WBD529 Audio Transcription

The Role of Bitcoin Maximalism with Udi Wertheimer

Release date: Wednesday 20th July

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Udi Wertheimer. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Udi Wertheimer is an independent developer and consultant, and an active member of Bitcoin’s Twitterverse. In this interview, we discuss the evolved status and definition of Bitcoin maximalism, what success for Bitcoin means, and how Bitcoiners should interact with crypto investors.

“I don’t know if it relates to the whole block size war thing in 2017, I don’t know if it’s something else, but we changed the focus. The focus is not really on Bitcoin anymore. It’s on all the things that Bitcoin isn’t.”

— Udi Wertheimer

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Udi.

Udi Wertheimer: What's up?

Peter McCormack: What's up, man, how are you doing?

Udi Wertheimer: Good, good.  This is a risky episode.

Peter McCormack: No, man, it's always good.  Listen, thanks for coming in, good to see you. 

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, it's awesome.

Peter McCormack: First time we've ever done a show in person.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, we've had some good interviews before, but never face-to-face.

Peter McCormack: Good interviews, good panels, and yeah, tricky subject I want to talk to you about today.  It's a bit like when I do the climate ones.  I've had the discussion with Alex Epstein and then Andrew Dessler, I've got both sides, and I think I'm going to have a similar thing with this topic.  I'm talking to Rizzo when we're in New York, but I want to talk to you about Bitcoin maximalism, because I think of myself as a bitcoiner.  Sometimes I've called myself a maximalist, but then sometimes I haven't, because I've realised maybe I don't follow some of the same principles as some of the maximalists.

But one of the things I was conscious about, me and Danny were talking before the show, is I want to be a positive force for Bitcoin, I don't want to do bad things for Bitcoin; and there has been this heightened discussion recently, we're in a bear market so it naturally happens, but there's been some heightened discussions around what maximalism is, what it isn't, and I felt like you would be a good person to talk to.  I know you like to trigger people sometimes, but I always find it interesting to talk to the people who push against ideas, challenge ideas.  I think that's where some of the most interesting discussion is.  So, how are you feeling about this?

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, well, people definitely considered me a Bitcoin maximalist for a while, for years probably, and I think I never liked the term.  I always said that I don't like it, I don't identify as one, but for obvious reasons, I think people saw me as a Bitcoin maximalist, which I understand.  It's hard to define it, right.  I think the most courteous definition I would give would be, "It's someone who only wants to focus on Bitcoin", and I think that's super-reasonable for anyone to decide they only want to focus on Bitcoin and not on other things.  Just in general, humans who choose to focus on a specific thing, they often do very well, so it makes sense to specialise.  And if the thing you care about is Bitcoin, that's great. 

But that's not really what -- usually when someone calls themselves a Bitcoin maximalist, I don't think that's really what they mean; they don't mean, "I only focus on Bitcoin".  You can see that with just the way that people speak about other things.  I think a lot of the so-called Bitcoin maximalists spend a lot of time talking about things that aren't Bitcoin, like how Ethereum is bad and how other tokens are bad, and so on.  I think those are the people that (1) identify as a Bitcoin maximalist, and (2) other people seem to identify them as a Bitcoin maximalist.

So, coming up with the exact definition of what it means, I know it's really difficult; I think it's difficult for a lot of things.  And we had this very short back and forth on Twitter where you asked what Bitcoin maximalism is, and I said, "To me, I think it's almost a destruction to try to define it", because people know when we say Bitcoin maximalists, I think people know who we refer to, and those people call themselves Bitcoin maximalists, so I don't think we need to guess.  And it seems very similar to a religion.

Peter McCormack: Well I think on that, there are two separate things.  I think it's easy to identify who is a Bitcoin maximalist, but to actually fully understand what Bitcoin maximalism is, I think it's a bit harder.  I don't do many interviews, mainly because I'm shit at being a guest; but when I do, I tend to do it on non-Bitcoin shows.  I did one on the FT and I think I referred myself as a Bitcoin maximalist, because it felt in that scenario it was a useful term.  And then I can say, "Well, it's the only cryptocurrency I'm interested in, it's the only one I work on, it's the only one I own, it's the only one I really talk about", that's how I used it.

But recently I've felt like a bit of a hypocrite and that I shouldn't be using that term, because I've had discussions -- well I've always said actually, ever since I started the show, I see a use case for Monero.  I can see scenarios where I'd want to use that, and I've been criticised for it, but I've stood by it, because I do.  And even more so recently, I wrote a tweet about trying to square the circle of not liking shitcoins, but also following what Gladstein says about the usefulness of digital dollars in certain parts of the world, and I can't square that circle.  How do I criticise TRON and Ethereum as shitcoins, while at the same time knowing in Palestine, access to Tethers is super-useful?

So, I've stopped using the term to self-describe, but at the same time I don't want to fight Bitcoin maximalists at cross purposes, I don't want to have that argument, I don't want to have that disagreement, because I think we agree -- most Bitcoin maximalists, I think I agree on 95% of things, and then we're arguing over this 5% and it feels destructive.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I think that's accurate.  Most bitcoiners I know -- I've been around for a little while, and I know bitcoiners from a few generations, and most of the ones I know from, let's say the 2017 era or before, while a lot of them are only interested in Bitcoin, at least in the cryptocurrency sphere; there a lot of people who hold Bitcoin and do completely other things in life.  They bought some Bitcoin a long time ago, put it aside, they're usually doing the best of all of us.  They put some Bitcoin aside, mind their own business, do other things and they don't focus their lives on Bitcoin.  But in the cryptocurrency world, they only care about Bitcoin, and I think that's very reasonable.

But I think maybe because we tried to -- I don't know if it relates to the whole Blocksize War thing in 2017, I don't know if it's something else, but we changed the focus.  The focus is not really on Bitcoin anymore; it's on all the things that Bitcoin isn't, it feels like.

Peter McCormack: How do you mean; what do you mean by that?

Udi Wertheimer: Well, Bitcoin isn't great with privacy; Bitcoin isn't great with retaining its value over the short term because of volatility; Bitcoin isn't great with building decentralised applications.  I think all of those things are fine.  Bitcoin didn't necessarily set out to fix those things, and Bitcoin is doing great in what it is.  But we seem to be really focused on what it's not, and I think that's why it's so destructive, because I mean, I don't know, I don't see people who are Tesla fans going around and saying that, "Apple is a terrible company, because it's not making cars".  The companies don't compete; why make it into a competition?

Peter McCormack: Well, I can empathise with why people do, because it's very easy to lose a lot of money, even with Bitcoin; but it's very easy to lose a lot of money.  And there are certainly -- I'm not in the "everything that isn't Bitcoin is a scam", because I think it's important to separate outright scams, like OneCoin, which is designed to rob people of their money, from ideas which are stupid, to ideas which maybe are different from your world view.  I think you've got to separate them all, because I think putting an outright scammer in with somebody who's just got a stupid idea, I think that is just fraught with danger.

But what I was thinking about with this show is I always want to make shows that are useful, and I don't want to piss people off for no reason at all, and I thought what would be useful today with you is -- one of the funny things is, I probably disagree with you on a lot of things.  I put out a lot of tweets where you instantly challenge me, but at the same time I don't fall out with you, we don't block each other, we've not said we can't be friends, we will have a beer, we'll fly in and meet up, and I think that's healthy and I want a lot more of that.  That's why I wanted to approach this with you first and I want to get to the bottom of what maximalism is.

I put out the tweet, because everyone was arguing and I was like, "Well, can anyone clearly define what Bitcoin maximalism is?" and it got a range of replies from personal definitions to being mocked to being subtweeted; there was a range of things.  But I actually meant that, I was like, "I don't actually know what it is".  I know what it is to me, but I don't really know what it is.  And if I don't know what it is, and if I was to criticise Bitcoin maximalists, are we actually arguing at cross purposes, because I'm criticising at one point, and they're definitely on a different point, they're not even aligned, and I think that's potentially an issue.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I think you're right.  I think there's definitely a lot of talking past each other all the time, for sure.  I think there are two ways to try to define it. 

Peter McCormack: Can we do one thing before that?

Udi Wertheimer: Sure.

Peter McCormack: Because the question I had for you, and I'll answer it for me, is, "What is Bitcoin to you?  And in your long-term trajectory world view, what would be a success for you for Bitcoin?"

Udi Wertheimer: Well, I think that Bitcoin is a neutral form of money, I think that's the thing it's best at.  It's predictable and it's neutral, there's no one that can change it, and that has value.  I'm not sure if it's the most important thing in the world, but it has value.  I think it's still today undervalued by most people.  You could buy some Bitcoin today, put it aside, save it for your grandchildren, and you know that they'll get the same Bitcoin that you put aside today.  It wouldn't be inflated, it wouldn't be confiscated.  There's not a lot of other assets that you can do that with, and it's digital.  So, I think that's, in itself, very unique; that's great.

