When Bitcoin Maximalists are Promoting/Shilling an Altcoin

[fillippone]

I do agree with  Cøbra,

I am particularly disappointed by Jameson Lopp and Dr. Adam Back too, being particularly vocal in his defence (this is not the content I would expect from someone credited to be Satoshi Nakamoto).

Jameson Lopp spent his entire career teaching bitcoin, spreading the gospel of Bitcoin as anti-fragile privacy tool, censorship resistant, and then he shills a token, actually an ERC-20 token, built on the ETH blockchain, which is by definition a privacy disaster, totally censurable, shitcoin blockchain.

• What is the need to the token? You want to raise capital? Good, there is plenty of ways to do so in a non trusltess, intermediated way instead of using a fancy "blockchain" or "crypto" buzzword.
• Why not a regular equity share issue? Given the SEC authorisation and consequent AML/KYC rules, a classic share would have been the most obvious choice. There is not a single reason why you should issue a token for this.
• Are they trying to legitimise the shitcoin ETH blockchain trough an ERC-20 Token scrutinised by the SEC?
• I am not critical of the cash amount he wants to be paid. I reckon free stock option are granted for a consultancy work, or board membership you are not paid for, a common scheme in startups/newco with high mortality rate, as Dr. Back taught us multiple times during the last hours. The things change when you use your reputation (Mr. Lopp) to shill such Token.

I already made a post on this on the WO thread. I just didn't want to open a thread, the matter is quite delusional for me.

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[bitsurfer2014]

This is a classic case of a principled believer whose values get easily thrown away by a probable monetary consideration but we can't blame them  when they knew they could gain huge profits with their newfound alt stash especially if the project is also legit. Imho.

If a maximalist came across a project they actually believed in, beyond enriching themselves that is, they might regret having backed themselves into a corner by pandering to what Bitcoin obsessives want to hear. You're much better off retaining a light touch.

Andreas Antonopoulos has found the right balance. He doesn't dismiss non Bitcoin. He does call out the undeniable shit. He'll still be harvesting what he's grown many years after the sell outs have gone down in flames.

Of course! Besides any financial consideration, it would be wise for us to also consider other crypto projects especially if they have merits in this ever changing and evolving crypto technology lets say for the sake of enthusiasm at the very least.

I myself would have done the same if given the opportunity and that I  would think most people would do it also.

[buwaytress]

Just found out about all this. I suppose this is what you get when you want to be ultra elitist, and then end up having to eat your own hat to share in the bandwagon pie.

End of the day, it's an old boys' club trying to do a dignified circlejerk of elitism. Can't lose respect when I didn't have that much for them though (and that's not an insult, btw, everyone can do as they please).

[Mulann2]

But then again, I just don't like how these people frequently crap on Ethereum and then end up using the Ethereum platform. Though Samson Mow also said on Twitter that they could move to RSK or Liquid once they are able to.

This is exactly why I hate hypocrites. They trash something they are not part of and all of a sudden an ERC20 token is okay just because they have acquired something in their pockets. It shows how their judgement is easily corruptible.

What cobra twitted was spot on.

I guess this goes to show that some people's loyalty only base on where it will be beneficial to them nothing else, they seem to be very confident shilling those erc20 tokens just for their interest, it is not always good to do what people say because they themselves don't usually do what they preach.

[stompix]

These people have built their rep by being beacons of Bitcoinness and relative rationality in a sea of squealing Carlos Matoses. It's just business but their business previously has been primarily about upholding that position.

But at one point, you might have to put a price on that reputation of yours.
As people grow old, as the youth enthusiasm dies so do a lot of principles, when your young you think of no laws, only your dreams, when you start hitting 30s and 40s, most stop caring about those and start looking at more practical things, waste your life for principles or enjoy a better-off live and forgetting what you've said a month ago!!? A glimpse of a few million just waiting to be yours and be spent on whatever you like gets more and more appealing as days pass by.
In the end, it's all about living your life how you want it, and for some, that's what they've chosen.

No one's going to die and I personally couldn't give a shit but many others will and memories are long, especially for those who reverse long-held behaviour.

The more your pockets get filled up the less you start to care what others think of you.

[dothebeats]

These people would put their loyalty on whatever hands can feed them and give them luxury. I’m pretty sure the price is more than what they bargained for that’s why a sudden shift of interest is seen on these people. This is how McAfee started trashing on bitcoin (or swaying from his sturdy stance on bitcoin)  and becoming a paid persona to shill shitcoins that he knows is just a money-grab scheme. I couldn’t care less on what they do actually, but the fact that they stomped on altcoins once to prove a point, and now promoting it is just laughable. But whatever floats their boat and whatever keeps them afloat, I guess

[gentlemand]

But at one point, you might have to put a price on that reputation of yours.

If you keep it in intact you can do consultancy, speaking fees, write books, monetise vids, sell posing pouches with your face on it, and do it for a long time to come.

