Siapa yang Peduli dengan Maksimalisme Bitcoin?

Ini adalah editorial opini oleh Shinobi, seorang pendidik otodidak di bidang Bitcoin dan pembawa acara podcast Bitcoin yang berorientasi pada teknologi.

What is Bitcoin Maximalism? People will not stop asking this question, either to defend it as a virtuous label, or to attack it as a symbol of everything wrong and rotten in this ecosystem. This question is as meaningless in my opinion as asking:

• “What is a liberal?”
• “What is a conservative?”
• “What is a Christian?”

Tidak ada seorang pun yang akan memiliki definisi atau gagasan yang sama. Label tersebut akan selalu memiliki arti yang sangat berbeda bagi orang yang berbeda. Mereka akan dikaitkan dengan identitas yang berbeda, perilaku yang berbeda, moral dan nilai yang berbeda. Tidak peduli apa yang kamus atau definisi katakan dalam arti sempit, tidak akan pernah ada konsensus mengenai hal tersebut.

It is completely and utterly meaningless in a discussion on a topic like this to fixate so much on labels, attempting to universally apply them to everyone, instead of focusing on the actual conceptual core of the conversation. The root of this issue has nothing whatsoever to do with labels, and everything to do with behaviors. So let’s talk about the behaviors.

One of the core behaviors commonly associated with Maximalism is a focus on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the longest running project in this ecosystem. It is the most sound system compared to everything developed thus far, and is extremely conservative in its approach to changes and upgrades. While everything in this space in terms of assets is highly speculative in nature, Bitcoin is the one with the longest running and most consistent market performance, and has maintained the top spot in terms of overall market value through the entire history of every asset in this space. Approaching things from this reality, focusing on bitcoin above all other assets in this ecosystem is a perfectly rational financial decision. Yes, like everything else, it is still speculation to invest in bitcoin, but in terms of the financial risk that entails bitcoin is the least volatile asset trading in this space. Most people are not day traders, they are not financial experts, and the further away from bitcoin you go in terms of investments the more skill and understanding of those activities is required to not burn yourself. The vast majority of projects in this space have their one blow-off market pump, crash and then do not recover. There is absolutely nothing wrong or toxic with sticking to bitcoin given that reality, and attempting to inform people of that reality is in no way unethical.

Another core behavior is the criticism of other technologies in this space, particularly with the goal of demonstrating a lack of decentralization, or more specifically misrepresentation of the degree to which something is decentralized. Bitcoin is the only system in this space that has demonstrably shown an extreme degree of decentralization. It has fought off numerous attempts by developers to alter the core of the system, as shown when Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen were still involved and pushing for Ukuran blok meningkat secara ekstrem. Ini melawan upaya selanjutnya yang dilakukan oleh sebagian besar perusahaan besar yang terlibat dalam hal tersebut Perjanjian New York/UASF kegagalan untuk melakukan hal yang sama. Ia selamat dari ledakan satu-satunya pertukaran yang cukup besar ketika itu Gunung Gox tenggelam, yang Peretasan Bitfinex, patung Silk Road dan bahkan negara-negara besar seperti Tiongkok perlahan-lahan mulai melarangnya, yang mencapai puncaknya membatasi seluruh aktivitas pertambangan. Bitcoin has stood strong and continued functioning in the face of everything thrown at it so far.

Contrast this with platforms like Ethereum. The DAO was launched as the first massive experiment in decentralized coordination of financial activity on the platform, with the promise “code is law.” This blew up in their faces due to poor engineering that allowed funds locked in the DAO contract to be terkuras by what were supposed to be unauthorized users. The code however allowed it, the “law” as it were.

Menanggapi hal ini, Yayasan Ethereum dan tim pengembangan memberlakukan upaya untuk meninjau kembali apa yang secara sah terjadi sesuai dengan aturan sistem di blockchain. Khususnya, mereka melakukan hal tersebut karena adanya konflik kepentingan yang berupa banyak orang terkait dengan mereka diinvestasikan di DAO dan kehilangan uang. Mereka telah berkali-kali bercabang untuk mendorong maju bom kesulitan, sebuah fitur yang membuatnya semakin sulit untuk ditambang hingga menjadi mustahil, sebuah fitur yang secara khusus diterapkan untuk memaksa mereka beralih ke bukti kepemilikan. Mereka punya bercabang dua to alter the economic issuance policy. The development plan has pivoted drastically more times than I can count based solely on Vitalik Buterin’s changing ideas about how to improve the system.