Also, being neutral and being censorship resistant, it also allows for a lot of use cases that I don't think are necessarily a great fit for Bitcoin, but they can start with Bitcoin.  So for example, we had dark markets very early on.  They don't necessarily use Bitcoin as much these days as they used to, and I don't think that's a bad thing.  Maybe they moved onto Monero, maybe they have some other payment schemes that they're using.  They proved there's a group that's interested in those things, they proved you can build a market there, and then they started looking for things that are a better fit maybe than Bitcoin, and I think that's fine.  I think you'll see that same thing with usage of Bitcoin in countries where you can't hold dollars, for example, where people would want to hold dollars, but they're not allowed to.

I think earlier on, people used to use Bitcoin for that; a very small minority of people, but still some people use Bitcoin for that.  But then, as stablecoins became more and more popular, and people trusted them more and more, a lot of people are saying, "I just want access to dollars.  I'm not here for the ideology of Bitcoin, I just want access to dollars.  So, as long as the stablecoins exist, I'm going to use them.  Maybe if Tether stops working, or if Circle stops working, whatever, then maybe I'll need to reconsider Bitcoin.  But for now, that's the best solution for my problem".

So, I think Bitcoin allows for a lot of that kind of experimentation that eventually settles down somewhere else, and that's an amazing thing.  That's great, that's a win, yeah, now people have the freedom to try things out that they couldn't before, and eventually arrive at a solution that works better than what they have.  Everyone should be happy about that; that's good.  I just don't know that Bitcoin is going to be the long-term solution at every point in time for every person.

Peter McCormack: I feel a bit similar.  I agree with you, it's great to have this form of money we've never had before.  You could get out your phone, I could send you some Bitcoin now and you hold that; I think that's great.  I think it's pretty cool that when I went to El Salvador last time, I didn't use a cash machine, I just used Bitcoin, because I was only at El Zonte, which was just interesting, just a very interesting thing.  There was a time when I couldn't pay a cameraman in Japan, years ago when I went out and did the Mark Karpelès interview, we couldn't get the banks to connect.  I sent him Bitcoin.

There's lots of things like that that are super-cool and it's an amazing thing.  And like you say, you can hold it forever, I can leave it for my kids, that's really cool.  I think my long-term goals are more towards maybe some of the more Austrians', in that I think if Bitcoin was widespread enough and it brought a little bit more economic responsibility to the state, I think that would be super-cool, I love that idea.  I'm not one of these people who believes in a complete collapse in the state, not because I'm a statist cuck, but actually because I think the state is a natural monopoly.  So, if you get rid of the state, a new one arrives, and it might be worse than you have.  And I'm just not there yet.

I'm also not fully clear on the consequences of a bitcoinised world.  I don't know if there are negative consequences that we haven't fully considered; it's an area I'm still exploring.  But that's kind of where I am with it, so it's really important to me.  I mean, I've dedicated my life's work to it now and I'm not going to work on anything else, so it is really important for me.  But at the same time, I'm super-conscious of not doing, as I said at the start, I don't want to do things that are bad for Bitcoin.  I would hate to drive a narrative, or do something on the show, that led people to think something was wrong.  And hence why we're here.

So, I interrupted you earlier, I made you answer that question before.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.  I think there are, I guess, two ways to try to define what maximalism is, and they're very at odds with each other.  One way would be, I like the way that Pete Rizzo puts it, that it's really maybe a cultural phenomenon that's trying to answer a question of, "How do we make sure consumers are protected; and how do we make sure that people build on Bitcoin, even though it might not be financially the best decision for them?"  And Bitcoin maximalism is sort of this cultural ideology that tries to answer those questions, and I think that's one way to put it.

It might be the reason why maximalism exists; I would just argue that it's not doing a very good job of it.  If the goal of Bitcoin maximalism is to prevent scams and to protect consumers, well did it do very well at that?  In the last two years or so, we've had a lot of scams, a lot more than before.  So, in the last two years, did Bitcoin maximalism do a good job of stopping scams?  I would argue that it didn't.  It's not really about intent.  It's possible that people have the best intentions at heart, but when I say this, people very often get defensive and they're like, "Well, it's not our fault that there are scams.  We tried to stop it, it's not our fault".

I'm definitely not blaming Bitcoin maximalists for the existence of scams.  But if we claim that our goal, that the thing we're doing is to protect consumers, then we have to ask ourselves, "Are we doing well?"  If we're failing at that, then maybe something's not working, maybe we should change things up, if that's the goal.

Peter McCormack: Well, there are certain people who will say they have been protected.  We get emails into the show saying, "Your show has made me focus on Bitcoin.  I haven't got involved in any other shitcoins, I haven't lost any money there".  You will see people tweet out that it's the bitcoiners that have led them to a path of Bitcoin maximalism and they've focused on Bitcoin and it's saved them money.  There is a weird kind of thing there, in that there are people who actually have made money in altcoins as well.  We're talking about the bag-holders, who rode it up and rode all the way back down and it never came back.  Whereas Bitcoin, we have had consistent cycles where it keeps coming back, so that's that belief that you will get that with Bitcoin.

Udi Wertheimer: Oh, of course it's not special to Bitcoin.  Ethereum is very similar in that regard, and people who bought Ethereum early and held did much better than people who bought Bitcoin at the same time.  So, it's not unique to Bitcoin; there are certainly other coins that can claim to have been around and their holders have done very well.  So, that's part of it too.  So, yes, there are certainly people who chose not to use other coins because of Bitcoin content and Bitcoin Twitter and so on.  Those exist.  But the question of impact I think is, well compare that to the people that didn't listen, and how much that group grew in the last two years.

Peter McCormack: But isn't that natural?

Udi Wertheimer: I think it is, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Because the crypto ecosystem is huge and there are a lot more entry points in; sometimes it looks a bit more fun.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I think it's very natural, of course.

Peter McCormack: My 18-year-old son certainly thinks NFTs are cooler than Austrian Economics.  I can explain to him why he shouldn't buy an NFT and I can explain to him why Bitcoin is bought, and that's great and he listens and he understands, because he has me around him.  But his friends, their dad doesn't have a Bitcoin podcast; they're just kids who will see something on Instagram or Snapchat, it's an NFT, it sounds cool and they'll buy it and they'll invest in it.  They just miss that whole protection zone that my son has.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I agree with you, it's very natural.  But then again the question is, I'm not trying to make a moral argument against Bitcoin maximalism.  I think in a lot of cases, not always, a lot of cases the intentions are very good; not always, by the way, but in many cases they are!  But I'm just saying, looking at the result, and of course it is because it's natural, looking at the result, I don't think it's achieving its goals in the last few years.

Peter McCormack: Could you argue -- well, I would argue that it kind of is, in some ways, in that very, very few altcoins, as a percentage of the ones that are created, have actually had a long-term life.  There was a tweet that came out, a really interesting tweet, I think it was Scott Melker; is his name Scott Melker, Danny?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well he put out, "The biggest altcoins of the next cycle have not even been created yet", which is this conveyor belt of altcoins that come out, maybe it's a Multicoin thing, or a16z, they'll do a bunch of new investments.  They'll go up, they'll come down, whatever, and there's this endless cycle of the creation of them.  But during that period, they'll be winners and losers, but if Bitcoin keeps growing, it becomes that kind of apex predator that starts to pick people up that have gone into these projects and have lost money.  So eventually, it could be that Bitcoin maximalism in the short term doesn't look like it's doing its job, but actually as long as it keeps picking up people and itself keeps growing, eventually it will do; does that make sense?

Udi Wertheimer: It does make sense, but now we're introducing a new goal.  So, the goal that was alluding to, and of course it comes down to definition again, but the goals I was alluding to were protecting consumers from harm and scams, etc, and encouraging people to build on Bitcoin.  And I think those two goals clearly were not achieved in the last two years, I think.  I would say if those truly are the goals of Bitcoin maximalism, then I would say that maximalism failed in the last two years, because look, there have been many scams, many people failed over them; sure, some people listened to Bitcoin maximalists, but most people didn't, and then the question is, maybe the goal of the Bitcoin maximalist isn't to protect consumers, maybe the goal of the Bitcoin maximalists is to say, "I told you so"!

Peter McCormack: But that's okay.

Udi Wertheimer: That's okay, everything is okay.

Peter McCormack: Some will listen on the way and then some will get burned and then ultimately become a maximalist.  I mean, even if I'm not, I'm close to it.  I only hold Bitcoin at the moment and I've been through that process of getting burned and realising I can't trade; and for me, long term it just makes sense, I'll just hold Bitcoin and that's worked for me.  Maybe Bitcoin maximalism isn't so much of a preventative measure, but it is a set of values and principles whereby when people do go out and get burned and they don't listen, there's this welcoming arm that says, "Come back in" and says, "Here we go".