Of course there are plenty of shameless hookers doing the same too but almost all of them slide into irrelevancy and madness eventually. Stepping off the most powerful train out there when you were very early to get on it and worked your way towards the front seems like a mindless move to me.

[cabron]

Hey there is a COVID crisis and we all need a guaranteed share of cash flow. It ain't so bad after all the assurance of having profit is almost like investing in BTC. Nothing wrong with it. Don't expect too much that they are not going to do something else.

If you are going to benefit from promoting something, it must be something to promote too. A bounty hunter alike who does it all the time.

[Fundamentals Of]

I love not being a Bitcoin Maximalist.

There seems to be nothing wrong with being a Bitcoin Maximalist for as long as you are really into it and you are utterly convinced of it. If Bitcoin is the one and only true crypto to you and the rest are all shitcoins, it is your view, but you don't have to crap on them day by day by day, and worse only to end up promoting one of them because there is a big amount involved.

If that is what you are, then what kind of a Bitcoin Maximalist are you? A fake one? A Maximalist when there is no opportunity? If that is what you are then you are indeed a hypocrite.

What? You seem to have the wrong end of the stick entirely.

See my recent thread topic:

Bitcoin maximalists are doing more harm to the crypto space than good ?
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5270150.0

HINT: Not all altcoins are shitcoins, however, I have yet to discover a shit-token that isn't or that has a valid use case.

To me it's just a matter of how you look at things, although a problem may be created when people start to look at something with emotions and even go as far as taking an extreme view, immediately and totally dismissing anything else not in favor with his view as worthless shit. This is what Maximalism is basically all about.

But even with this, it's not really a big problem. To each his own. If someone is utterly convinced of Bitcoin and Bitcoin alone, then let him be. Sometimes it becomes a matter of principle, of belief, or even faith.

The problem really is when someone who proclaims himself a Bitcoin Maximalist and who endlessly disses any other cryptocurrency aside from Bitcoin ends up promoting an altcoin because of what he receives in return. Everything becomes a joke. 

[bitmover]

I love not being a Bitcoin Maximalist.

It gives me the wherewithal to be proud to say that I have never invested in any shit-tokens (and/or promoted any ICO, whatsoever).

I'm free to use privacy coins and good altcoins etc.,

Oh boy it's my time to be controversial again.

In my opinion: I don't see anything that much wrong with what they're doing. Sure they're pretty much shilling it, but they're selling ownership and equity of a real legitimate and regulated business, not some utility altcoin that gives you discount on exchange fees or something. It's no different than having an IPO like what typical stocks have done in the past.

There is nothing wrong in buying altcoins.
It is somewhat immoral to get paid to shill a project, but ok.

The problem here is the hypocrisy and the contradictory speech from Loop.

I don't care if he is a bitcoin maximalist, shitcoin maximalist, shitcoin minimalist or whatever. The problem is to have a position and a reputation defeding this postion for years, and then, suddenly, just make a different speech because he was paid.

There is no problem in changing his opinion. If Loop said "I don't'like bitcoin anymore. I regret the years I promoted it because of X, Y and Z" that would be fine. The problem is that he is saying "I am a bitcoin maximalist, don't buy any shitcoin. Buy only this shitcoin, because they are paying me to promote it"

[pixie85]

^^^
Agree. He wasn't even paid to shill. He's a board member and has a stake in the project which is known to public so he's promoting his own project. It's not even shilling. Shilling is when you act like you're not involved and don't have a stake in it and are interested to buy, find it an attractive investment.

He's proven to be untrustworthy because he, just like McAfee and many others, will do whatever is profitable for them at the moment.
Most politicians act this way.

[jekanmasin]

He is a bitcoin maximalist and he trying promoting erc20 token from ethereum platform.. what do you call that? Hypocrite or what.. Being greedy is a human nature so i'm not really surprise to see a drama are being made just to make all peoples eyes focus on them. If i can i will just ignored them.

[squatter]

I am not critical of the cash amount he wants to be paid. I reckon free stock option are granted for a consultancy work, or board membership you are not paid for, a common scheme in startups/newco with high mortality rate, as Dr. Back taught us multiple times during the last hours. The things change when you use your reputation (Mr. Lopp) to shill such Token.

The "advisor" title is just a front. What they are really paying him for is his ringing endorsements of the token sale to his Twitter following -- they have been around long enough to know that. There is no pleading ignorance on this one.

I too was especially disappointed to see Jameson Lopp shilling this way.

This is really, really embarrassing:

[mk4]

If they claim to be running a by the book company, why bother with Ethereum token in the first place? Something tells me that this isn't in best interest of investors.

Samson(or someone else related to that business) claims that it's for transparency reasons. While I have no idea how good or bad of an idea using Ethereum for this is, I'm just going to say that they know a lot better than me soo..

Really disappointed here in Lopp and Mow and the rest. They spent so much time shitting on Ethereum and tokens, and now they engage in one. Now they have to admit that Ethereum is not as bad as they say, otherwise how can they explain that they use it?