Menunjukkan perbedaan-perbedaan ini sekali lagi merupakan perilaku yang sepenuhnya rasional dan sah. Itu adalah kritik yang sangat nyata, berdasarkan kenyataan, dengan konsekuensi yang sangat nyata. Semakin tidak terdesentralisasi suatu hal, maka semakin besar kemungkinan terjadinya perubahan besar secara tiba-tiba, yang mempunyai konsekuensi nyata terhadap nilai dan kegunaan sistem. Hal ini ditunjukkan dengan sempurna oleh kejadian baru-baru ini dengan Tornado Cash. Ya, kontraknya masih ada, ya, secara teori Anda masih bisa menggunakannya, namun kenyataannya setiap penyedia API dan backend dompet utama yang ada secara dominan digunakan memiliki berinteraksi dalam daftar hitam dengan kontrak itu. Situs web itu disita dan menutup melalui pendaftar DNS. Untuk berinteraksi dengan kontrak tersebut memerlukan pengetahuan teknis yang melebihi banyak pengguna sistem, karena sebagian besar cara untuk berinteraksi dengan sistem sangat terpusat. Menunjukkan dinamika ini adalah hal yang sangat rasional dan sah.

What is the root motivation behind these behaviors? In the case of focusing on Bitcoin and conveying to people why that decision was made, to provide realistic expectations of how you will do in a market. Also, to correct the illusion in most people’s heads that they will magically figure out how to time the market, ride the pump and make out like a bandit; because most people won’t. In the case of correcting misrepresentations of the level of decentralization in other projects, it is to allow people to make rational decisions when interacting with them, and to make people aware of the potential consequences and risks varying degrees of decentralization expose them to.

We’ve gone through some positive behaviors — let’s look at some negative ones.

Constantly preaching like you are a priest in church, speaking directly from the holy gospel that preordains Bitcoin’s success in consuming the entirety of the world’s financial system and currency markets as a guaranteed divine certainty. Stock-to-flow was a perfect example of this type of behavior. In reality, all that model is, is a somewhat interesting backtest. By backtest, I mean it is a model that can verify that a market has followed some particular behavior di masa lalu. It has no predictive power, and no ability to model things going forward. It literally does not have the data in the model necessary to do so, i.e., the demand variable to account for shifts in demand for bitcoin. The movement around the model was completely absurd cult-like behavior. It had no rational basis at all, and yet became a dominant narrative pushed all over the space. This did not inform people, or give people realistic expectations or reasons to invest in or use Bitcoin. It projected the outward appearance of a cult.

Or take for instance, in the exact same dogmatic manner, calling something a scam without being able to actually provide a reasoned argument or criticism. One example are the ICOs of Ethereum and EOS. Mobs of individuals constantly rail against these systems almost solely on the basis of being a scam because they centrally issued tokens before launch. There are almost no mention of real technical faults. In EOS’s case, there is a concept called “virtual RAM,” which limits how many smart contracts are allowed to exist and run on the system. Use of the virtual RAM is a scarce economic resource you have to pay to own, while at the same time EOS block signers are in total control of the supply. This allows the block signers to buy RAM, sell it as it appreciates in value, and then create more to crash the price, buy low and repeat. The incentives of the entire system are totally gameable by block signers to rent-seek and extract maximum value from users in a manipulative fashion. Another example, one of the biggest value propositions of Ethereum currently is the use as a platform for decentralized finance, i.e., building exchanges and trading platforms on-chain to allow people to trade peer-to-peer. A requirement for that to work is a smart contract that anyone can interact with by themselves, that automatically handles facilitating a trade. Anyone being able to engage in that interaction, in combination with the fact that miners (or stakers) choose which transactions interacting with the contract occur first, allows them to front-run any use and soak up any profit able to be made doing so. The incentives are broken.

The vast majority of people, at least that I see, criticizing other projects articulate criticisms more along the lines of, “It was an ICO, scam!” rather than, “The RAM market, or MEV, fundamentally breaks the incentives of block producers.” Such behavior is not at all constructive, informative or something that will actually convince people to reassess their opinion of a project. “It’s a scam,” with no supporting argument is not convincing at all and it does not inspire self reflection or reassessment. It creates the perception of jealousy over a potential for greater profit.

Now think about the “left/right” categorization of political positions versus the four quadrant categorization. That is what is occurring, a complex reality of many different behaviors is being over simplified into “left/right” categories. That is not productive, it is not constructive criticism or feedback, it is binary over-simplified tribal thinking. It does not change people’s minds, does not equip people to make informed decisions, it does nothing constructive.

Pikirkan tentang semua perilaku ini, lalu pikirkan tentang semua orang yang Anda kenal di ruang ini yang menunjukkannya. Bisakah Anda menggambar garis hitam putih untuk membaginya menjadi beberapa kelompok? Aku meragukan itu. Jadi mengapa seluruh percakapan terfokus sepenuhnya pada label dan kelompok, bukan pada individu dan perilaku? Yang satu benar-benar mengganggu, memecah-belah, dan tidak produktif dalam segala hal. Yang lainnya rasional, berpotensi mempersatukan dan produktif.

Labels ultimately are nothing but vague and shallow social signaling. Virtue signaling. Behaviors and their effects are ultimately what really shapes and changes things. If there is any discussion to be had, that is the one that should be had. Not one over labels, but actual substantial behaviors and rational arguments. Who gives a shit about the label “Bitcoin Maximalism.”

Ini adalah posting tamu oleh Shinobi. Pendapat yang diungkapkan sepenuhnya milik mereka sendiri dan tidak mencerminkan pendapat BTC Inc atau Majalah Bitcoin.