Confessions of a former Bitcoin Maximalist

Humans are naturally inquisitive. It is natural to ask questions and to question things. I don't believe Bitcoin Maximalism does this. Being a Bitcoin Maximalist is really only about accepting things and no questioning. It's very closed-minded. Very few are open-minded to new ideas. Everyone thinks the same, if you step out of their box, you will get shouted at. On Twitter, I went too far down the Bitcoin Maximalist path. I felt trapped and I did not enjoy the Twitter experience at all.

I believe Bitcoin Maximalism is an unsustainable strategy, over the long term. Also, I certainly don't agree that being a toxic maximalist is helpful, whatsoever. People don't like to be shouted at. You can offer helpful guides, but telling new people they are buying shit coins and have fun staying poor is just stupid, in my opinion. People won't listen to that. That strategy has no place in the modern world. We need to be more accepting, of all.

Bitcoin is sound money, but has there ever only been one money? A common statement I hear around the place is that everyone will eventually use Bitcoin and only Bitcoin.

I don't believe this is realistic at all, so I began to question things.

My top 2 concerns around Bitcoin have been.

What if Satoshi dumped his stack?

What happens after the block reward ends in 2140?

I have always treated Litecoin differently from PoS coins but I didn't really research it enough. I knew it had cheap transactions and was decentralized but really thought it had no real use, with the Lightning Network on BTC.

Through my investigation, I discovered that not only does Litecoin solve my top 2 concerns with Bitcoin, being that it has no founders stash and is merge mined with Doge. It is also cheaper to transact on-chain using Litecoin than using a Lightning wallet.

It's also important to note that the Lightning Network started on Litecoin. On May 10, 2017, the first Lightning payment on Litecoin was made.

It will always be cheaper to settle the transaction on Litecoin than Bitcoin and it will be 4x faster to settle. Due to the difference between Litecoin's 2.5 minute block time, and Bitcoin's 10 minute block time. Litecoin also has the capacity to support more transactions. This is a massive advantage for Litecoin.

Furthermore, merge mining shows how forward-thinking Charlie Lee is. Doge has a 10,000 block reward forever. Since Litecoin and Doge are merge mined, miners can rely on the Doge Block rewards and not just the transaction fees from Litecoin. Providing this additional reward will help secure the network.

The network effects of Litecoin are in the top 3. After only Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's available at just about every exchange, widely accessible from crypto ATMs, and is always one of the few coins mentioned when a company makes an announcement regarding crypto-like we saw with Paypal and Venmo. I believe this is because it is one of the very few coins that is confidently classified as a non-security, as per the definition from the SEC.

Finally, the last bit of FUD Litecoin receives is: Isn't susceptible to a 51% attack? What really matters is if the network is dominant. And Litecoin is dominant with script miners. You can't simply compare the hashrate of Bitcoin and Litecoin. They use different mining algorithms. Litecoin has the majority of the Scrypt hashrate, along with Doge, since they are merge mined.

This is the main advantage that Litecoin has over Bitcoin Cash. BCH uses the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin. The SHA256 algorithm. It would be fairly easy for Bitcoin miners to arrange a 51% attack on BCH as they have most of the hashrate.

In summary, I firmly believe that Litecoin is immensely undervalued based on its current use cases and the network growth in terms of transactions per day and active addresses. In these metrics Litecoin is so far above its competitors it is silly.

Litecoin has a great story and it is immensely sound, with the best fundamentals of any crypto. No Premine, no VC backers, no founders stash.

My final thoughts are:

• Litecoin is a sleeping giant
  

• Litecoin is truly, the coin for the people
  

• Litecoin is hope.