One word: hypocrisy.

[bitcampaign]

why not if the project pays for a tweet from a Bitcoin maximalist

Yeah, why not promote something you used to stand against if you get money, huh?

those words are just metaphors and they don't come from me, but usually people will do something weird when they get paid high, that's what life is like, I don't mean to have that attitude because I'm against it, I would never want to promote scam project even if I get paid high, because it will hurt a lot of people, because they are paid high so they will say why not

[Wind_FURY]

There's nothing but greed to change the standpoint/perspective of some of the biggest Bitcoin evangelists, to shilling their own tokens.

Understandable, it's GREED, but curious why they chose Ethereum instead of Liquid.

[hatshepsut93]

Samson(or someone else related to that business) claims that it's for transparency reasons. While I have no idea how good or bad of an idea using Ethereum for this is, I'm just going to say that they know a lot better than me soo..

Sounds like typical useless ICO - first invent a problem, then slap blockchain/token on top of it. I never heard "transparency" being some big problem in the field of finance, exchanges, equities, cash flows. Even if this projects works, it's still worse than the proper way of doing it with regulated securities, because there's always some risks to tokens - hacks, exit scams, bugs, failures of the underlying platforms, etc. And if that happens, I kinda doubt investors will be as protected as they are on fully regulated markets.

[witcher_sense]

Jameson Lopp proclaimed himself a cypherpunk. It is a movement that has been advocating privacy and use of cryptography for years, it is on their ideas bitcoin is built, because it is based on cryptography and gives people a right "to selectively reveal oneself to the world." https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

KYC is opposite to ideas of cypherpunks, because it doesn't allow you to selectively reveal yourself, to the contrary it forces you to reveal your identity completely in order to have a control over you.

Jameson Lopp, as a cypherpunk, was criticizing KYC when talked about DeFi and Libra:

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1270134618604351488

https://blog.lopp.net/thoughts-on-libra--blockchain-/

However, when it comes to Bitcoin and his own benefit, he is no so categorical and instead pretty okay with KYC idea and idea of being tightly controlled.

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1291450868093591552

https://help.inx.co/hc/en-us/articles/360015783180-Can-I-buy-INX-tokens-without-going-through-KYC-

[BitcoinFX]

I love not being a Bitcoin Maximalist.

There seems to be nothing wrong with being a Bitcoin Maximalist for as long as you are really into it and you are utterly convinced of it. If Bitcoin is the one and only true crypto to you and the rest are all shitcoins, it is your view, but you don't have to crap on them day by day by day, and worse only to end up promoting one of them because there is a big amount involved.

If that is what you are, then what kind of a Bitcoin Maximalist are you? A fake one? A Maximalist when there is no opportunity? If that is what you are then you are indeed a hypocrite.

What? You seem to have the wrong end of the stick entirely.

See my recent thread topic:

Bitcoin maximalists are doing more harm to the crypto space than good ?
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5270150.0

HINT: Not all altcoins are shitcoins, however, I have yet to discover a shit-token that isn't or that has a valid use case.

To me it's just a matter of how you look at things, although a problem may be created when people start to look at something with emotions and even go as far as taking an extreme view, immediately and totally dismissing anything else not in favor with his view as worthless shit. This is what Maximalism is basically all about.

But even with this, it's not really a big problem. To each his own. If someone is utterly convinced of Bitcoin and Bitcoin alone, then let him be. Sometimes it becomes a matter of principle, of belief, or even faith.

The problem really is when someone who proclaims himself a Bitcoin Maximalist and who endlessly disses any other cryptocurrency aside from Bitcoin ends up promoting an altcoin because of what he receives in return. Everything becomes a joke.  

You see, we were on the same page all along!  

I'm often misconstrued and I'm a bit prickly these days ...

Perhaps I've just been here to long ...
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.msg188#msg188

...

"Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!"

... "unless your a self-proclaimed Bitcoin Maximalist who promotes shit-tokens via twitter" - SWIM

Onward.

...

*Satire* *NSFW*
Arise Chicken
- https://youtu.be/zZ9dtZ8lYww

[mk4]

Sounds like typical useless ICO - first invent a problem, then slap blockchain/token on top of it. I never heard "transparency" being some big problem in the field of finance, exchanges, equities, cash flows. Even if this projects works, it's still worse than the proper way of doing it with regulated securities, because there's always some risks to tokens - hacks, exit scams, bugs, failures of the underlying platforms, etc. And if that happens, I kinda doubt investors will be as protected as they are on fully regulated markets.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, it's not though. I think what they're offering is business equity, just through a blockchain(not saying it's a good idea).

However, when it comes to Bitcoin and his own benefit, he is no so categorical and instead pretty okay with KYC idea and idea of being tightly controlled.

They literally need to require KYC unless they want to be fined or put to jail; even as per IPO requirements.