Bitcoin’s Success Versus the Failed Doomsday Predictions of Maximalists

Author: Nic Carter

Compiled by Deep潮 TechFlow

DeepChain Summary: This article by Nic Carter provides a systematic reckoning with Bitcoin fundamentalism. Using the historical analogy of the Millerites’ failed apocalyptic prophecy yet continued survival, he explains why Bitcoin succeeded while the core predictions of fundamentalists have almost entirely failed. For investors, it helps distinguish the intrinsic value of Bitcoin from the ideological noise surrounding it.

Nic Carter eulogizes Bitcoin fundamentalism: Bitcoin won; all the predictions were wrong.

The fundamentalist movement has devolved into an unfalsifiable belief system that stifles technological progress on the network and offers poor practical advice.

In 1816, a Baptist preacher named William Miller, while reading the Bible in a farmhouse in northern New York, arrived at a profound insight. If you interpret literally Daniel 8:14 (“Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed”), replacing “days” with “years” and counting from 457 BC, when Artaxerxes issued his decree, you arrive at the year 1844 as the time of the “cleansing of the sanctuary.” Miller ultimately concluded that the sanctuary represented the world, and its cleansing meant the righteous destruction of the world: Christ would return, the wicked would be destroyed, and the faithful would be resurrected. Miller attracted a large following, and after careful analysis, the Second Coming was narrowed down to October 22, 1844.

As that decisive day drew near, Miller’s supporters—now numbering in the tens of thousands—eagerly awaited the end of the world, the Second Coming of Christ, and their ascension to heaven. It was a significant revival movement in the northeastern United States.

When the midnight bell rang on October 22, nothing happened. The Millerites, who had bet everything on the Second Coming, were devastated and ridiculed. This day later became known as the "Great Disappointment."

You might think that after encountering a clear and unambiguous denial, the Millerite movement would have gradually faded away. But you would be wrong.

Some disappointed Millerites quietly returned to their mainstream churches, which did not preach the end times. But many held firm, concluding that despite all evidence to the contrary, the prophecy was still true and the date was correct—only the sanctuary was not on Earth, but in heaven. After all, the Book of Daniel never explicitly stated that the sanctuary was on Earth.

According to these Millerites, Christ entered a new phase of His heavenly ministry in 1844, beginning a final investigative judgment period before His ultimate second coming. So they were not wrong—they simply misinterpreted the prophecy.

Can you believe that a church which regards all of this as official doctrine today has 24 million baptized members? You may have heard of them—they are known as the Seventh-day Adventists. Although the 1844 prophecy was formally incorporated into its belief system, the movement did not fail; far from it, the failure to be raptured, the disappointment, and the subsequent theological adjustments became foundational elements of Adventist theology. Several other major denominations also trace their origins to Miller’s prophecy, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I’m not saying this to criticize anyone’s beliefs, but to illustrate that when a testable belief is falsified, it doesn’t necessarily end a movement. Those who have invested significant social capital in a popular movement may not abandon it even when its core tenets are clearly disproven—they will find ways to adapt their predictions and beliefs to new circumstances. In fact, failed prophecies can quite easily survive.

Think about Bitcoin fundamentalism.

Bitcoin purists—whether you call them fundamentalists, hardcore believers, or puritans—believe solely in Bitcoin, are convinced that fiat currency is doomed, and are certain that when fiat eventually collapses, they will inherit the world. They despise intermediaries and custodial institutions and view Bitcoin’s success as a payment system as inevitable. These individuals have transformed a financial asset into a meticulously constructed ideology, incorporating social and political critiques beyond monetary theory.

Like the Millerites, fundamentalists have meticulously crafted a grand apocalyptic prophecy, patiently awaiting the collapse of the dollar, the self-destruction of fractional-reserve banking, and the rejection of the pure fiat central banking era that began in 1971, with Bitcoin believers as the chosen few inheriting the smoldering ruins of this shattered world. Like the Millerites, their predictions are remarkably specific (though with fewer exact dates); as a result, the credibility of this ideology can be assessed by the strength of its predictive power and cognitive framework. Also like the Millerites, even when their predictions fail to materialize, followers adapt, restructure, move the goalposts, and declare that the reckoning has merely been delayed.

As Bitcoin leaves its adolescence—this October it will turn 18—the fundamentalist doctrines surrounding Bitcoin have finally come due for reckoning.

I want to be clear: I am not analyzing or attacking the value of Bitcoin as I understand it. I am still a passionate believer in Bitcoin.

My argument is simple: fundamentalists are right about Bitcoin itself, but almost everything they derive from Bitcoin is wrong. Bitcoin has undoubtedly achieved success far beyond the wildest expectations of its early enthusiasts; however, the ideological superstructure built around it has proven to be an extremely poor guide to the world.

The target of this critique will immediately protest that I have missed the mark, because I am criticizing a fictional ideology. Therefore, I will be extremely precise.

The Bitcoin fundamentalist or purist ideology I refer to is a prescriptive theory that promotes some combination of the following beliefs:

Bitcoin will ultimately replace all fiat currencies and is progressing smoothly toward this goal.

Fiat currency is guilty of causing various social problems.

All other altcoins or crypto assets are scams, wastes, or guilty; all other uses of blockchain besides Bitcoin are irrelevant or pure waste.

Blockchain use cases such as stablecoins, DeFi, real-world assets, and decentralized exchanges are typically a waste of time—they exist only due to venture capital's "bad investments."

Bitcoin is categorically distinct from all other "cryptocurrencies"; holding anything other than Bitcoin is unwise and likely sinful.

Bitcoin will always go up, and that’s simply how it is. Encouraging friends and family to believe this is morally commendable; if they lose money, it’s only because they lost courage and sold during a temporary dip.

Bitcoin’s price, while not entirely determined by its scarcity, is strongly influenced by it; the four-year halving cycle mechanically drives its price.