Udi Wertheimer: I love that, I just don't think it's happening in practice.

Peter McCormack: I think it is.

Udi Wertheimer: Well, just looking at the data, there's a lot of research done where mostly, a bunch of firms are going out and asking, like there are a lot of firms that made the poll about how many Americans own Bitcoin; how many Americans own crypto; how many joined in the last year or two?  The results are always conclusive.  It's very rare that someone will only own Bitcoin these days, very rare.  Most Bitcoin holders, at least in the western world, own crypto too, like 80% of them.

So, the idea of Bitcoin only is very small.  It seems like people are moving to the more open-minded camp, but not really in the reverse direction; that seems to be the case.  So it is true, and we have seen that in the previous bear market that people have done the shitcoin stint, it didn't work out well for them, and they moved back to Bitcoin maximalism over the bear market, and you could argue maybe the next bear market will see the same thing happen.  But so far, if you look over time, it seems like more people hold Bitcoin plus other coins, and not that people are holding Bitcoin only, or a larger percentage.  The percentage of people who hold Bitcoin plus other coins is growing over time, across bear markets too, so I just don't think it's true.

It's a good story, I wish it was true; I believed it at a point in time, but I don't think it's true, and there are many reasons for that.  I really don't want to frame this as Bitcoin failing or losing.  I'm so bullish on Bitcoin, I find it very hard to be long-term bullish on other cryptocurrencies, especially the ones that exist today, but I can't tell you -- for some of those things, you know what?  Maybe that's a good time to introduce some arguments for why shitcoins are not necessarily all bad.  There are things like exchange coins.  So, BNB for Binance and FTT for FTX, and whatever. 

A lot of the new exchanges, the post Coinbase exchanges, most of them seem to have their own token.  Really what those tokens are, they're a form -- the mechanism differs from one to the next, but generally they try to have some form of revenue share with holders of the coin, and they do that with various ways.  Sometimes they exchange or buy back the coin with the fee revenue, then burn it and you would expect supply goes down, so maybe if the exchanges as well, they burn a lot of their coins, and then there's less coins in the market and then maybe the price will go up.  That's the thinking for some of them.  I don't know if it's going to work or not, I don't know if it's going to go up or down, but it seems to me there's nothing wrong about this model, as far as I can see.

There are obvious problems as far as security regulations are concerned.  You could definitely argue that that's a security.

Peter McCormack: I mean, it certainly is a security.

Udi Wertheimer: Well, it depends.  I guess for the SEC, it probably is considered a security probably.  There are countries where they don't have the same laws as the United States.

Peter McCormack: Of course, there is that.  But I also think you can get into the area of ethics and money creation.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, so the question is, why is that money?  I don't see BNB for Binance, or FTT from FTX, or many others, I don't see them as money, I don't think anyone does.  Very few people would hold the coin of Huobi, or whatever, and try to pay with it in a store, or try to even make a large payment to someone and say, "Do you accept Huobi Coin?"  I don't think anyone sees that as money, I don't think anyone sees that as a savings technology.  People see that as investment in the exchange.

Peter McCormack: So, why do you think there's this universal rejection of these altcoins?  I actually wrote something down here.  Do you think it's a little bit like, think with regards to gun regulation in the US; there's a massive debate at the moment, there's been lots of issues with mass shootings, and whenever there's any discussion about any form of tightening the regulations, even the smallest amount, there's a huge rejection from anyone who is a proponent of guns, specifically the NRA, even though some of them you think, "That sounds maybe reasonable, maybe not allowing an 18-year-old to buy a gun.  I came to the realisation that at 18, you're still a child.  You might be an adult by the law, but you are still a child and incapable of making certain decisions".

Maybe if you're thinking someone can't drink at 21, maybe they shouldn't have a gun, I don't know.  The points are irrelevant.  Someone listening will be shouting, "No, let everyone have a gun!"  The point I'm trying to get to is that, is it more about holding the line, therefore we cannot allow one change in the laws regarding firearms, because you'll give one and eventually they'll come after this, and it's never-ending.  So, hold the line, everything but Bitcoin is a shitcoin, and then we don't have to have this debate, because otherwise you'll be like -- do you think that's happening?

Udi Wertheimer: For sure.  I think it's a combination of just holding this hard line, because it's simple to communicate, and also I think a lot of the practitioners of Bitcoin maximalism, they lack the knowledge and the tool to discern between the types of cryptocurrencies, so they themselves I think a lot of them think they're right.  I think a lot of them don't think they're being hardliners, I think a lot of them think, "Yeah, BNB is the exact same as a Shiba Inu".

I think most importantly though, I'm not making any moral judgement about their intent, I think in many times their intent is very good; but the question is, does it work to say that BNB is as bad as Shiba Inu, because when you say that, people are not going to listen to you on BNB and they're not going to listen to you on Shiba Inu, and they're not going to listen to you on anything, and I think we've seen that.  I think it was very obvious, for example, to see when early on in 2020, a lot of Bitcoin maximalists got very mad at Elon Musk for being a proponent of Dogecoin.

Peter McCormack: Me too, I got mad at him.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, and I mean I can fully understand why.  Obviously Doge is a joke and it's ridiculous, but then again I don't know, he clearly struck a chord with people.  And the problem was, while Bitcoin maximalists were fuming at the mouth on this, the price just wouldn't stop going up, and from the very bottom you'd have Bitcoin maximalists shouting, "Elon's scamming you, he's going to steal your money!"  Meanwhile, everyone who got into Doge was getting rich.

Even now, after Doge collapsed, I don't, 90% or something, I've no idea how much, a lot, it's still way higher than it was in early 2021.  So, anyone who neglected to listen to Bitcoin maximalists then, sure they lost a lot of money from the top, but they still made, I don't know, 10X or whatever; that's pretty good.  Am I saying that it's a sound investment?  No, but I'm saying those people are not going to listen to Bitcoin maximalists anymore.

Peter McCormack: Could there be another angle with this, in that these altcoins are extraction from Bitcoin?  So, if you're a bitcoiner who believes that -- I mean, it's highly relevant right now.  We're seeing economies collapse.  Sri Lanka is a very obvious case study for bad policy, economic mismanagement and it's a catastrophe there in the country right now.  And therefore, you can see why some bitcoiners believe that sound money, within a country like that, would be useful, whether it is the only money or alongside the government, in that if that's the case, then perhaps there's this moral duty to promote Bitcoin; because the more people who come into it, the bigger it gets, the quicker we can avoid situations like that.  So, it becomes a moral imperative to direct people towards good money.  I accept and like that as an argument.

Udi Wertheimer: I'm onboard with that.  Again, the only problem I have is that it doesn't work.  I'm onboard with that.  I think, yeah, it is moral to teach people about the benefits of Bitcoin and to help it propagate and to help more people enjoy the benefits of Bitcoin.  I think it's a moral and virtuous thing to do, and I think the way that Bitcoin maximalists are doing it isn't working.  Now, look, obviously it's working on some people, and I think the Bitcoin maximalist group is growing, it's not shrinking; I think it's growing, but it's growing much slower than everything else in the cryptocurrency space.

Peter McCormack: Is it really though?  If you pick your timeframes, some cryptocurrencies will grow super-quick on a short timeframe, because it's new and interesting.  Low liquidity means high gains.

Udi Wertheimer: I'm not referring to the prices at all, this isn't about the market caps and the prices.  Yeah, for sure, the prices are all manipulated.  Definitely on the short term, there's not a lot of information to glean from that.  But you can just see the number of people, and just talk to people in the US who are interested in crypto in the last year; how many of them got Bitcoin, how many of them got other things?  Not all of them bought Shiba Inu; a lot did, but not all of them bought Shiba Inu.  Some people bought Ether, and they're planning to hold Ether for the long term.

I don't think that's a scam, I don't think Ethereum is a scam; we had these discussions before.  I certainly didn't think Ethereum would succeed as much as it did.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think it's very difficult to define a protocol as a scam.  I think you can define the actions of somebody behind it as scammy, and you certainly can describe some coins as -- OneCoin is a scam, okay.  I struggle to call Ethereum a scam under any definition, but I understand the definitions that other people would call it a scam.  But I would certainly see how you could identify the claims or the promises of certain people behind it as potentially scammy.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I mean look, sure, and there are more influential people in Ethereum, obviously Vitalik and Joe Lubin are in some sort of leadership position and some others too, which doesn't exist in the same way in Bitcoin.  You could say, if someone like Vitalik says something that's false about Ethereum, then maybe that's a scam.  I find that just looking at the things that Vitalik says, I find that he tends to not talk about promises about Ethereum as much as he used to, so I think he changed the way he acts about those things. 

