"Bitcoin maximalist" term was born as a mockery from supporters of alternative cryptocurrencies against those who until then were simply called bitcoiners.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, in his article called "On Bitcoin Maximalism, and Currency and Platform Network Effects" - I suggest reading it because it is very interesting - began by describing Bitcoin maximalism as: "the idea that an environment of multiple competing cryptocurrencies is undesirable, that it is wrong to launch "yet another coin", and that it is both righteous and inevitable that the Bitcoin currency comes to take a monopoly position in the cryptocurrency scene. ## 36_"_
As I said, the article is very interesting but Vitalik, a genious without any doubt, insists on this overlap between the bitcoin currency and the protocol, generating confusion, it is not known whether deliberately or unconsciously. He even describes the maximalist bitcoiner as one who sees positively the monopoly of an asset within a free market.
Well, from that article on, many bitcoiners started playing and defining themselves as maximalists, not because they found themselves in the description provided by Vitalik, but because they basically didn't recognize the need for different infrastructures, above all Ethereum, on which to build their libertarian dream.
But you know, the joke's gone far enough!
Here new maximalists arrived, perhaps having become such after having suffered setbacks from the crypto world or having been the victim of a scam (who has not been raise his hand, I hold them low), who have however committed the error of accepting the definition given by Buterik without studying the reasons that push a user to recognize the practicality of a single secure protocol for the exchange of value between peers without reliable third parties.
This Bitcoin maximalism is not really such: I call it BTC maximalism, because the focus is the bitcoin asset rather than being the Bitcoin network.
From my point of view we should focus on Bitcoin and leave out the rest - the so-called crypto world - not (only) because the bitcoin asset is currently the only one with the possibility of being recognized as a global medium and Store of Value, but also, and above all, because the Bitcoin network is the only one that has the possibility of becoming a standard in the exchange of value between peers without a reliable third party.
If we analyze the history of the Internet, the only real term of comparison in the technological field, we see that actually several systems, each with its own rules, its protocols, competed with each other at the beginning. In this "cold war" between standards, who won according to you?
Not the permissioned and centralized corporate networks, but the open source and permissionless global network that we now know as the Internet.
But how did a system not imposed to prevail over perhaps even more efficient systems, mainly managed by a single entity, be it a company or a consortium or federation?
More than looking for the pure efficiency of the system in terms of speed and capacity, priority was given to the efficiency of communications and to what would become the purpose of the very existence of a global interconnection network: sharing.
Thus, on the one hand, there were intra-corporation networks, highly efficient, fast but closed, and on the other, slow research institutes' networks, but in communication with each other because they were open, willing to come together to define common communication standards.
Thus the latter prevailed and the suite of the Internet protocols that we still use today, called TCP/IP, was born, where IP indicates the Internet Protocol as the base layer (just above the physical network infrastructure), and TCP the Communication Protocol, that is the set of rules that define how the data packages shared by the network nodes must be managed.
The most open standard prevailed, which was not based on forced adoption but on shared intent.
Internet is just an example that shows how human beings tend to converge on well-defined standards; this convergence and sharing of intent is the basis of communication.
The same thing happens with the language: although there are multiple languages in the World, when we are dealing with a person who does not understand our mother tongue we tend to look for a new medium to be able to communicate, be it a lingua franca (typically a widely used language) or gestures.
And guess where we can see the same tendency to converge towards standards?
Exactly, in trades.
Gold is the medium par excellence, universally recognized as a scarce fine commodity, but even when we are dealing with fiat coins the subject does not change.
Let's take the Euro: many different countries, with different economic conditions, have decided to adhere to a single monetary standard in order to facilitate trade within the European Union. However, it is a pity that, although better than the previous models, this is not a good standard, precisely because it is imposed on the operators of the European economy, the single users, and not the result of a convergence of intents between individuals.
Can there be different protocols for exchanging value without a reliable third party competing with each other?
Of course they can exist, but, most likely, only one will remain and will constitute the so-called Settlement Layer for the exchanges of value on the Internet.