Self-custody is inviolable; entrusting assets to centralized exchanges or custodial institutions is wrong; using hardware wallets that have compromised themselves by supporting altcoins is also wrong.

Not every Bitcoin purist believes every single point above; but most purists believe the vast majority of them.

The key point is: they genuinely believe in Bitcoin. They are combative. They do not focus on Bitcoin in a mild or moderate way. They zealously preach that altcoins are, at best, distractions and, at worst, scams. They are the warrior priests of Bitcoin—the Knights Templar of Bitcoin. Many of them wear the label “toxic fundamentalist” as a badge of honor.

Some of these "toxic fundamentalists" are actually quite decent people. I’ve been friends with several of them in the past. Some have made meaningful contributions to Bitcoin. I’m not saying they’re bad people—I’m saying their ideology has failed. It no longer provides a useful description of reality.

Some hardcore Bitcoiners reject the label of “extremists.” They may refer to themselves as “plain folk,” purists, “puritans,” or hardliners—along with various other variants. The important thing is that we all know who I’m referring to. These individuals endlessly preach morality, claiming that Bitcoin is superior to gold or altcoins, that fiat currency is responsible for most of society’s ills, and that Bitcoin is the only financial asset worth holding. They firmly believe it will one day replace fiat currency entirely. I acknowledge there’s some merit in opposing the term “extremist,” since Vitalik popularized it as a derogatory label for Bitcoiners. But at this point, there’s no better alternative. ^4

Like the Millerite sect, Bitcoin extremism is essentially an apocalyptic secular religion. Its followers believe they are the chosen ones, possessing secret knowledge that fiat currency is on the verge of collapse and that they are destined to inherit a hidden kingdom. This religion promotes short-term self-denial in exchange for long-term abundance: when fiat currency collapses, Bitcoin holders will inherit the Earth.

The direct inspiration for this article comes from the failure of a splintered purist group (filters), as well as the Coldcard hacking incident, in which users have lost over $100 million—a figure that continues to rise. This is another blow to the Bitcoin extremist ideology that asserts self-custody is inherently superior to centralized custody. It also once again exposes the subculture of “Bitcoin-only” startups, which were once believed to be inherently better because they served Bitcoin alone. Users who suffered unfortunate financial losses in this hacking incident were misled by purist influencers on both counts.

But in reality, I could have written this article at any time over the past few years—in fact, this is the second time I’ve written it. See my 2022 obituary for extremism. It has long been clear that the most rigid factions within Bitcoin ideology have become腐朽. They often exact a high price from their followers, like a reverse prosperity gospel.

So it’s time to evaluate extremism. How do you assess an ideology? Unlike many other ideologies, this one actually blends normative and predictive elements. This makes it somewhat vulnerable. Extremists are vague about when the world will adopt a bitcoin standard. But enough time has passed. The term “bitcoin extremism” was coined over a decade ago—by my estimation, around 2014. Let’s test the theory: Has it produced accurate predictions about the world? Has it made its believers profitable?

Unfortunately for them, the numerous predictions made by self-proclaimed extremists have largely failed. ^5 As a guide for the future, this ideology has proven to be almost worthless. Let’s take stock, shall we?

Falsified prediction:

The stock-to-flow price models are complete failures from both a categorical and empirical standpoint. Almost all hardcore Bitcoin believers I know once enthusiastically adopted and promoted the stock-to-flow model. The model’s premise is that Bitcoin’s appreciation stems from its “increasing scarcity”—or more specifically, from the periodic reduction in new supply. Who wouldn’t love such an idea? It guarantees Bitcoin will always rise! These models were popularized by “PlanB” and assigned specific price predictions to Bitcoin on particular dates, asserting that Bitcoin’s price is primarily driven by its issuance rate. Needless to say, these models have utterly failed. Surprisingly, most hardcore Bitcoin supporters who endorsed these models have faced no criticism, despite offering such poor investment advice.

Altcoins collapse entirely: A core tenet of extremism is that all altcoins are scams and will ultimately crash. They are very clear about this. Yet altcoins continue to exist in large numbers. The vast majority of blockchain activity occurs on Ethereum, Tron, Hyperliquid, BNB, and Solana—not Bitcoin. They have not gone to zero. Although altcoins have been sold off alongside Bitcoin, their total value as of this writing stands at $600 billion (excluding stablecoins). Ethereum alone is worth $220 billion. Fee revenues on each of these blockchains also exceed Bitcoin’s. Fees may be the best indicator of a chain’s enduring value: Are people willing to pay to use it? Extremists have been predicting altcoins’ demise since their first appearance in 2012—and they’ve consistently missed the mark.

Adopted by sovereign nations: There were waves of enthusiasm in 2021 and 2025, but they have since faded. As of today, no country has recognized Bitcoin as legal tender. The U.S. “strategic reserve” initiative was never realized. The enthusiasm of extremists for using taxpayer funds to purchase BTC is both embarrassing and ironic, given their previous anti-government stance and claims of concern over centralization. At the IMF’s request, El Salvador has nearly stripped Bitcoin of all attributes of legal tender. No central bank has added Bitcoin to its official reserves. There is no indication that Bitcoin is replacing gold as a sovereign asset.

Blockchain has no other use cases: Although some hyped sub-sectors like gaming, the metaverse, or NFTs have failed to deliver, blockchain has proven its commercial value across a variety of non-Bitcoin applications. This contradicts the predictions of extremists. By any measure, stablecoins are blockchain’s killer app. DeFi has matured. Decentralized exchanges are thriving and capturing market share from centralized exchanges. Prediction markets have been a major breakthrough success.

Regulators favor Bitcoin over altcoins. Not all extremists believe this. Some are completely indifferent to regulation. But those who care about the U.S. government often insist that the SEC’s prohibition of Ethereum and all other altcoins is merely a matter of time—so that Bitcoin can be crowned the sole legitimate cryptocurrency. This has not happened. Regulators have adopted a more neutral and diverse stance, explicitly excluding many altcoins from being classified as “securities.” The landmark GENIUS Act aims to solidify stablecoins, not Bitcoin.