Certainly there are a lot of people in the Ethereum camp who are saying, "Yeah, Ethereum is better than Bitcoin; Ethereum will replace Bitcoin; Ethereum will be ultra-sound money".  I think those claims are ridiculous.  But they're just people.  There are a lot of people in the Bitcoin camp making ridiculous claims too, so I don't think it makes Ethereum a scam or scammy.  Yeah, some of the Ethereum proponents are either batshit crazy, some of them are bad people, sure yeah, that exists; that exists on Bitcoin too, so what?  We have to look past those things.

Peter McCormack: So, if you were to attempt to steelman the bitcoiner argument, the maximalist argument against altcoins, can you do it?

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I think…

Peter McCormack: Because I think the consistent one they're saying, I'm now answering for you, but I believe that altcoins will trend to zero versus Bitcoin on a long enough timeframe, therefore there's no point having them.

Udi Wertheimer: I mean, that's only true if you believe that everything in the world will trend to zero versus Bitcoin.  Like, you shouldn't buy a house because it will trend to zero versus Bitcoin.  Maybe that's true, I don't know.

Peter McCormack: It's actually come out recently that people have said a house is a shitcoin!

Udi Wertheimer: I think sometimes it's a joke and that's fine, it's okay to joke.  Some people are probably serious about it too.  You need houses, right?  I don't think I need to explain that.  If you believe that real estate will trend to zero versus Bitcoin, I guess maybe, so I guess it's possible, but I wouldn't say that makes real estate a scam.

The problem with saying that you group all the cryptocurrencies together, there are so many different types of them.  So again, there are the exchange coins.  What are you telling me when you're saying that the exchange coins will trend to zero versus Bitcoin; what are you telling me?  Are you telling me that the exchanges will disappear, they will cease to exist?  Are you saying that Bitcoin will grow faster than exchanges?  I'm not sure that makes sense, because people need the exchanges to buy the Bitcoin, so clearly the exchanges will make money when that happens.  I'm not sure how that works.  How does the exchange coin trend to zero while Bitcoin goes to infinity?

Peter McCormack: I think I'd buy the argument certainly on any coin that is just trying to be money like Bitcoin, so BSV, a BCH, a Litecoin, even a Monero.  I think when you've got like-for-like things, which are just trying to act as money; when they're trying to act as money, then it kind of makes sense they will trend to zero against Bitcoin.  But I think when something acts more like equity, I think it's a different argument.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I would agree with that.  So I think when you say another coin is trying to be money, the obvious examples are stuff like BSV and BCH and whatever.  I was very happy to call those a scam back in the day, but I think it's very difficult to look at Ethereum and say, "Ethereum is exactly the same thing as BSV".  It's just not, it's a completely different beast and the performance of the price will be different.  I'm not saying Ethereum will outperform Bitcoin; I don't think it will, but I don't know, but it's definitely going to be different than BSV. 

Trying to group those two together, I think it just doesn't make sense to outsiders who look in and say, "Well, I need to make a decision.  I think there's something ongoing in the crypto world, I think I need to make a decision now", and they're looking for all the opinions.  I think the opinions of the Bitcoin maximalist camp just doesn't seem to make sense, because people try to group Shiba Inu with Ethereum and the Binance Coin.  Those are very different things.

Peter McCormack: Well this is where I think therefore we can separate the money maximalism from the protocol maximalism.  When I put out that tweet, Brady Swenson put a really good reply to it.  He said, "Maximalism to me is two things.  I believe that an open monetary network will trend towards one, and an open protocol will trend towards one".  So, if we talk about the money cryptos, they probably will trend to zero against Bitcoin.  So then you have to talk about, an open network will trend towards one.

There is that belief that people think you will have tokens and equities and things built on Bitcoin.  Liquid, which I know you've been critical of, but people say you can do it, then maybe it will happen there.  And therefor I think the claim is, "Why would you build on anything else when you can build on Bitcoin?"

Udi Wertheimer: It's very easy to answer that.  You only ask this question if you don't have any intention to build anything.  If you are an actual builder, there's no question.  Why would you ever build on Liquid today, because you need exchanges to list your coin, your security, whatever it is, call it a security if you want; you need exchanges to list it, you need wallets to support it, you need users who can use your thing, and Liquid is not widely deployed at all and Ethereum is, that's just the case, that's just a fact. 

If you were a builder and your goal was to build a useful product or service for people, Liquid is not an option, it is not.  It's not a maybe, it's a "let's consider", it's just simply not an option, because the tools aren't there, the infrastructure isn't there; nothing is there.  In ten years, maybe, I don't know; but right now, it's not on the consideration table.  When a founder thinks about how they're going to build, they'll think, "Maybe Ethereum, maybe Solana, maybe whatever".  They're not going to consider a Bitcoin sidechain, because that's just not a practical solution.

The attempt to paint those founders as bad people and as scammers, some of them are, a lot of them are, but I think it's fundamentally wrong; because, some of them are truly trying to build something they believe there's demand for in the market, they're trying to solve a problem for real people.  And telling them, "Well, why don't you just build it on Bitcoin?"  "Well, because I can't.  I want to build a solution now.  The solution is not an ideology, I'm trying to build an actual solution, and I can't build it on Bitcoin, because the tools aren't there, the infrastructure isn't there, there's no support, there's no anything". 

Go make it, make it happen, make exchanges accept Liquid deposits, make wallets support Liquid, then we can talk about it.  But right now, there's what, one wallet with 10,000 users that has Liquid?  You can't even discuss that.

Peter McCormack: So, this comes down to then the timeframes of certain technologies.  When I first got my first mobile phone, I got a house phone.  And then, when I first moved house and got my own house, I didn't even bother with a house phone.  Now, I can't even remember the last time I used a landline.  So, landlines have had a time when they were the dominant form of phone, then they had parity with mobiles, and now they're losing against them. 

So I guess, in that scenario, what you're saying here is, there was Bitcoin and now there's Ethereum you can build on; but there may come another time where everything can be done on Bitcoin, and then Ethereum's time might end.  And, why should someone be denied the write to build something on an application when the other application can't support it?  I mean, I'm not technical, so I won't understand what can and can't be built on Liquid.

Udi Wertheimer: I wouldn't even go there.  I mean, Liquid is factually a lot more limited in what it can do compared to Ethereum, but there are ways around that; I wouldn't even go there to the technical part.  I would say, "Look at deployments".  Ethereum MetaMask right now is the most popular crypto self-custody in the world.  They have 30 million active users, and they don't support Bitcoin at all.  But it's the most popular and widely-deployed wallet.  Then, look at Liquid wallets; I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying maybe 10,000 active users probably, or of magnitude less, but let's be nice, maybe 10,000.

There's no question, even if Liquid could do everything and more than Ethereum can, it only has 10,000 potential users.  Of course you're going to go to the 30 million; what is even the question?  If you're a builder and you're trying to build for people, there's no question.

Peter McCormack: So, why do you think some people are so ardently against these other protocols and people building on them?

Udi Wertheimer: I can tell you why I was against them in the past, and I think that maybe that's the similar reason for other people.  I think that when we looked at Ethereum, when it launched let's say in 2015, 2016, technically there were a lot of reasons why it shouldn't have worked.  It made a lot of compromises that seemed wrong, both technically, financially and economically too; there were a lot of things we thought were mistakes.  But it turns out that it got more and more adoption over time.

Some of the economic blunders that Ethereum made early on were changed.  Economically, if you look at Ether right now, it is more sound that it was seven years ago; it is, for holders.  For holders, it's literally better than it was before.  I'm not saying it's as good Bitcoin.  When I hold Bitcoin, I feel safe and I know it's going to stick around for a long time; I don't feel the same about Ether.  But it's definitely better than it was in 2015.

Peter McCormack: So your defence is, it's not so shit!

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.  I mean, look, it depends on what you want.  The nice thing is, let's say you want to use -- let's look at Celsius.  So obviously, Celsius blew up recently, lost a lot -- well, we don't know yet exactly what happened, but it seems like they lost a lot of customer funds and will not be able to pay them back probably, unless some miracle happens. 

If instead, they would have used something like Aave or Compound on Ethereum, which I wouldn't say that they're decentralised; people call those things DeFi and decentralised finance.  I don't think that the term decentralised fits, but it's transparent and it's auditable.  So, even if it's not decentralised, you can see what's going on, and you can't really get away with a lot of funny business there.  You can't wake up one day and realise that all the money's gone; that's not really possible.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that does happen.

Udi Wertheimer: Well, it depends on which protocols, but it doesn't happen with, for example, Aave and Compound.  So again, that's the thing, anyone can start a DeFi protocol, anyone can start to upload a Smart Contract to Ethereum and call it DeFi, and 99% of it is going to be junk.  But Compound, Aave, some of the so-called -- I don't know how to even call them, but fundamentally you can look at how they work and they're transparent; there's not much that can happen.

