August 24th 2023 - A Tale of Two Maximalisms

Bitcoin maximalism appears to be the only segment of cryptosphere that appears to thrive during bear markets. It is quite different matter with Ethereum maximalism or even the somewhat less extreme notion of future crypto world being built on and around today’s second most popular cryptocurrency.

In many ways, this could be explained with differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum and, more importantly, with differences in psychological outlook of people who are attracted to those two cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has, despite so far not succeeding in its stated mission of becoming peer-to-peer electronic cash, found new life and purpose as digital gold. As such, it can attract people who view it less as a tool of personal freedom or wondrous new technology and more as a way to survive hard times and slowly stack sats whose fruits be enjoyed in distant and unforeseeable future. This notion is quite appealing in bear markets or nowadays, when the rest of crypto world, and world in general, seems to be falling apart. In other words, Bitcoin maximalists look very much like Ant in the famous Aesop’s fable – ascetic character who works hard in summer while everyone around him is having good time, ultimately knowing that he would have the last laugh during winter.

Ethereum maximalists are, on the other hand, more like the Cricket in the same fable. World’s second cryptocurrency has became immensely popular mainly on the account of its meteoric rise in price, which was fuelled by various innovations like “cool” cat-themed games, ICOs, DeFi or NFTs – phenomena that promised and sometimes delivered huge profit, but only in relatively brief periods near the end of the bull runs. Most people dealt with Ethereum didn’t invest that much in Ethereum itself and they mostly used it as a bridge for various Ethereum-based tokens promising (and usually not delivering) insane profits. So, there was usually little time for Ethereum maximalism to earn new adherents and many of them had much more reasons to feel betrayed during the long spells of bear markets.

Unlike Bitcoin, that didn’t change much in last fourteen years and allowed its adherents to slowly and painfully adapt to its features of digital gold, Ethereum was constantly touted as the “world computer”, but always failed to live to its hype and suffocated its users with high gas fees that made Ethereum a plaything for the richest of the rich crypto enthusiasts. Unlike Bitcoin, which had its founder in the mysterious figure of Satoshi Nakamoto, whose decade long absence allowed him to retain deity-like status and be interpreted in different ways by Bitcoin enthusiasts, Ethereum was stuck with real, very human and very fallible figure of Vitalik Buterin.

In the struggle between Bitcoin maximalism and Ethereum maximalism, the former has currently has the upper hand not because of the generally bearish sentiments, but also because Bitcoin was built on the principles of decentralisation and anonymity at the expense of efficiency. Ethereum was, on the other hand, much more centralised and, as such, became appealing to big banks, establishment institutions and governments that see it as tool of increased social control. Unsurprisingly, Ethereum nowadays doesn’t enjoy very good reputation among those cryptocurrency enthusiasts who take the meaning of the word “crypto” seriously.

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