Trend unfavorable for purists:

Price Prediction: Over the past 15 years, Bitcoin has performed exceptionally well as a financial asset. Yet it has fallen short of the lofty expectations of its most ardent supporters. At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $63,000.^6 This price is identical to where it stood five years ago, in November 2021. Bitcoin’s price movement is better described as “moving in place in an interesting way.” Extremists had loudly predicted that Bitcoin would rise indefinitely—despite inevitable volatility. Compared to gold or stocks, Bitcoin has significantly underperformed in recent years. It has neither served as an inflation hedge nor as a truly uncorrelated risk asset. Those who followed the purists’ advice and held only Bitcoin have incurred substantial opportunity costs, as numerous other investment opportunities emerged elsewhere. Bitcoin was the trade of the 2010s. So far, the trade of the 2020s is AI, not Bitcoin.

The progression from store of value (SoV) to medium of exchange (MoE) to unit of account (UoA). Over time, the Bitcoin ideology came to accept that stagnation in Bitcoin’s use as a payment method was acceptable, reasoning that new money first becomes a store of value, then a medium of exchange, and finally a unit of account. While this is a simplified interpretation of monetary history, it is still somewhat reasonable. However, this progression has now completely stalled. Bitcoin’s growth from nothing to a meaningful SoV over a decade is a remarkable achievement. Yet, the medium of exchange envisioned by Satoshi has not materialized. Very few commercial transactions are priced or settled in Bitcoin. Stablecoins have entirely overtaken Bitcoin in this space. This does not mean Bitcoin has failed—only that the maximalist assumption of a necessary progression from SoV to MoE and UoA is incorrect.

The primacy of proof of work. For years, many Bitcoin supporters have insisted that proof of stake doesn’t work or won’t succeed. Of course, PoS works very well. On successful PoS blockchains like Ethereum, centralized oracle problems have not materialized. While I understand Bitcoin supporters’ rebuttals to the “energy waste” critique, from a mechanistic standpoint, PoS is entirely viable and has been proven at scale.

Stablecoins are a temporary phenomenon. Most pure Bitcoin supporters ignore or underestimate the impact of stablecoins. The common argument is: “If Bitcoin will soon replace the dollar, why bother with dollars at all?” Although stablecoins originally emerged on Bitcoin, purists dismissed dollar-backed tokens, causing all the benefits of stablecoins to flow to other blockchains. Some believe stablecoins might serve as a temporary bridge to Bitcoin. But the opposite is true: infrastructure originally built for Bitcoin is now being massively utilized for stablecoins. Stablecoins have achieved market penetration and real-world adoption that Bitcoin has never had.

The value of digital asset treasury companies. While some pure Bitcoin supporters reject DATs like Strategy, many others have jumped on board, becoming ardent supporters and even promoters of these structures. Several prominent maximalists, such as Adam Back, Jack Mallers (and evidently Michael Saylor), have themselves become DAT entrepreneurs. This is ironic, as many longtime Bitcoin supporters once deeply distrusted Bitcoin derivatives or related equities, wanting only physical Bitcoin. While it would be unfair to condemn all Bitcoin purists, it is undeniable that some of their most cherished maximalist heroes have issued or endorsed DATs, most of which have now completely failed. Strategy still exists, but its likelihood of maintaining a permanent premium and becoming a long-lasting Bitcoin acquisition tool appears more fragile than ever.

Transaction fees will replace block subsidies. This is a necessary component of Bitcoin’s celebrated scarcity. If Bitcoin transaction fees cannot rise to a sustainable plateau as issuance approaches zero, Bitcoin will be unable to fund block rewards and security in the long term. If fees fail to materialize, Bitcoin will be forced to consider altering its cherished monetary policy, thereby undermining its core value proposition. Since 2024, fees have nearly dropped to zero. Today, fees account for only about 1% of the total security budget, when they should be high and steadily increasing. Annualized, fees amount to roughly one basis point of Bitcoin’s market capitalization. As subsidies disappear, this is unlikely to be sufficient to sustain security spending. The purists barely acknowledge this imminent issue—discussing it is considered “FUD” against Bitcoin. Bitcoin culture is so narrow that it cannot openly address troubling long-term challenges.

Structurally unfalsifiable, but the trend is not favorable:

Fiat currencies: They are still with us and have not collapsed. If blockchain infrastructure leads to the collapse of fiat currencies, the more likely culprit would be dollar-stablecoins ("crypto-dollarization").

Super Bitcoinization: Is this rhetoric or a genuine prediction? Who knows. What does it mean? No one can say. In any case, it hasn’t happened, and there’s no sign it’s coming.

Bitcoin, as a beneficial cultural and political asset, was claimed to extend society’s time preference, improve art, end harmful credit cycles, fractional-reserve banking, and central banks, constrain the fiscal state, and end war (yes, Bitcoin supporters have claimed all of this would occur if Bitcoin succeeded sufficiently): none of this has happened. Bitcoin has not become widespread enough to leave a meaningful political or cultural imprint on the world, even if these sound money theories held even a shred of truth.

Some may object, saying I’m being unfair to hardcore Bitcoin supporters, as these predictions could one day come true. Bitcoin might eventually replace gold, and subsequently the dollar. Perhaps Bitcoin will reclaim its role as the primary medium of exchange from stablecoins and become the dominant transaction network. Maybe Ethereum and all other blockchains will eventually become worthless. Perhaps Bitcoin will end bad art and war. Maybe even superbitcoinization could one day occur!

Maybe. But predictions based on an infinite time horizon are worthless. I want to assess the credibility of Bitcoin’s most ardent supporters. So far, most of their predictions have failed to materialize. In fact, Bitcoin seems to be retreating relative to most of their expectations. Bitcoin has been around for nearly 18 years. At some point, we ought to examine the gap between its reality and the dreams of its most fervent promoters.

