
Donât believe the âmaximalistsâ: bitcoin canât be separated from crypto
The people who push it have the same financial incentives as those pushing any other token
If you have ever dared to direct criticism at the world of crypto, the chances are you will have received some charming rebukes. You are likely to have been told to âhave fun staying poorâ as youâre ânever gonna make itâ; your criticisms have probably been dismissed as mere âFUDâ (fear, uncertainty and doubt); and you may well have been informed that you are in fact nothing more than a âsalty no-coinerâ. But there is another slightly more sophisticated flavour of counter-criticism finding its way into my inbox with increasing regularity these days. It usually starts with something designed to appease â some kind of agreement that crypto is immoral, a scam, or some version of a Ponzi scheme. But then it quickly changes course, to explain that none of this applies to bitcoin. Bitcoin, the bitcoiners tell me, is not crypto. And, you understand, crypto bad, bitcoin good. Very very good. âBitcoin is a lifeline for so many people around the world,â one altruistic bitcoin holder said to me recently. âPlease stop lumping it in with crypto, which is morally reprehensible.â Recommended Cryptocurrencies A Scepticâs Guide to Crypto: The Crypto Wild West I recently suggested that one way of practising the art of âintellectual humilityâ is to âsteelmanâ your opponentsâ position â that is, rather than finding their weakest points and arguing against those, you present the strongest version of their argument possible. And so Iâm going to try to apply this technique here, before explaining why I believe they are wrong. Why do the âbitcoin maximalistsâ â the purists who argue that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that has value â make this claim? They state that the organic way that bitcoin came into being cannot be replicated and that, while bitcoin can be copied, it will always have a first-mover advantage and thus cannot be unseated. They point out, too, that there was no market for bitcoin when it was invented, and so the network was maintained not for profit but by people who believed in the value of the system â unlike later coins, some of which were issued by big corporations. Bitcoin arose not as a way to make money, but out of a libertarian internet subculture that believed technology, specifically cryptography, was key to driving social and political change. Maximalists also say that bitcoinâs incentive mechanism, the energy-intensive âproof of workâ mining process that rival Ethereum just last week moved away from, is the only way of ensuring a truly decentralised system. But while you can see why bitcoiners might be keen to distance themselves from the plethora of scams and failures that have occurred in cryptoland, their arguments donât stand up. First, it doesnât matter what bitcoinâs origins were â the people who push it now have the same financial incentives as those pushing any other crypto token. Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin, might have intended it to be used as money, but that does not make it so â it fulfils none of the necessary criteria, and instead operates in a pyramid-shaped structure that relies on constantly recruiting new members. Second, bitcoin is not in fact decentralised â not only do miners group together to form âmining poolsâ but wealth is also hugely concentrated. On Tuesday, MicroStrategy announced that it had bought another 301 bitcoins, meaning this company alone now holds almost 0.7 per cent of the entire supply. Third, a âfirst-mover advantageâ does not always last. Other crypto tokens already have various features that bitcoin does not, and there has been renewed talk of a âflippeningâ, in which Ethereumâs value overtakes that of bitcoin due to the formerâs switch to a less carbon-intensive form of mining. Finally, there is not even agreement on what bitcoin is. For the vast majority it is the digital coin also known as âBTCâ, currently changing hands at around $19,000. But there are other versions that have split off, such as the one promoted by Craig Wright, the man who claims to be Satoshi and who says BTC is a scam. The real reason bitcoin maximalists want to separate bitcoin from the rest of crypto is to create the illusion of scarcity in a world where there is none. CoinMarketCap now lists more than 21,000 different crypto tokens, which bitcoin maximalists call âshitcoinsâ. Of course they do â if there is infinite supply, how can there be any value? This is still the core problem of crypto, and bitcoin cannot solve it. This is not to say that there arenât some crypto projects and tokens that are better than others. But a spade, no matter how shiny, is still a spade. And bitcoin, Iâm afraid, is still crypto.