Now there can be hacks.  It's possible that a developer made a mistake, and someone will exploit that.  That's a risk, that's a real risk.  But other than that, they're transparent, so you can at least know that if there's no bug, then you can expect how things are going to play out, and you're not going to wake up one day and realise that someone stole all the money from Aave, for example, unless there's a hack.

Peter McCormack: So, is it more then potentially a culture war?  I mean, we're in the midst of a culture war at the moment, but is it more like a culture war in that there are these fundamental differences?  So Ethereum is moving apparently to proof of stake, which is considered, let's say, a more centralising force; and Ethereum did have a premine, which if you discuss or read up on the ethics of money production, a premine is arguably slightly, well not slightly, but less ethical.  Is it because Bitcoin tends to be move slow, don't break things; whereas Ethereum is move fast, break things?  So, is it just a set of cultural differences of how people consider money and cryptocurrencies?

Udi Wertheimer: Well, that's a claim.  There's a claim that there's a set of cultural differences, but I would posit that it's fake, because Bitcoin maximalists start companies, as they should, and they start businesses.  Those businesses sell equity.  They create equity, they give the equity to the founders when the business has started, and then they sell some of the equity to early seed investors.  That's a premine.

Peter McCormack: But equity's different from money.  When you're making the claim that Ethereum is ultra-sound money, that's very different from equity and investment.  I don't like that analogy.

Udi Wertheimer: So, I think that Ethereum is not ultra-sound money.  I know that some people say that it is; I think they're wrong.  I would say that Ethereum is very similar to an equity.  Obviously a lot of people in the Bitcoin camp are saying, "Ether is a security".  If you believe that, why is it a security?  Why is Ether a security and Bitcoin not?  Well, because Ether has some similarity to some sort of maybe not equity, but it certainly tries to do revenue share with holders of Ether, and certainly the way it was sold originally is similar to an equity sale.  I think Bitcoin maximalists recognise the similarity for sure, so I would say yeah, that's what it is. 

Now, I don't particularly care about American regulations on securities, that's not my problem.  If Americans want to support the SEC, I'm not going to intervene in that.  But as a non-American, I don't particularly care.  The founders who create those coins don't particularly care if they're not Americans, and if Americans want to stay out of this entire thing, they can stay out.  I don't know why it is Bitcoin maximalists are choosing to promote the idea of the SEC saving the market, but sure, you can do that.  If American Bitcoin maximalists want to do that, that's their prerogative, that's none of my business.

But for the rest of the world, they seem to be okay with a different set of regulations.  So, I don't see anything wrong with someone issuing a token and saying, "Yeah, I'm going to use this token to share revenue with my investors", I think that's fine.  Some of them scam; that's not fine.  But if you don't scam, I don't see a problem.

Peter McCormack: There'll be people who won't even like the fact we're having this conversation.

Udi Wertheimer: For sure.

Peter McCormack: And they won't like the fact that we're having it on what is considered a Bitcoin podcast, certainly won't.  It happened recently.  I had Seth For Privacy on and we discussed Monero, and some of the comments were like, "Why don't you launch What Monero Did [or ] you're a shitcoiner [or] is this a shitcoin podcast now?" so it immediately comes out, and that's fine, I understand that.  So, some people won't like the fact that we're having this conversation.  I do. 

Udi Wertheimer: I like it too.

Peter McCormack: You like it, don't you, Danny?

Danny Knowles: For sure, I think it's an important conversation.

Peter McCormack: I think it's important because firstly, for me, just on a personal level, it's to understand what Bitcoin maximalists' goal is, do I align with it; therefore, how do I support it and what's the purpose and the goal; and therefore, what are the actions I can do to help support and make Bitcoin stronger?  So, it's an important conversation to have, and I certainly haven't agreed with you on a few things through this.  But there will be some people just won't like the fact that the conversation's happening, and they're listening.  What would you actually say to them?

Udi Wertheimer: I think, as you say, I think we agree on most things.  I think that the concept of a free market and allowing people to innovate, I think it's things we agree upon.  I would say, take a look at what changed in the last two or three years in the crypto space.  I think that a lot of the defensiveness stems from how, in the last bull market in 2018, or whatever, it was all scams, it was; 100% of it almost, maybe except for Ethereum itself, but everything that Ethereum did for sure was a scam.  And they just assume that it's the same this time.  To a certain degree, it is the same, but not 100% of it.

I think if you take a look -- I threw out some names, you know, I threw out some names about exchange coins, about lending protocols on Ethereum.  I think those are very reasonable services that offer something that is valuable to their users.  Their users don't need to use ETH, they can use WBTC, which is Wrapped Bitcoin, just like Liquid is Wrapped Bitcoin; it's the same thing.  It's a real service that is valuable. 

I know a lot of people who own some Bitcoin and want to take a loan against their Bitcoin, want to take a dollar loan against the Bitcoin; keep holding the Bitcoin, not sell it and take a dollar loan.  These lending protocols allow you to do that, without KYC, without censorship, you can do it anywhere in the world.  I think that's a real benefit, I think that's good; I don't think we need to hate on that.

Peter McCormack: What are the inherent risks in those platforms?  Again, bringing it back to my world of being a bit of an idiot, where could I go wrong wrapping some BTC and taking out a loan; what could I…?

Udi Wertheimer: So, if you wrap BTC, then that means you give up custody of your Bitcoin, you give it to, in that case, BitGo.  I think BitGo is a very established custodian, but you definitely give it to BitGo or one of their partners, I don't know exactly which one it will be, and you get a token that represents that deposit.  Now, that's very similar to depositing on BlockFi, on Bitfinex, on Square, you know.  You make a deposit of the Bitcoin, you no longer have custody and you get a service.

The difference is, you get the service in a way that is transparent, auditable and permissionless; you don't need to ask permission, you don't need to provide any identity information, so I think that's an improvement.  Is it fantastic?  No.  There are drawbacks, there are risks.  Main risks would be either the protocol itself gets hacked, or maybe something happens to BitGo and they lose their Bitcoins; that's possible too.  But those things are transparent, you can at least track them, you can see where the Bitcoins are, the real BTC is; you can see it on the Bitcoin blockchain. 

You can see on the Ethereum blockchain that the loan is backed, you can see that there weren't $500 million that went out to Three Arrows Capital and are unaccounted for; you can see that, so you don't need to trust anyone on that.  There is some trust involved, there is some risk involved, but I would say it's less risk than giving your money to BlockFi and taking a loan, just because it's more transparent, not because I don't trust BlockFi; it's just transparent.  So, I think that has value.

Now, if the only reason you don't like that product is because it's built on Ethereum, or because the founders chose to incentivise investment using a token instead of equity, then I would say that's not a good reason.  I think if the service is valuable, if it solves the problems that bitcoiners are talking about, bitcoiners want to be able to do those things without KYC.  Those are things we care about, so it solves them.  It doesn't solve them perfectly, but it's better than what we had before.  If the only reason you don't like it is because it uses Ethereum behind the scenes, or because the founders issued a token, don't buy the token, you don't need to buy the token; don't use it, just take a loan.  If you only don't like it because there is an existence of a token somewhere, that's very odd to me; I don't understand that.

Peter McCormack: So, what do you think the purpose then of Bitcoin maximalism is, because the things I would put in the bucket have changed since, let's say late 2016, early 2017, so about five, five and a half years that I've been more heavily involved; there's certainly been a change and the dynamics have changed.  And there seems to be for me, there's monetary maximalism, there's protocol maximalism, but there's become this whole cultural movement almost around the fiat world; fiat art, fiat food, and I think bitcoiners have been right on a lot of those things.

I certainly think there's been misinformation with regard to food over the years, I certainly think central planners are getting a lot wrong; there's a lot of that being exposed.  But where do you think the important parts are, for you as a bitcoiner, not for them, for you as a bitcoiner; what do you think that Bitcoin maximalists could be doing, or should be doing, which are important?

Udi Wertheimer: I think that the most important thing is to understand the problems that people have in the world today, and try to see or show how Bitcoin fixes those problems.  I don't think a lot of people feel like they have a problem with their food and that Bitcoin solves the problems that they have with their food.  I'm not saying that the dietary choices of Bitcoin maximalists are wrong, maybe they're scientifically right, but I don't think that these are the answers that people are looking for now in the world.

Peter McCormack: I'm just going to jump in there.  I'm not sure it's the answer they're looking for; I think perhaps they're things that they find that they weren't aware of before.  It's definitely influenced me.

Udi Wertheimer: It influenced me too, yeah.  I mean, it literally changed my diet.  Bitcoin maximalists literally changed my diet and I've been doing better for that.  But that's a completely cultural thing and isn't relevant to Bitcoin.  It worked for me, but I also can appreciate that other people have other needs and other interests, and I don't think it will work for them.  I'm a very private guy, I know people wouldn't guess, but I consider myself very shy, I know, I know --

Peter McCormack: You're not fucking shy!

