‘Belief’ – an enchanting concept that has enough power to sway the most powerful minds amongst us into taking action, no matter how subliminal the thoughts based on in it might be. That is one way to describe as to how ‘Bitcoin Maximalism’ came into existence. 

‘Bitcoin Maximalism’ is a strong rooted belief that Bitcoin is the only crypto-currency worthy of existence in the digital currency world.  Bitcoin supporters cultishly known as ‘Bitcoin Maximalists” have always put forward sound arguments in lieu of their judgement.

Bitcoin Maximalism - A million dollar dream and the hypothetical reality laid forth

For any product or service to gain trust and value, it needs to go through a longstanding grind and should prove its worth.  This is a fundamental argument put forward by
Bitcoin Maximalists in support of Bitcoin Maximalism.

This is not the only notion that drives a hardcore Bitcoin Maximalist’s devotion. It goes further to emphasize on the harm newer currencies otherwise known as Altcoins cause by diverting investments and stirring speculations in the digital trade.  Smart contracts and the underlying blockchain networks of these crypto-currencies are mostly built on basic bitcoin structure but they have neither existed since the dawn nor had any of them stood the test of time.

Metcalfe’s law and the Network Effect

If Metcalfe’s law is to be believed, it means that the value of a network with a certain number of participants is much greater than the value of a series of networks with the same combined networks.

Taking a look at it with simple algebra, (n) is the number of network participants. According to Metcalfe’s law the value of a network is equal to (n2). Mathematically, the value of a single network with a certain number of users is worth more than two different chains even if they have the same number of total users when combined.
One of the colossal pillars of success supporting Bitcoin is its underlying blockchain network and the huge number of traders. When compared with other altcoins, where the participants are distributed, and majority of these coins have its end value reconnected to Bitcoin’s base itself, Bitcoin outperforms them beyond compare.

Trading into the Future

The immeasurable Bitcoin trading network that had taken root across multiple mediums of exchange and investment is already testament to its value and acceptance.  As the trade with Bitcoin increases, the more it liquefies into markets and the more valuable it becomes for investors and traders as an investment.  This in turn reduces its volatility and it becomes a greater medium of digital monetary exchange.

Development of other Coins under Bitcoin’s Environment

Almost all Altcoins in one form or the other have always relied on Bitcoin.  Two factors are a given, first the blockchain algorithm that any crypto-currency is built on is simply a modified version of the Bitcoin platform and second their value is always dependent on Bitcoin.
Since the interconnection is inevitable due to dependence of majority of altcoins on the Bitcoin environment, Bitcoin Maximalists propose that any other crypto-currency network should be built as a sidechain to Bitcoin blockchain itself rather than creating a new one, technically the mechanism is known as ‘pegged sidechains”.  Developing separate side chains to the Bitcoin network without having a native token is one way to go about creating a new network without compromising on security and providing smart contracts.

The Defiance of the notion “Bitcoin Maximalism”

A few people are simply opposed to the notion of taking stance against other competitors with adherence to only one maxim which restricts overall growth.  Others argue that newer smart contracts cannot be built on the Bitcoin platform. Smart contracts are the best way to attract investors and transact in the real world.  Adding these features to the bitcoin platform would not only make it unstable and perilous but might prove to be a disaster for the $230 Billion of its value.         
Bitcoin Maximalists are aware of these shortcomings hence the idea for a combined network with side chains was proposed. 

Limitations of Protocols and Sidechains

Advanced features like ‘Non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs’ and other privacy-based protocols are too complicated to be added to the current Bitcoin Blockchain algorithm. Similarly, advancements in decentralized technology such as DAGS (Directed Acyclic Graphs) have a completely different data structure and do not rely on blockchain at all.
Creating Sidechains is not only a mammoth task, also the lack of native tokens itself is a beastly hurdle that the developers and supporters are supposed to overcome for Bitcoin Maximalism to succeed in the true sense.The other major problem is that certain amount of the Bitcoin should be in the sidechain reserve.  Since no coin is created in the sidechain, the only incentives for block propagation would be the transaction fees.

Common Ground. Is it possible?

The arguments are sound from both the ends but they all have a common goal: ‘Decentralizing systems of power’.
Bitcoin is the undisputed champion as of now; there is no denying to that but since the current advanced technology is almost impossible to build on top of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Maximalists should go easy on the Bitcoin Maximalism approach and give some space for other genuine and more secure decentralized-cryptocurrencies to grow.  This not only helps the digital assets market to evolve into something better but also breathes in life into the crypto-ecosystem.

Having closely watched the interesting drama that took place yesterday (26 November 2018) on the BCHSV markets, we have our analysis to this happening. We saw a sudden surge in BCHSV markets. Exchanges from Korea displayed major volume of trade.

Let’s assess this pump and dump with few evidences:

On November 15th , Bitcoin Cash was hard forked by two rival factions of Bitcoin Cash community. Bitcoin ABC (BCHABC) - Roger Ver and Jihan Wu led a faction of users that wanted to maintain the block size at 32MB. On the other side were, Bitcoin SV (BCHSV) - Calvin Ayre and Craig Wright (who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto) wanted to increase the block size to 128 MB.

On November 23rd, Calvin published an article on CoinGeek stating that Bitcoin SV was the original Bitcoin. He said, “Bitcoin will live on with Bitcoin SV and will finally have a chance to show off the true power of the original economic model. Similarly, ABC can join with the rest of the new chain/coin models to demonstrate what they believe they can do. The models can then all compete in the marketplace and this lets actual users vote with their actions.”

Calvin had mentioned that he would have his team start working with everyone to roll out the new Bitcoin SV coin. He also mentioned that he looks forward to the CoinGeek Week Conference as the launch party for the return of the original Bitcoin and all that this will enable.

The CoinGeek Week conference is happening this week in London. Expensive tickets that cost 800 Euros-1000 Euros, were on sale. CoinGeek published an article on the event on Nov 26th , the article stressed that there were only a few tickets remaining. The article also mentioned that “one can purchase tickets today using either Bitcoin BCH on the CoinGeek website or, if you prefer, with a credit card through Eventbrite”


From the above happening, we can conclude the following:
A.   Craig and Calvin wanted SV to be considered as the original Bitcoin because of which they may have decided to pump and dump.
B.   After the article on Nov 26th about the event, the two may have decided to pump more and more BCHSV into the market
C.   The other objective with this pump and dump may have been to create a hype around the conference.
D.   Craig’s pinned tweet, and the GIF clearly hints at a hostile taking down BCHABC

According to this article by Ambcrypto, which was published on Nov 19th, Kraken has said that when it comes to the SV implementation, no known wallets support replay protection. They have also said that the miners on the SV network are “apparently subsidized or are operating at a loss”. The exchange has also admitted that they had done only very minimal code review when it came to the SV network. The exchange has reiterated multiple times about the lack of safety on the SV network. Even Bittrex has asked users to trade with caution while sending BCH/SV as there is no replay protection.

Taking the above article as a decent evidence, we can say why certain exchanges like Upbit and Binance have taken the side of BCHSV while the remaining exchanges have taken the safe road of not liquidating. It could also be seen that, BCHSV wanted to target the Korean market as a planned approach.

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