And thus we go back to human tribalism. It’s in human nature to form groups, to take sides, and to fight with other groups. We see this on all kinds of scale: from family feuds, to football teams, to rival countries – and cryptocurrencies are no different.
So it’s not surprising that one of these tribes, perhaps the first one in the crypto community, is that of Bitcoin Maximalists.
Although there’s no formal definition for what a maximalist (or just “maxi”) is, the term is generally used to describe someone who believes Bitcoin is the only true and pure cryptocurrency, and therefore rejects all (or most) others. Maximalists refuse to acknowledge the value of other use cases and to hold Bitcoin’s core principles as gospel.
Of course there’s more nuance to this, but that’s an extreme version.
This intolerance inevitably leads to lots of conflict – particularly noticeable on the main crypto channels, such as Twitter, Telegram and on forums like Bitcointalk. This behaviour doesn’t win cryptocurrency any favours, but that’s just human nature.
The truth is, Bitcoin was designed to be copied, modified, and grown into new experiments, and to evolve into solutions for problems we haven’t even considered yet. And there’s nothing stopping other types of cryptocurrencies to complement Bitcoin, improving upon it or making up for some of its shortcomings.
While the term cryptocurrency refers to money and the financial side of things, the technology lends itself to an infinitely broader range of use cases, as we’ll see in future lessons.
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