So what did they all get right?

A few key points. Bitcoin has not only survived but thrived for 17 years. Major protocol-level events have been rare, with the last significant vulnerability occurring over a decade ago. It has continued to appreciate in a cyclical, meandering manner, reaching a peak market capitalization of $2.5 trillion in 2025. Bitcoin is an emerging digital-native commodity with genuine significance. As a digital store of value, it has yet to be displaced by any competitor. Maximalists correctly identified Bitcoin as a historically significant monetary asset, a view some recognized early on. They accurately predicted that the vast majority of altcoins, token ICOs, yield schemes, and NFT projects would prove to be worthless. Bitcoin’s conservatism has likely contributed to its monetary credibility and success.

However, their predictions regarding Bitcoin’s interactions with finance, fiat currency, technology, other blockchains, politics, and society have largely missed the mark.

By any reasonable standard, Bitcoin has performed exceptionally well. But has it met the expectations openly claimed by staunch Bitcoin supporters? No, and things have not unfolded as they had hoped.

One of the most peculiar aspects of Bitcoin maximalism is its technological regression. In the early 2010s, Bitcoin was an exciting cutting-edge technology—it combined cryptography, networking, hash functions, proof-of-work, distributed systems, and the academically thrilling field of digital cash. It was genuinely inspiring and created a vast opportunity space for entrepreneurs to explore. Early Bitcoin supporters often said: “Bitcoin will absorb all the proven best ideas from altcoins.” In fact, altcoins did bring significant innovation.

Ethereum has brought us smart contracts, tokens, AMMs, DEXs, scalable stablecoins, RWA, ENS, Rollups, prediction markets, EVM, DAOs, account abstraction, and much more.

Monero brought us RingCT, and Zcash brought us the first operational zk-SNARK.

Solana delivers high throughput and parallel execution at the base layer.

Polymarket brings us scalable on-chain prediction markets, realizing a decades-old dream of economists.

Hyperliquid brings us a globally scalable on-chain decentralized exchange for perpetual contracts.

Despite early Bitcoin supporters' hopes, none of these ideas were ever adopted by Bitcoin, or even seriously considered. Bitcoin retreated into its shell, focusing almost exclusively on innovations like the Lightning Network that were approved by the community. A quiet conservatism took hold, causing progress at the protocol level to crawl—only two major upgrades, SegWit and Taproot, have been added in the past decade. Dozens of promising ideas have met only indifference and apathy.

Of course, you could say that blockchain was always destined to specialize. Bitcoin focuses purely on monetary use cases and remains extremely conservative—that’s reasonable. Ethereum can support smart contracts and DeFi; Solana can enable fast transactions. But Bitcoin purists go further: they insist that nothing happening on other blockchains matters. Nothing has lasting commercial value. Bitcoin, they claim, has nothing to learn from any other blockchain. Their focus has turned into willful ignorance—and it has come at a heavy cost. Does Bitcoin truly have nothing to learn from other blockchains? Stablecoins were originally created on Bitcoin via Omni, but later migrated to Ethereum, Tron, and Solana. Today, they are massive consumers of block space on those chains. Purists barely acknowledge them and show no regret over missing the opportunity. DeFi barely exists on Bitcoin; it thrives primarily on Ethereum and Solana. Bitcoin’s blockchain is a ghost town for transactions; block space clears at the minimum market price of 1 satoshi per byte because no applications are consuming it at scale. (Bitcoin supporters should remember: Bitcoin’s long-term security depends on sustained, meaningful demand for block space in the coming years.)

Beyond the community-endorsed strategy of "buying Bitcoin and holding it long-term yourself," all slightly ambitious applications of Bitcoin have failed.

Sidechains dominated developer attention as a Bitcoin scaling model between 2014 and 2017, but ultimately produced nothing on Bitcoin itself. Blockstream’s Liquid was the most significant, as most key developers worked there and wielded the greatest influence. At the time, Bitcoin enthusiasts often claimed Ethereum was unnecessary because all these use cases could be handled on Bitcoin sidechains. This never happened because Bitcoin’s programming language was too limited to enable trustless pegs. Years later, Ethereum realized this vision with ZK Rollups—ZK Rollups are truly trustless, but only possible on a more expressive virtual machine. I mention Liquid and sidechains because hardcore Bitcoiners frequently use them as rhetorical tools, saying things like, “We don’t need altcoins,” or “We’ll fit everything into Bitcoin using sidechains.” In the end, Bitcoin’s programming environment was too limited to realize this vision, and Bitcoiners were unwilling to fundamentally overhaul the protocol to make the necessary changes. Thus, this early extremist prediction failed, and these compelling use cases were instead realized on Ethereum.

From 2016 until recently, the Lightning Network was virtually the only focus of the Bitcoin development community on the "application layer." The Lightning Network was, in part, a response to the Bitcoin large-block camp—individuals who later defected to Bitcoin Cash. They believed Bitcoin needed more block space to be better suited for everyday payments. In fact, they argued that Bitcoin should prioritize its role as a Medium of Exchange (MoE), rather than solely as a Store of Value (SoV). In response to this criticism, Bitcoin supporters developed the Lightning Network—a layer built on top of Bitcoin that aggregates individual payments and settles them periodically. It is an extremely subtle and complex protocol that required a major update to the underlying system via SegWit in 2017. Ultimately, despite significant improvements and increased user-friendliness since 2018, the Lightning Network has not achieved the goals its early advocates had hoped for:

The Lightning Network has not established Bitcoin as a widely used daily payment protocol.

The Lightning Network has not reinstated Bitcoin as the dominant blockchain or asset for on-chain payments (most of which are now handled by stablecoins on high-throughput blockchains).

The Lightning Network has not led to a surge of diverse applications.