Udi Wertheimer: I know, but that's how I see myself.  I'm an introvert.  I know it doesn't look like it, but I consider myself an introvert.

Peter McCormack: In the meatspace?

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: You're not an introvert on Twitter!

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, of course, I know, and that's exactly the thing.  I have this personality where, when people recommend a diet on Twitter, I'm very likely to look into that and maybe find it's useful for me, but that's a unique personality.  I don't think that most people are like that, I don't think that most people are seeking diet advice on Bitcoin Twitter, even if it's good.  So, what can we as bitcoiners do?

I think for the masses, for most of the world, for example, I think that if we see that people are, for whatever reason, super-interested in Dogecoin and NFTs, even if we find those laughable, I think it would make sense to reach out to those people and say, "Hey, did you make some money on jpegs?  Great for you, happy for you, good job.  Now, would you consider now that you have money -- before you were broke.  Now you have money, would you consider maybe taking 5% of it and storing it in Bitcoin long term, instead of holding it in apes?" and have that discussion about, "Hey, you know what, you did great, good job".

Peter McCormack: Dan Held says exactly the same thing.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, and I think that's at this point in time.  And at this point in time, culture seems to be fascinated with NFTs; maybe in two years they won't be, and they will be fascinated with something else, and I think bitcoiners should be there too, instead of saying, "Hey, you guys are idiots and you're going to regret it in four years".  How does that help anyone?  It's probably true, but how is that helpful.

What I would like is to see those people, let's say that we agree that NFTs will go to zero and Dogecoin will go to zero; I don't actually think that, but let's say that we believe that.  Wouldn't it be great if they held 5% of their portfolio in Bitcoin, so that when everything else goes to zero, now they're bitcoiners, they have some Bitcoin.  Everything else is zero, so they have the 5%; it's now 100%.

Peter McCormack: So they're maximalists.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.  Wouldn't that be good though; wouldn't that be good for Bitcoin?  So instead, we're calling them stupid so that two years from now we can tell them, "I told you so".  I don't see how that's helpful, I really don't.  And, those are the things that I think we should be doing.  I think we should accept that the world is changing, I think maybe because of Bitcoin inflexibility, which is good for Bitcoin, I think maybe we have this mindset that nothing in the world needs to change, or nothing in the path of the world needs to change.  I think a lot of bitcoiners believe, or a lot of Bitcoin maximalists believe, that maybe states will disappear, or maybe will change substantially.  But that's kind of a predetermined path that they believe in.

I think a lot of people in the Bitcoin maximalist world do not see a need to update their view of that path.  So yes, there is a path and the world will change, but the path is predetermined, it's not going to change based on what mere humans are doing, and I think that's wrong.  The world is changing and as the world changes, you need to update your views of how the future is going to look like, because it's not predetermined and path dependency is a thing.  So, I think we need to look at those things and we need to understand what people are looking for now, and we need to accept that in two years they'll probably be into other things and we should be there. 

We should always be there, we should understand their motivations, "Why is it that they're interested in Shiba Inu and not in Bitcoin?"  There's a reason.  It doesn't mean we need to change Bitcoin to be more like Shiba Inu, but we need to understand where people are coming from.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I mean for me, where I was going with the question is more like where I first kind of realised fundamentally what Bitcoin maximalism for me was at the time.  And it was during the Blocksize Wars, where originally it was like, "Oh yeah, big blocks, they kind of make sense, because you can get more transactions in, they're cheaper".  Then only when I dug into it and started reading about it, then I understood the trade-off with decentralisation, and I was like, "Okay, no, it makes sense to have small blocks.  Great, I'm on the small blocks side". 

But there was nearly that change where, you would probably explain it better than me, but there was nearly the hard fork that would have led to probably Core being removed.  And what I did as I went and read all the, not Bitcoin Talk, it was the mailing list, emails, I retrospectively read them all, I saw how all these names were discussing it.  I always particularly thought John Carvalho did a very good job in standing up to people saying, "What are you doing?  This is crazy".

I've spoken to a lot of people since, and I never fully appreciated what that civil war was and what it meant, because I was new, I only had a little bit of Bitcoin.  Now, if there was a new civil war that opened up, I would feel that threat a bit more.  Recently, Peter Todd has been discussing the idea of inflation, and in my head I was like, "Yeah, we should get Peter Todd on, we should talk about this"; but actually, that might fan the flames of a new civil war, which would be bad for Bitcoin, and probably bad for my Bitcoin.  And when I talk about not wanting to do things that are bad for Bitcoin, I think actually entertaining that idea that 21 million isn't fixed and that could be -- I think that's bad and I don't want to do that.  So, I'm not going to have that conversation just now; even if other people want it to happen, I'm not going to do it.

So for me, maximalism was always about the absolute foundational principles of Bitcoin and defending the protocol, and that's where I've always felt comfortable, always felt safe, and I've always aligned with that and I think that's important.  I think consensus is important; I think 21 million is important; I think defending that is really important, and I think you can do it in a firm, and in a principled way, without having to be aggressive or abusive, and I think that's what happened in 2017.

This kind of fragmentation of what Bitcoin is is where I've got a little bit personally lost, whereas it's all these other things.  Like I judge the fragmentations on, "What am I being yelled at for today?" and it's this fragmentation of things where it's political or cultural, and that's where I've started to get a little bit lost with it.  I want to change the focus, I'm going to change my personal focus and what can I do, and it's rounded back to what happened in 2018 saying, "Okay, it's these foundational principles.  That's where I want to be focused".

If somebody wants to shout at me because I'm from the UK and I think a National Health Service is good, I can just ignore that conversation, I don't need to have it.  Where are the important conversations we should be having?  It's almost like, I actually think anyone, and if I've said it I apologise, anyone who says or groups together Bitcoin maximalism or Bitcoin maximalists in a sentence as a criticism, I think trying to do that is fraught with danger and risk, because it's too broad.  I'd rather say, "Okay, if it's about altcoins, let's discuss that.  If it's about monetary maximalism, let's debate that.  If it's about a specific issue, let's do that". 

But suddenly to say, "All Bitcoin maximalists are this, bad, are this", I think you've got a problem there, because you're attacking somebody's identity.  And in attacking their identity, they're going to be defensive, and you haven't really made an argument.  It's like even when I criticised my Bitcoin maximalists, I actually tried to categorise a group of them, the dot-HODL types that came over the last two years, who just are relentless.  And it's not just mean words.  Some of the things that have been done to some people are actually quite devastating, and that's where I've kind of focused in on.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I've definitely talked about that a bunch, but honestly I think that the thing I'm -- I don't personally want to make it about people being nice online.  It's not that it's meaningless; it has a meaning and it does affect how people view us, but I don't think that's the main thing.  I think that Bitcoin used to be seen, and I think that was true up until the end of the 2017, 2018 bull market; I think Bitcoin used to be seen as the King of Crypto.  That was an actual term that people used.  And people would very often speak somewhat amicably about altcoins and they would say, "Well, they exist.  A lot of them are scams, but who knows, whatever.  Take them with a large grain of salt.  Bitcoin is the King, the rest are, whatever, maybe something comes out of it one day".

Today, we have a very different view, at least in the public discussions, where Bitcoin is seen as completely separate, has nothing to do with crypto.  All of crypto isn't necessarily a scam, but also Bitcoin is something that shouldn't interface with that at all.  Now look, here's the thing.  If we believe, and this is the one thing if you ask me what I would try to change, what I'm working towards; if we believe that Bitcoin one day is going to be a currency that people use day-to-day, or even not day-to-day but for big purchases, maybe they use it for savings, whatever; if we expect that things will be denominated in Bitcoin, that people will use the Lightning Network to pay for things sometimes, how comes people don't use Bitcoin as a currency in the digital realm now?

There's now a digital economy that didn't exist two years ago.  It's big, it's not small, it's billions of dollars big, people are buying NFTs from each other, people are buying those altcoins.  I understand that a lot of them are scams, maybe all of them; fine.  But people do the digital activity, how come they aren't using Bitcoin as the currency for that?

