I know that Vlad Costea from the Bitcoin Takeover podcast ventures somewhat far afield and can totally jump on a shitcoin bandwagon when it's pumping, but I have to admit I enjoy his podcast more than most -- he gets really interesting guests and he asks questions that suit my ignorance.
Here he is now, making his contribution to the field of things telling us what Bitcoin maximalism is. And what he thinks it is is bad.
Objectively speaking, Bitcoin maximalism’s only merit is that of making the price of BTC increase.
I would say that BTC's exchange rate with the dollar has increased despite maximalism.
Vlad fills his piece with a lot of criticisms of Bitcoin -- I don't think they are rightly criticisms of maximalism. And some of them are fair. It sometimes seems like Bitcoin is struggling along.
We don't see very much desire for self custody. Nodes aren't running like routers in every house. And worst of all, not many merchants want sats.
Or as Vlad puts it:
I will say it once again, in a world in which Bitcoin is winning, this phenomenon would never happen. No altcoin would outperform BTC for an entire year. No altcoin could take away miners from Bitcoin. No smart developer would leave Bitcoin to work on an altcoin. No other chain would offer better incentives than Bitcoin.
But Vlad doesn't seem to know about the slow, quiet work going on all over the world: in Brazil at Vinteum, in Indonesia at Bali Bitcoin House, in Germany at Einundzwanzig, in South Africa with Bitcoin Ekasi, in Switzerland at Plan B , in Argentina at Mi Primer Bitcoin, and so many other places.
Bitcoin maximalism is alive and well and in a thousand meetuos and communities all over the globe, building, teaching, inventing.
So, based on the article, it seems like he attributes Bitcoin's lack of adoption to lack of technological upgrades.
I am not really convinced. Do any of the altcoins with more full-featured capabilities and faster tx throughput have more adoption as either a MoE or SoV than Bitcoin?
If not, then I don't think the problem is technological.
Ultimately I think the problem is societal. There is too much inertia in the current financial system; most people don't think in macro terms, they only think about what can help them in the moment. Unless Bitcoin is having a huge price run-up, no one sees how Bitcoin helps them in the near-term and are thus uninterested.
I don't think this is a problem you can solve with better tech, or even a better UX or onboarding experience.
This. You can't sell a car to a guy who's content with riding a horse.
Don't need to, just because its preferable doesn't make it materially important.
Same.
Same.
These are mostly just virtue signals Bitcoiners tell themselves, they'd be nice to haves, but not a KPI as long as the optionality exists. Let idiots like Vlad think this matters, more Bitcoin for us... it just further illustrates why he's a shitcoiner. He doesn't understand Bitcoin itself, forget maximalism.
Gross display of, completely arbitrary, time preference
Where are those miners overwhelmingly saving their rewards?
If that developer is saving in Bitcoin what they earn from other projects/scamming, they are a smart developer.
Sophistry
This also doesn't matter, most projects are vanity projects or for personal gain. None of it is material to Bitcoin itself. It's gravity is unaltered by the space dust around it.
I almost spit out my coffee the other morning when, for the first time in probably 10+ years, Brian Armstrong let on that he got Bitcoin. He demonstrated his understanding of all that matters is it being the successor to central banks, is already keeping them in-check, and that is inescapable. Then Fink today with the "1-chain" quote.
People like Vlad will virtue signal at every opportunity, get distracted by Toyota Supras and shitcoins, while his moral inferiors actually disembowel the globalist system.
I wonder if I can make a bit if a Pascal's wager here: I'm afraid that I sound a little like Bitpain's ancap losers (at least my fantasies are like that), but i get occasional glimmers of this other vision of Bitcoin, the one you describe here. And it makes sense to me.
So perhaps I'll go along with the unimportant preferables, but place my hopes in the inevitability of Bitcoin cucking the central banks.
If you think it is inescapable that Bitcoin becomes the successor to central banks, how does one know what is worth working on in Bitcoin?
The preferables aren't mutually exclusive to the bigger picture, as those things are maximally good for many individuals. The capacity to understand that they are not material to Bitcoin benefiting all individuals is what losers lack.
Since the globalist order collapsing under the pressure imposed by Bitcoin's mere existence benefits everyone, virtual signaling about how ancap one must be is even bottom tier at virtual signaling. Losers as described by Bitpaine can't help but be bottom tier in all they do.
It starts with asking ones self the question, why work on it. Working on something to help Bitcoin is always the wrong answer, since you can't help Bitcoin.
You can however help others. So how can you best help others?
If that involves Bitcoin directly, great. But maybe what you're good at is better for mining fiat and saving in Bitcoin. What you work on is deeply personal to your specific value proposition.
This may seem counter-intuitive coming from someone who works on decentralized sovereign stuff in the Bitcoin ecosystem. I know I can't help Bitcoin, but I can help people use Bitcoin in ways they might not otherwise.
If more people use Bitcoin in this way, it will make the internet better and create new businesses, but that's only achievable if Bitcoin is.
Bitcoin helps me build a vision, it's not my vision for Bitcoin.
And even that is purely a combination of my interests and my vocation overlapping, it won't effect Bitcoin's march to global reserve currency status one way or another.
These statements about what would never happen are silly starting with the first one. There be infinite money printers in the world. All it takes is an owner of one to aim at their favorite shitcoin. Wish him luck with his engagement farming.
Vlad’s framing misses a fundamental point about maximalism and about Bitcoin itself. If you define Bitcoin maximalism purely as a strategy to pump the price of BTC you are already setting up a straw man because you are ignoring the cultural and technical forces that underpin it. Maximalism is not primarily about short‑term price performance. It is about the belief that Bitcoin’s architecture, principles and monetary policy form the most robust foundation for a truly decentralized global money. Price movements are a byproduct not the mission.
The concern that Bitcoin is “struggling along” because we have not yet achieved universal self custody or ubiquitous merchant adoption is understandable but overlooks the reality that Bitcoin’s trajectory has always been gradual and often invisible to outsiders. This quiet growth is a feature not a bug. Protocol stability and cautious development mean progress is measured in years and decades rather than hype cycles.