The Lightning Network has not truly created additional demand for Bitcoin as a reserve.

The Lightning Network processes approximately $10 billion annually—broadly speaking. That may sound substantial, but it is negligible compared to stablecoins, which settle around $15 trillion annually and are still growing (all on non-Bitcoin blockchains). The Lightning Network does exist; it’s something some Bitcoin enthusiasts use occasionally. But if dollar-denominated tokens on other blockchains process 1,500 times more volume than the Lightning Network (that’s the real number!), can it still be called a success? I don’t think so. If you went back in time and told Satoshi Nakamoto this would be the outcome—would he say, “Great! Looks like Bitcoin won!”?

When viewed in context, the Lightning Network is not a relevant blockchain-based payment medium. Partly because no one wants to use Bitcoin for transactions—clearly due to poor tax efficiency and the inherent issues of transacting with a volatile currency. Because Bitcoin enthusiasts have resisted and ignored stablecoins (remember, fiat is destined to go to zero), Bitcoin has never benefited from the trillions in stablecoin transactions. Other chains have reaped these rewards.

Nostr is Bitcoin’s primary “purist-approved” non-monetary application. Most hardcore Bitcoiners dismiss or ignore the NFT craze on Bitcoin, especially Ordinals. But Nostr is promoted as an application layer for Bitcoin. At its core, Nostr is a bulletin board, though it also supports other applications such as direct messages, long-form posts, video, marketplaces, and identity. It is very much like a Bitcoin-flavored Web3. At the heart of Bitcoin ideology is the principle: “What they can do, we can do better.” Ethereum was an early leader in decentralized internet (Web3) use cases, and Nostr is Bitcoin’s response.

Despite being heavily hyped, Web3 never truly took off on Ethereum. Decentralized social platforms like Farcaster or DeSo have faded away. Only a few things have genuinely succeeded—such as decentralized storage (IPFS), identity (ENS), wallets (MetaMask, WalletConnect), and authentication (Login with Ethereum). But regardless of the underlying technology, blockchain-based decentralized internet remains clunky and user-unfriendly. The billions of dollars invested in Ethereum-based Web3 never succeeded in bringing it to the mainstream. As investor interest in this category waned and meaningful builders failed to coalesce, a Bitcoin-based Web3 never stood a chance. Nostr has stalled, broadly speaking, hovering around 10k WAU and 40k MAU—assuming those aren’t bots. Bitcoin culture doesn’t revolve around experimentation, tinkering, or building. The monetary faction has won decisively. Today, it’s more about storing coins in cold storage and writing blog posts about the Fed and “how Bitcoin fixes culture.”

Aside from sidechains, the Lightning Network, and Nostr, virtually no Bitcoin applications recognized by purists have achieved scale. Concepts such as e-cash, DLCs, RGB, Fedimint, and Taproot Assets have seen almost no adoption. The most popular Bitcoin application in recent years has been Ordinals, which was once mocked by purist factions. But even it has faded from view.

Faced with the failure of most Bitcoin-native applications, purists have been forced to retreat into an increasingly narrow position. They claim Bitcoin is suitable only for monetary use—buy and hold. If Ethereum or Solana succeed in payments, DeFi, or Web3, Bitcoin supporters must move the goalposts. If the outer bastion in 2016 was “Bitcoin can do anything altcoins can do, and do it better,” then the inner bastion in 2026 is “Bitcoin is money. It doesn’t need to do anything else. Those other use cases don’t matter anyway.”

Personally, I have mixed feelings about non-financial uses of blockchain or payment systems reliant on volatile native tokens. However, it’s worth noting that pure Bitcoin purists did once attempt to compete in these areas. As these efforts have stalled, they are retreating into technological Luddism, denying any utility or value to blockchain applications beyond the anointed act of buying and holding BTC.

A phenomenon shared by Bitcoin and many other radical or extremist groups is the purity spiral: true believers compete to prove who is more committed to the cause, accusing each other of insufficient zeal. Think of the Bolsheviks purging the more moderate Mensheviks.

I believe the best way to understand the cultural history of Bitcoin is to view Bitcoin enthusiasts collectively as a loose alliance of affinity groups. They came together through shared grievances, and their beliefs have been continually reinforced by price increases. Early on, there were cypherpunks: skeptical advocates of privacy and cryptography focused on anonymous cash and communication. There were also libertarians: followers of the Austrian School, critics of the Federal Reserve, and proponents of the gold standard—including those who believed “fractional reserve banking is fraud,” Rothbardians, and hard-money advocates opposed to credit. Among libertarians were agorists, as well as anti-state figures from the gray and black markets who built and promoted early darknet markets.

Later, Silicon Valley types also got involved. They were digital cash entrepreneurs trying to build faster global payment systems. They ran headfirst into gold standard advocates and libertarians, who were more focused on Bitcoin as a monetary system than as a payment network. These groups were forcefully pushed out into Bitcoin Cash forks and other cryptocurrencies focused solely on payments. As Bitcoin moved toward mainstream adoption, it attracted more populist, anti-establishment figures—the kind of Joe Rogan-style conspiracy theorists who say, “Everything’s rigged, man.” “Have you heard of the Cantillon effect?”

Of course, there is the subject of this article: extremists. They are the IRGC of Bitcoin—true believers among true believers. They decide what is real, good, and permissible. They hunt down and ban any unorthodox or inappropriate interpretations of Bitcoinism. Yet, what exactly constitutes orthodox Bitcoinism remains strangely vague; it seems tautologically defined by whatever the extremists believe it should be at any given moment.

From its obscure origins in 2009 to its semi-mainstream status during the first major bull run in 2017, Bitcoin continually expanded its tent. It accommodated many diverse groups with fundamentally incompatible views on what Bitcoin was and what it should be. As a result, factions such as the payment-focused group led by Roger Ver and the smart contract-focused group led by Vitalik were expelled.