Peter McCormack: They used to, I mean they do on some.  I remember back when I was trading shitcoins back in 2017/18, I was on Bitrex --

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, and back then everything was paired against Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Everything was paired against Bitcoin, and then there was this first exchange, I can't remember what it was called, that came out, and then you could do it with Ethereum.  I can't remember what it was.  And then some of them would do some Ethereum pairs.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, you could do that on Poloniex.  But over time, I think most of the transition, either to stablecoins, or most today when people are trading altcoins, they're doing that against stablecoins, against the dollar.  Or, when you trade NFTs on Ethereum, you're going to buy it with ETH; when you trade NFTs on Solana, you're going to buy them with SOL.  I don't understand why we're not trying to be part of that.  Why isn't Bitcoin…

If there is a digital economy, and there was an economy of drugs on Silk Road.  I think a lot of people would consider that immoral; I don't, but I think a lot of people do.  There's definitely an argument, a debate, around dark markets.  But bitcoiners back then said, "Look, I'm not making a moral judgement about what you should or shouldn't buy.  I'm just saying that Bitcoin should be the currency that people use in markets where it's not clear, the legal background isn't clear.  Then Bitcoin should be there and be a solution for those people, and the market will figure it out.  If it's good or bad, I don't know, but they'll figure it out".

Why isn't Bitcoin the currency used to trade Uniswap shitcoins?  Why isn't it the currency that's used to trade NFTs?  There is a digital economy, it's real, it's big, Bitcoin can't even be used there; this is a problem.  How come?  How will it be used in the real world if it can't even be used there?

Peter McCormack: It's not technically it can't, it just hasn't been built out.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, technically why not?  There's no reason why not, but it seems like we gave up.  It feels like this is the perfect thing that people have dreamed up about in early Bitcoin.  It's a digital economy, people can build and make business anonymously.  Think about an NFT project, and again, a lot of them are scams, whatever; I'm not here to protect or defend them.  But think about an NFT project.  Often you get people who are completely anonymous, they start a project, they create a community, they create interest in it, sometimes they throw real-life events, sometimes they give some sort of service in return for buying the tokens.

Peter McCormack: Or even a physical object.

Udi Wertheimer: Sometimes that too, and they do that anonymously.  Are most of them speculative scams?  Yeah, but so what?  It's the exact thing that we're talking about with Bitcoin.  It's a circular economy where people are anonymous.  They can build things without other people giving the permission, without registering anything, without asking for permission, they just do it; and Bitcoin isn't used there at all.

Peter McCormack: Why do you think it hasn't been though?

Udi Wertheimer: I think we gave up.  There is a reason for Ethereum people to promote the use of ETH as a currency there; there's a reason for the Solana people to promote the use of SOL in those ecosystems.  No one is even trying to promote Bitcoin, because I think bitcoiners gave up; I think we gave up.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, what do you mean by "gave up"?  I'm not sure, because gave up means it's like, "I can't be bothered to do this", or is it just that a bunch of people said, "I think all this stuff's bullshit.  Let's not distract ourselves --"

Udi Wertheimer: Was it bullshit in 2013 and 2014 when all exchanges were trading shitcoins against Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: So then, it's really down to whoever creates and runs the project.  Why have the people who've created and run the project decided not to add Lightning support in?  The owners of Poloniex and Bitrex allowed you to have those pairs; the people who've created OpenSea, they could add Lightning; why haven't they?  It's not been down to bitcoiners, it's down to those who've chosen not to do it.

Udi Wertheimer: Sure, of course, but if we see ourselves as people who try to promote the usage of Bitcoin in the world, if we say that our goal is to make Bitcoin mainstream, and we couldn't even convince people who are building a digital, circular economy to use Bitcoin, how are we going to convince nations?  That's my question.  We couldn't even convince OpenSea, so how are we going to convince the real economists to accept Bitcoin?  That's my question.

I think it's the most obvious testing ground for using Bitcoin at scale.  El Salvador is not a good testing ground to test Bitcoin at scale, because the people of El Salvador are not ready for it yet.  It's not their fault, I'm not saying they're doing a bad job, they're just not ready for using Bitcoin as their main currency.  But those digital communities are ready for it.  They are using ETH, they're fine with the volatility, they're fine with managing their own keys, they're fine with all of those issues, they're okay with it, and we couldn't win them over; how come we couldn't get them onboard?

So I think when I say that I think Bitcoin maximalism is not doing its job, that's what I mean.  Those are the things we talked about.

Peter McCormack: I don't know if you know the term, it might just be British, or it might be everywhere, but it's "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Is it some of that; is it like, "We don't want to get involved in that so we won't, but actually you've missed an opportunity there"?

Udi Wertheimer: I think so, yeah, and I don't want to miss the next one.  We're not going to get OpenSea probably to adopt Bitcoin and Lightning at this point; maybe in ten years when Lightning grows, but we're not going to get them to do it now probably.  But the next opportunity, I want to be there, I want to be, "Okay, well those communities continue to grow and Bitcoin needs to be part of that", because we'll learn from that.  We want to make Bitcoin be a currency that people actually use.  There are people that want to use it as currency, and we're not even trying to approach them, we're not trying to evangelise it; why?

Peter McCormack: Well, maybe it comes back to that holding-the-line thing.  If you're somebody who promotes having Lightning on OpenSea, you're basically saying, "Okay, I'm okay with NFTs", and a lot of people have been very critical of NFTs, in that you're basically buying the jpeg.  You're paying a lot of money for it and it isn't unique, because you can copy/paste.  So really then, you're buying a hash, all that argument, which by the way, I buy.  I've never owned a single NFT, and maybe it's just because I'm old.  It's just not for me.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I think it's not for most people in the world, that's fine, but there is a community who wants it.

Peter McCormack: Fentanyl is not for everyone, but some people want to buy that with Bitcoin.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, and it's a group that's onboard, they want this.  They want a currency that's fluctuating, they're fine with that; they want a currency that requires them to hold keys; they want all those things and we're not even trying, we're not even evangelising.  How come that's the exact thing we always talked about?  Yeah, some of it is scams, a lot of it, maybe all of it, so what?

Peter McCormack: Well, some people don't want to be associated with scams.

Udi Wertheimer: I mean, look, sure, so they wouldn't have been associated with Bitcoin in 2013 either.  How do you grow Bitcoin to where it is today?  You need to put your fingers on your nose and not smell the stench of all the scams that were around since day one and all the Ponzis, and everywhere, not just in altcoins; literal Bitcoin casinos that ran away with the money, there's so many stories about those.  But Bitcoin doesn't get anywhere if you don't dive in and do it anyway.

Yeah, there are a lot of scams, there will continue to be a lot of scams, but this is how we got here by saying, "Yeah, but it's not all scams though, there are other things", and we need to focus on those.  I will refuse to accept that 100% of everything happening in the NFT space is 100% a scam.  There are good things happening there, you could have hundreds of interviews with people who changed their lives, transformed their lives, not by scamming people, who found a community of people who appreciate their art, appreciate their whatever, their management skills, whatever. 

There are big, substantial communities that do the exact things we always talked about in Bitcoin early on.  There are circular economies that are digital, and people can be anonymous and people can be whoever they want; that's what we wanted.  If we can't convince them, how are we going to convince, like Germany, to be a bitcoiner?  To me, that's crazy!  People are ready, they want it and we can't get to them.

Peter McCormack: Well, maybe it's a different point though, that some of these people who are evangelising why Bitcoin is so important, and then if somebody gets some Bitcoin and then they use that with some other scam, that Bitcoin becomes guilty by association.

Udi Wertheimer: But it's supposed to be money, right?

Peter McCormack: True, but it's that view of the world that some people have.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, I understand the view.  I think, as I said before, I think the intents are almost always good.  I understand the view, I understand where people are coming from, I understand why they don't like the scams, I understand why they don't want to be involved, I get it.  I just think it's not working.  I think we're missing out on big things by not doing that.

Peter McCormack: I mean, I agree with a large part of what you're saying.  It's a reason I wanted to have the conversation.  I could have had a, "What is maximalism?" with a maximalist, and I will also do the one with Rizzo and I will carry on the conversation.  But I wanted to have it with you, because I knew it would be a different point of view.  I'm onboard with a lot of what you're saying, not everything.  Why do you think some people entirely reject what you're saying?  If we had Mr HODL here, he would have rejected a lot of what you're saying.  Why do you think that is?

Udi Wertheimer: Some of it is my style, for sure; a lot of it is just that.  And to that, I would just say that I'm not trying to convince Bitcoin maximalists to change their minds.  My interest is in the rest of the world, so that's why I think a lot of the Bitcoin maximalists find my style kind of repelling.  Honestly, that's fine.  But I think that also, other than that, I think that again it comes from really good intentions, where they remember that in 2017, a lot of these were all scams, and they weren't circular economies.  Those things didn't happen, it was just make-believe, if that.  Sometimes it wasn't even make-believe, it was just a scam that was named a scam, or whatever.

So they're saying, "Look, nothing changed, it's the same", and I'm saying, "Well, look deeper".  I think that people have those burns from four years ago, and they do not want to look deeper again.  I didn't want to look deeper for the longest time, but once I did I saw, yeah, still a lot of it is a scam, the majority is a scam, but there are things that are happening that are real, that didn't exist before and have been made better than what they were before, so you can ignore that.

