The Bitcoin Maximalists were right about pretty much everything. ICOs didn't add any value and were vehicles to sucker new people into giving VCs and token founders money. Blockchains didn't revolutionize industry and were vehicles to sucker new people into giving VCs and token founders money. DeFi didn't revolutionize finance and were vehicles to sucker new people into giving VCs and token founders money. NFTs didn't make becoming an artist viable and were vehicles to sucker new people into giving VCs and token founders money. Web3 tech didn't displace Web2 and were vehicles to sucker new people into giving VCs and token founders money.
Bitcoin Maximalism started as an epithet. It was a way to dismiss the Bitcoiners that were showing the obvious flaws of altcoins and "blockchain" because, let's be honest, they really didn't have good answers. They hid behind obscure terms and deflected with questions about Bitcoin, but they couldn't truthfully make a good case for their own value proposition.
So Bitcoin Maxmialism, having been right for many ears and continuing to be right, has been elevated from epithet to something like a badge of credibility. To be a Bitcoin Maximalist is to have been proven right. It's become such an obvious truism that Maximalists have been right that there are people that want to claim the title for themselves while re-labeling the actual Bitcoin Maximalists as "Bitcoin Puritans" or "Bitcoin Fundamentalists." Cringy propaganda aside, the Bitcoin Maximalists having been right has made the label a prize. That the term is being worn by people who didn't make those predictions and new epithets are being thrown about to discredit opponents is evidence of this elevation of the term.
Debasing Reputation vs Elevating Reputation
This is such a contrast to the altcoin world where new names are a regular occurrence. Way back when, Mastercoin rebranded to Omni to get away from the many different disasters their token went through. Bitcoin ABC rebranded to eCash after the split from Bitcoin Cash. Even Ethereum has rebranded to Ethereum 2.0 to get away from their own history. Altcoin reputations are constantly debasing, so it's no wonder that they rebrand regularly. Bitcoin Maximalists' reputations, on the other hand, continues to enhance and has done so the hard way, by being right.
Which is why the current doomerism is so annoying. There are many different lines of attack, from people making the case that without covenants (or some other fork) that all is lost and that Bitcoin will lose forever, to others making the case that Blackrock and the US Government having lots of Bitcoin would spell doom for it. There are still others that fear altcoins might surpass Bitcoin in some way (privacy, transaction volume, etc.) unless we do X. These arguments have little basis in reality, given what's happened the last 15 years.
Bitcoin is doing fine. In fact, it's doing way better than fine. Look at the cultural conversation around Bitcoin. Look at how wide the Overton Window has gotten. Look at how many people take seriously what only a few people considered even 5 years ago. And of course, look at the price. We are winning big.
Learning to Win
Yet the doomers complain that Lightning sucks, or that the fees suck, or that exchanges suck, or that the organizations buying Bitcoin suck, or that the consensus process sucks, or that mining pools suck. Some of these complaints have some merit, but the vehemence of the complaints are way overblown for the actual issue. These are not life and death issues for Bitcoin. At best, they're nice to haves 20 years from now. I know social media doesn't get attention unless you make the consequences sound dire, but such negativity is ridiculous. We're winning and we need to learn how to win. And to keep winning, we need to remember how we won.
We're winning because Bitcoin is way better savings than anything else that exists. It's better than dollars, it's better than gold, it's better than altcoins, it's better than real estate, it's better than stocks. And why is it better? Because it's decentralized and related to that fact is that it's credibly scarce. This is why people buy Bitcoin, not because of someone's pet feature that has yet to be implemented.
When you are winning, the smart move is to double down on what made you win, not on any perceived weaknesses that most people don't care about. So stop being doomer-y, because we have a lot more winning to do.
One can bet his mighty-fine ass we will.