You could argue that these periodic cleanings actually benefit Bitcoin by removing a disruptive faction, allowing Bitcoin to refocus on its core mission with greater clarity and efficiency. But at some point, the loss of advocates, capital, and talent certainly harms the protocol. In my subjective assessment, Bitcoin’s talent environment has been shrinking since around 2021, despite benefiting from price increases driven by financialization and White House acceptance.

Partly due to Bitcoin’s remarkable rigidity. Bitcoinism discourages you from doing anything with your coins except holding them. The Bitcoin protocol has seen only two updates in ten years, stifling its ability to support experimentation and creativity. Remaining Bitcoin enthusiasts have increasingly focused on monetary use cases: buying and holding Bitcoin, or adjacent financial assets like ETFs and similar strategies. Most of their energy is spent debating the merits of financial instruments like Strategy or explaining how Bitcoin adoption can improve society. Extremists appear to have effectively consolidated power.

However, this summer, two events occurring less than two weeks apart shook the core of extremist doctrines.

1. Coldcard Hacking Incident

On July 30, Coldcard, a Bitcoin hardware wallet from Coinkite—a relatively niche but unexpectedly popular brand—was revealed to have insufficient entropy. In other words, the wallet used poor randomness when generating Bitcoin private keys, leaving users vulnerable to attacks where malicious actors could directly guess these keys. After the incident became public, more hackers joined the attack, beginning to crack additional Coldcard wallets. Over 1,816 BTC, valued at $116 million, have already been stolen, with the number still rising. This is undoubtedly the most severe consumer-grade hardware wallet incident in cryptocurrency history. More established hardware wallet brands like Ledger and Trezor have never been exploited in this manner.

The Coldcard incident was especially bad because the wallet was heavily promoted by prominent Bitcoin maximalists and podcasters. They praised it as purer and more consistent for Bitcoin users because it supports only Bitcoin and no altcoins. This "Bitcoin-only" stance was intended to reduce the attack surface—but in reality, it reduced the company’s revenue potential. Coinkite never scaled adequately nor conducted thorough code audits. Coinkite’s reputation stemmed from a kind of Bitcoin maximalist DEI: a small Canadian company ended up with an outsized market share simply because it was endorsed as the default wallet for "true believer" Bitcoin users who refused to use services supporting altcoins. The "Bitcoin-only" label became a signaling mechanism for affinity, mistakenly perceived as a signal of quality.

This hack was catastrophic because Coldcard users were the truest of true believers. They “did everything right”: they refused to keep funds on exchanges, used air-gapped cold storage with deep security, adopted a “bitcoin-only” approach, and followed the strictest advice from hardcore bitcoiners. Many bitcoiners had entrusted their life savings to Coldcard—only to lose everything. In terms of harm caused, this incident may be even more severe than many larger DeFi or exchange breaches, because it targeted the personal savings of ordinary individuals. In contrast, other cryptocurrency hacks typically primarily affect wealthy traders, who lose paper gains. The Coldcard hack impacted everyday people—people who had diligently followed the teachings of bitcoin’s high priests.

What does this hacking incident reveal about Bitcoin extremism?

"Bitcoin-only" is not an infallible doctrine. There are indeed truly exceptional "Bitcoin-only" companies; my firm has invested in several of them. River is a good example—they focus on Bitcoin, offer multiple product lines, and have made appropriate investments in security. However, there are also cases, with Coldcard being the latest, where companies use "Bitcoin-only" as a feel-good marketing tactic targeting Bitcoin enthusiasts. The resulting goodwill is then used to mask flaws in businesses that are fundamentally unviable or insecure.

The advice from extremists is not universally applicable. For years, extremists have repeatedly claimed: Bitcoin always goes up in the long term; self-custody is essential; use hardware wallets that support only Bitcoin (especially Coldcard); avoid exchanges; invest all your savings in Bitcoin; and maintain unwavering faith. Nearly every tenet of this doctrine has been challenged by recent events. Most ordinary Bitcoin users could have made better choices—buying a Bitcoin ETF and storing Bitcoin on reputable exchanges or brokers. If self-custody is necessary, opt for more mainstream products like Ledger or Trezor. Self-custody is too difficult and too risky for most average users. I’m glad it exists as an option, but it shouldn’t be recommended to the general public.

Self-custody is declining. Today, with the exception of highly unusual or exceptional circumstances, there is little reason to choose self-custody over custodial services. For instance, you might be a refugee crossing borders with no digital accounts; you may be withdrawing funds from a custodial institution; or you could be a high-net-worth individual holding funds via a Casa multisig. There are too many ways it can go wrong: from self-inflicted traps and exploits to phishing, scams, and hacks. In the world of Bitcoin ETFs, the vast majority of users can confidently and securely use paper Bitcoin. Self-custody remains an extremely powerful tool, but it is not universally safer. Extremists insist it is the morally and practically superior default choice, ignoring massive tail risks. When Bitcoin’s history is written, the Coldcard hack will be remembered as a pivotal moment marking the end of the self-custody era.

American Hodl nicely summarized the psychological impact of this hack:

Psychologists refer to recently occurred events as "shattered assumptions." The world is generally predictable: effort yields rewards, and doing the right thing ensures safety.

Our version is roughly: Self-custody following the guidelines of industry educators is secure. Cold storage. Air-gapped Bitcoin is safe. If that were my setup, I could sleep soundly at night, even if the fiat world burned around me.

This entropy flaw completely overturned that assumption, turning the lives of many of us upside down overnight. The hardest hit were not the reckless leveraged traders, but the cautious ones. The prudent ones. The ones who did everything right. The ones who did their research. The ones who bought the “right” equipment. The ones who followed the guidelines.

This hacking incident severely undermined several pillars of the Bitcoin maximalist worldview; thus, its subsequent impact far outweighs the amount stolen.