Peter McCormack: There's a couple of significant divides.  There is a divide between Bitcoin maxis and ETH maxis; there's a divide between bitcoiners and altcoiners; but there's also a divide between bitcoiners and, say, people like, I'll just use myself here because I think it's a useful example, whereby maybe I don't ideologically fit with some people's world view, or I'm willing to have conversations they wish I wouldn't have.  How do you think we bridge that divide?

I don't think this conversation, there's any downside to having it.  That's why I'm happy to have it.  I think, as I said, the Peter Todd one with regard to inflation, I think there's a downside to having that, that's why I'm not going to do that now.  But I don't think there's a downside to this, yet other people won't be happy it's happening.  How do we bridge that divide where we perhaps stand by the strong principles of Bitcoin, but enable maybe a more open, fluid conversation around particular ideas?

Udi Wertheimer: I don't know, I honestly don't know.  People seeing the way I speak about it I think would probably determine that I gave up on trying to do that.  I'm not trying to bridge that gap anymore, I'm not trying to get Bitcoin maximalists to see my view.  I don't think they're ready to; that's the truth.  Or maybe I'm not ready to convince them, but either way I don't think we're in a place where we can make that connection.  I don't know how, honestly.

Peter McCormack: I think maybe it's a different approach.  So maybe if it felt less trolly and more like here -- let me give you another example.  One of the things that's high on my mind at the moment is that, I read every review of the podcast that goes up on Chartable and I read all the comments, well not all of them, a lot of them; I never want the show to feel like it's pigeonholed in one political area.  So, if it feels very towards the right or libertarianism, I want more people from the left.  Now I'm actively pursuing trying to get bitcoiners from the left in, because I think it's all part of the conversation to happen.

I'm wondering, how do I bridge that gap, because like I say, I pissed a lot of people off recently, and I did it with no direct intention?

Udi Wertheimer: It's hard.  Look, I think I guess there are two camps of people.  There are people that exist, and there are quite a lot of them, who want to see you fail, they want to see other prominent Bitcoin figures fail.  That's what they want, that's their goal, for real.  Their goal is not to stop scams, they want to see Peter fail, they want to see, I don't know, Pomp fail; I'm just throwing out names, it doesn't matter who.  And they're just going to jump on every opportunity to help you fail.  So, they'll just wait for you to say something, and they'll find a way to twist it into making you look bad.  Those people exist, and I don't think you can change their mind.  They're not a small group; it's a substantial group of people.

I think there's definitely a lot of bitcoiners, I think most of them, who are very reasonable people, and they're very willing to have a discussion.  So I think what you're doing, those discussions with people, one-on-ones, that's probably the way.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what, it's a shame.  Some of the one-on-one conversations that happen in private, don't happen with a microphone, sometimes they don't want to have it; I had a chat with someone about Monero and they're a Bitcoin maximalist, but they were saying, "Yeah, I think a number of people should actually use Monero and not use Bitcoin for certain transactions".  I was like, "Cool, should we make a show about that?"  They're like, "No, I'm not saying that publicly"! 

That's when you come back to the religion in that there are risks to standing out.  There are economic risks, there are risks with reputation to stand out and challenge certain ideas.  Somehow, certain people have got away with it, but there are certain reputational risks to having certain conversations.  That, to me, I always find sad.  But then maybe that comes back to the point about the guns, you've got to hold that line.  And if that is the truth, then fine, I understand it.  I'll still do my thing, but I totally understand what you're doing, and maybe we will end up with these splintered subcultures in Bitcoin. 

We have the absolute monetary maximalists, and they're really important because they stand by and ensure that people understand what money is, and try and protect people from holding too much shitty fiat in the wrong jurisdiction.  Then maybe you've got the protocol maximalists, who are going to absolutely protect the protocol from having BIPs that get rolled out which aren't ready, or whatever, and that's absolutely cool.  And then, maybe you're going to have these cultural maximalists.  Maybe that's just the way it's going to be, and people are going to find their own camps; I don't know.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah.  It might be!  I think that there's one thing, sure, people will have different opinions, people will have different things they care about very deeply, things they want to hold the line on.  I understand that, and I do think a lot of it comes from good intentions.  But the one thing I'm always surprised about, no matter how many times it happens, I'm always surprised about how people can't just have a discussion, like we started this discussion saying, "Hey, we're friends, we disagree about a lot of things, but we're friends, we can have a conversation, respectful conversation".  Then maybe we leave when we still disagree.

But the idea that you need to attack a person personally that was your friend up until a week ago, just because they said something that you disagree with, that you think you should hold the line on, I think that is an approach I don't think is productive for what people claim are the goals.  I think you see that in politics, you see that everywhere.  I don't think people do that in order to further their state of political goals, I think they do that in order to signal virtue.

Peter McCormack: But everyone has their own moral framework.  There's been people who've been in my life previously that aren't friends anymore because I don't like certain opinions.  Certain areas, I just have a hard limit.  Any form of discrimination, I've got no time for that.  I just can't be bothered to be around someone who is just an over-racist.  But what I'm saying is, some people they've maybe got to the point where money is the centre to their moral framework and if somebody doesn't align with that, then fine, I'm done with you.

Udi Wertheimer: That's reasonable.

Peter McCormack: John Vallis wrote this brilliant article this week about Of Monsters and Maximalists.  There was a brilliant opening to the article and he talked about maximalists.  He said he's found a group of people identify with him on a whole range of issues, and that's super-cool to him.  It's about freedom, and that's great, and I get that; perhaps that's the way it is. 

Udi Wertheimer: That's fantastic if you're saying, "Yeah, I just don't want to be around other people, I want to focus on the thing that I care about".  That's fantastic, but I sense a lot of -- you know what it reminds me of?  It reminds me of people disowning their children or parents over voting for Trump, or over not taking the vaccine.  We've heard a lot of that, a lot of political things where you say, "This was an actual family [or] those were very close friends who just went separate ways because someone voted for Trump [or] someone had some view on COVID".  That to me, I'm just saying that I don't think it's productive for the presumed goal, I think it's a virtue-signalling thing. 

You get to go to dinners and say to your friends, "Yeah, I'm not talking to my son anymore because he voted for Trump", and everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, you're great, you're a great father".  So, that's not about furthering the support of liberal ideas at all, it's about getting approval from your friends.

Peter McCormack: Well also, it can create coercive pressure, where the eyes are looking down on you, "You'd better not talk about that, you'd better not hold that opinion".

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, and some people did take the vaccine because they felt pressure, or the other way around; maybe they didn't take the vaccine because they felt pressure from the other side.  So, yeah, you're right, that does have some effect, but I think it's mostly a virtue-signalling mechanism.  Maybe I think it will be helpful to be honest about that, like how many times?  Does it make sense that a parent would brag to his friends about disowning their child over voting for Trump?  Does it make sense?  I don't think it makes sense; is this the society we want to live in? 

But it happens, it happens a lot, and I think the same thing kind of happens in the maximalism role.  And by the way, I don't see that as much on, let's say, the Ethereum side.  There are Ethereum maximalists, but I don't see them.  It happens, I'm not saying it never happens, but I'm not seeing them being that aggressive towards friends.  You see that all the time, you see people who move from Ethereum to other chains, and they stay friends.  So, why is it unique to Bitcoin?  I don't know.  I think it becomes more and more of a political movement and a religious movement, and I think that's why it's going more to those places.  I don't know if that's bad or good.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, maybe long term, they were proven right because this is so important, this is such an important technology.  It has given people around the world a certain amount of freedom they didn't have before.  And whether that is somebody fleeing Ukraine and is able to leave with some of their money, or somebody protesting in Canada, or somebody trying to earn money in a different country.  There are so many example case studies.  Maybe it is so important that it turns out those people are right, and if they were, great. 

But I find it very hard to lose a friend over a difference of opinion, without having at least sat down and had a talk with them and say, "Hey, let's talk about this".  And I'd probably still stay friends with them.  Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that.  What about you, Danny, you got anything?

Danny Knowles: No, I think you guys covered it.

Peter McCormack: By the way, if you shitcoin, you're fired!  Anything else you want to cover?

Udi Wertheimer: No, I think we did cover it pretty well.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, man.  Well, I appreciate you coming in to do this.  I'm glad we got to do it in person.

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, this was awesome.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a much better conversation.  I really enjoy it, and we also get to go and have a beer and talk about what we disagree on!

Udi Wertheimer: Yeah, that's awesome.

Peter McCormack: I don't know if you have anything you want to send anyone too?

Udi Wertheimer: No, please don't.  It's better if after this conversation, just erase me from your life!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, erase Udi and go and check out my football club instead!  We'll do that.  Udi, man, love you, dude.  Thank you for coming on, appreciate it.

Udi Wertheimer: Thank you.