Michael Saylor: I am a bitcoin maximalist

Yesterday Michael Saylor admitted what has been widely known for some time, namely that he is a Bitcoin maximalist. 

I am a #Bitcoin Maximalist.

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) July 24, 2022

A “Bitcoin maximalist” refers to a person who considers Bitcoin to be the only true cryptocurrency ever created. 

Maximalists not only consider altcoins to be completely different from Bitcoin, but also often consider them to be borderline legal projects, if not outright rip-offs. 

However, a distinction must be made between those who merely assert that altcoins are anything but Bitcoin, and the outright maximalists who believe that all altcoins are not even worthy of interest because they are dubious projects. 

It is worth saying that in absolute numbers, out of the thousands of altcoins, there are plenty of projects of dubious nature, if not outright scams, but that is not the point. The real resounding stance of the maximalists is against Ethereum, Binance Coin, or other cryptocurrencies that are, instead, commonly considered interesting projects. 

There is even a real clash between Bitcoin maximalists and Ethereum maximalists, although it is a clash that seems to have lost some force in recent years, especially since BTC and ETH seem to have gone two different ways. 

The shared thinking of Bitcoin maximalists

However, there is more. Indeed, many Bitcoin maximalists believe that even fiat currencies are unworthy of interest, if not even “scams in disguise.” In other words, the strict maximalists believe that Bitcoin is by far the best currency in the world, and the only one that can protect consumers from the monetary policies of central banks, which are certainly not aimed at serving the interests of consumers themselves. 

Therefore for pure maximalists even stablecoins are inferior currencies. 

From this point of view, Saylor has always seemed to be a Bitcoin maximalist himself, since he convinced the company he runs to convert all its currency reserves to BTC, practically getting rid of the dollars they kept as reserves. 

To date, there seems to be no other major company in the world that has opted for such a drastic and risky measure. 

However, one point that raises many doubts about Bitcoin’s maximalist ideology is that BTC’s volatility does not make it a good transactional currency at all. Many maximalists simply believe that such volatility will be greatly reduced in the future, thanks largely to mass adoption, but to date this seems more like a hope than a prediction based on objective and irrefutable data. 

In the event that volatility should remain an inherent feature of BTC, which by the way makes it such an attractive feature of the financial markets, it seems extremely difficult for it to supplant fiat currencies and stablecoins as a means of payment.