2. Failed Filters Coup

I won’t rehash the lengthy and tedious Filters debate here; if you’re interested, you should read Jameson Lopp’s detailed account. But to summarize: a group of hardcore Bitcoin purists launched a coup—but failed. Their core complaint was that the Bitcoin protocol had been polluted by arbitrary non-monetary data. This has been happening since Bitcoin’s inception; in fact, it’s extremely difficult to design a protocol that doesn’t allow arbitrary data insertion. What the Filters group objected to specifically were non-monetary protocols like Ordinals, which make it easy to embed arbitrary data—such as images—onto Bitcoin. To them, Bitcoin is money, and nothing but money—not a platform for hosting cat pictures or other trivial content. Beyond these specific grievances, the Filters group rightly pointed out that Bitcoin development has been monopolized by a small oligarchy of unaccountable developers who are entirely insulated from any form of feedback. Most members of the Filters group describe themselves as “Bitcoin commoners”—that is, relatively new entrants to Bitcoin. They can be seen as an anti-establishment movement, proud to represent the “average person” rather than the established Bitcoin elite.

Their meta-criticism is actually quite reasonable, but it’s not enough for them to win.

This group was led by long-time Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr. They supported BIP 110, a minority fork of Bitcoin that failed immediately after splitting from the chain on August 8. What’s interesting about the Filters group is that it was an ultra-orthodox splinter faction, defeated by the more moderate majority—a reversal of the Block Size War, where ideologues triumphed over pragmatists. The Filters group employed the same tactics historically used by extremists against Bitcoin’s perceived enemies. But this time, the target was core developers and established Bitcoin extremists. I may be idealizing it, but I believe the Filters group’s main contribution was making well-known extremists experience their own medicine. A small, mostly anonymous and fiercely angry contingent of Bitcoin users launched relentless, biting attacks, claiming moral superiority and greater purity.

Another outcome of the Filters debate is that a significant portion of the "toxic extremist" group has become disillusioned with Bitcoin and may disengage from active participation. While this is highly unscientific and completely disproportionate, this chart illustrates the positions reported by a segment of Bitcoin users on X during the Filters debate, with the green side representing the separatists.

Figure: Source: Consensus.health visualization showing pro- and anti-BIP110 X accounts

Some well-known Bitcoin figures—extremist infantry from past conflicts—found themselves on the losing side of the Filters debate. Among the most prominent are Luke Dash, Hodlonaut, GrassFedBitcoin, Justin Bechler, Knut Svanholm, Matthew Kratter, Fred Krueger, and Parman, along with a large group of “civilians.”

The Filter civil war did not end Bitcoin extremism, but it dealt a meaningful blow to the system. It stripped away some of the most radical foot soldiers of the orthodoxy, leaving the movement more exhausted. It subjected existing extremists to ongoing harassment from "civilian" tactics. It also revived a valid criticism: Bitcoin Core is dominated by a group of irresponsible developer priests, and it is too rigid to accommodate reasonable grievances.

Fifteen years later, becoming a Bitcoin purist is no longer about believing in a set of fixed slogans; it’s more about asserting insider identity for the sake of social benefit. The response to the bankrupt claims listed in my first part would undoubtedly be: “I never said that. No one meant it that way. We didn’t really believe those things.”

This is somewhat true, as provocative internet ideologies thrive in the space between sincerity and irony. Say something outrageous; if it doesn’t land or faces strong backlash, just claim you were joking.

"Super Bitcoinization? That’s just a rhetorical strategy. We don’t truly believe nation-states will adopt a Bitcoin standard. We’re shifting the Overton window. It’s a joke—don’t worry."

Moving the goalpost achieves a genuine social objective: it makes members feel they belong to a group where "everything is right," without requiring them to actually be right all the time. Successful predictions are celebrated and recorded; unsuccessful ones are retrospectively dismissed as phishing or propaganda.

This creates an asymmetric epistemology. If Bitcoin truly reaches $1 million, the predictor can claim to be a genius of world-historical proportions. If not, it was merely an expression of confidence. If a nation adopts Bitcoin, super-bitcoinization is just around the corner. If not, Bitcoin never needed the dirty nation-state to begin with.

Over time, it has become nearly impossible to determine what extremists truly believe. This doctrine has never been written down. When history turns against it, its radical claims lose their binding force.

The instinct to reinterpret prophecy when the rapture does not occur has, over the years, driven significant doctrinal shifts among Millerites.

1. Payment -> Value Storage Technology

Satoshi Nakamoto originally positioned Bitcoin primarily as a payment system. Due to technical limitations and a conservative design philosophy, this vision was first sidelined in favor of the Lightning Network and eventually abandoned entirely. Most payments are now denominated in U.S. dollars and occur on other blockchains. Today’s extremists show no loyalty to the early Bitcoiners’ vision of a payment network.

2. The best ideas for absorbing altcoins → those ideas are meaningless

This memory has been completely erased, but early Bitcoiners insisted that the best ideas from altcoins would be implemented on Bitcoin. None of this happened; Bitcoin gradually lost its ability to realize any new ideas. Bitcoin has been technologically stagnant for nearly a decade, and extremists have adapted, insisting those ideas are bad and meaningless. Their need to win has forced them into an unpopular stance—that any technological development outside Bitcoin is not worth considering.

3. Escape Wall Street → Wall Street Becomes a Tool for Victory

Early Bitcoiners were libertarian cypherpunks who believed in using cryptography to create private spaces immune to infiltration and regulation by governments and corporations. Around 2017, Bitcoiners accepted an explicit trade-off—though they didn’t realize it at the time: Bitcoin would be institutionalized, derivatives-driven, centralized, and captured by financial institutional structures in exchange for price appreciation. This Faustian bargain fueled several major rallies but extinguished Bitcoin’s potential as a true cypherpunk technology.

4. Currency脱离国家 -> Country adopts as reward

How would Satoshi Nakamoto and his early collaborators view American Bitcoiners pleading with the government to buy Bitcoin and add it to its strategic reserves? When the Trump administration hinted this might happen, nearly every Bitcoiner knelt. This most clearly shows me that even the most hardened extremists can be easily persuaded to abandon their principles.

5. Super Bitcoinization as a predicted → indefinitely postponed endpoint

Like the Millerites after their great disappointment, Bitcoin hardliners have had to scale back and revise their most cherished beliefs. They have gradually come to accept that they may have been wrong about the timeline. As people slowly realized the world was not drawing closer to a new gold standard based on Bitcoin, the goal was pushed indefinitely into the future. Anyone who casually pointed out that 18 years had already passed would be met with the response: “This won’t happen overnight! These kinds of things take generations.” Extremists now employ an argument that is entirely unfalsifiable.

Today in 2026, Bitcoin extremism is a niche ideology with little ability to recruit new followers. At most, it offers simple answers to those overwhelmed by the dazzling array of choices in the crypto space: Bitcoin, and Bitcoin alone, is the answer. Everything else is a scam. Just buy Bitcoin, self-custody it, and you will eventually be rewarded.

The problem is that, over time, these claims have largely been proven false. Bitcoin’s price has stagnated. Gold stole much of its spotlight in 2025, and inflation in major fiat currencies has also eased. Other investments have performed better. Other blockchains have begun offering numerous practical use cases. Buying and holding is no longer the only thing digital assets can do. Self-custody has ultimately become fragile, complex, and too risky for average retail investors.

In other words, the gospel of Bitcoin prosperity preached by extremists no longer delivers prosperity. Underlying all the elaborate claims that Bitcoin can cure societal and political ills is a simple reality: if you buy Bitcoin, you can make money—even potentially become unimaginably wealthy. For most new Bitcoiners (anyone who joined in the past five years), this has not been the case. Faced with cold reality, people have become less receptive to the more outlandish claims of purists. This ideology now offers less than ever, and fewer and fewer people are willing to tolerate extremists. I see no signs that this trend can be reversed.

As for me, I still love Bitcoin. I will continue holding Bitcoin (exclusively through ETFs). I will continue investing in Bitcoin companies. I will continue advocating for the changes I believe are critical to Bitcoin’s success, including increasing cryptographic agility to address future quantum threats. As I stated in my previous article:

Ultimately, Bitcoin is not a lifestyle. Bitcoin is not a steak dinner. Bitcoin is not a meme or laser eyes. Bitcoin is an extremely useful tool. It carries some ideology, but not the ideology promoted by these people. Bitcoin’s core values concern property rights, personal dignity, self-determination, privacy, autonomy, and monetary predictability. This is what drew me to Bitcoin, and I will continue to support it with all my resources, regardless of how others describe me. I am not pessimistic about Bitcoin. I am simply interested in the world as it truly is, not in utopian fantasies or pleasant illusions. My arguments for Bitcoin have always been more robust and resilient than those of these extremists, because their arguments rely on fantasies—such as stock-flow models, the inevitable collapse of all altcoins, or hyperbitcoinization. If I believed these things, I would be troubled.

One of the major victories of extremists has been convincing ordinary Bitcoin users that Bitcoin needs them to succeed. Of course, they may be a bit eccentric, claiming that Bitcoin can end wars or save us from bad art. But the movement needs a fanatical vanguard to counter central bank officials, academics, economists, and altcoin enthusiasts.

I want to help Bitcoiners move past this notion. Extremism thrives on Bitcoin, not the other way around. Extremism conflates Bitcoin’s success with the correctness of extremism itself. Assets and protocols can succeed while the radical ideologies surrounding them fail. In fact, that’s more or less exactly what has happened. Bitcoin has flourished to become a major global monetary asset, while the entire complex set of prophecies surrounding it ultimately failed to accurately describe what success would look like.

Extremists will not acknowledge this. The ideologies they construct are highly flexible and difficult to deter when confronted with reality. There will always be another timeline, another condition for victory, another interpretation. William Miller would be proud.

In 457 BCE, King Artaxerxes I of Persia authorized the restoration of Jerusalem, as described in Ezra chapter 7. Miller interpreted this as the "sanctuary," which would be cleansed after the 2,300-year period in Daniel chapter 8 ended in 1844.

In fact, I believe my more moderate stance on Bitcoin allows me to maintain a more enduring belief in the asset and protocol, because it requires less extreme expectations and is therefore less likely to end in disappointment.

Let me be extremely clear, because people try to be vague about ‘extremism’ and pretend it doesn’t exist. The following individuals are typical representatives of the philosophy I’m referring to (in no particular order): Pierre Rochard, Saifedean Ammous, Greg Maxwell (retired), Jimmy Song, Samson Mow, Francis Pouliot, Adam Back, Michael Saylor, Marty Bent/Matt Odell, Jack Mallers, Giacomo Zucco, Parker Lewis, Cory Klippstein, Max Keiser, and countless obscure Twitter anonymous users with laser eyes.

I am well-suited to write this article because I have been a highly active and prominent Bitcoin supporter for at least a decade. I understand the mindset of Bitcoin supporters and am deeply familiar with its history and ideology. I hold and support Bitcoin, invest in Bitcoin companies, and hope for its success. At the same time, I am an internal critic of Bitcoin maximalist ideology, which I do not personally endorse. In 2022, I publicly broke with Bitcoin maximalist ideology—a decision I now regard with pride and gratitude.

I will not cite specific examples of these beliefs or predictions and attribute them to particular extremists. This article is intended as a firsthand account of the subculture I belong to and participate in, not as an academic anthropological study. I write based on my personal recollections over the past decade. The extremists know they said these things, and I know they said them. You must trust that I am faithfully reporting what I observed.

This was the price of Bitcoin when I originally drafted this. Since then, it has appreciated, but the overall point remains unchanged.

Lightning Network transaction volumes are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, but a 2025 estimate by River indicated monthly transaction volume of $1.17 billion.