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If it’s not Bitcoin, it’s a shitcoin. While Bitcoin stands as the only true innovation, shitcoins thrive on speculation and deception, making them risky investments.
If it’s not Bitcoin, it’s a shitcoin. It’s as simple as that, don’t let crypto marketing teams fool you. Bitcoin is the only innovation in the space, all the other so-called “virtual assets” are cheap copies of the real deal. Everything that makes them different just makes them worse. Plus, these projects pretend to be decentralized while always having a team behind them.
Creators can copy the main principles and fundamental design, but nobody will be able to replicate the network that Bitcoin created out of nowhere. Thousands of miners distributed worldwide, millions of users, passionate spokespersons who do it for the love of the game, nodes running for the sake of the network. It’s beautiful to see.
On the other hand, shitcoins’ valuations are speculation-based and they bank on the greater fool’s theory. Since the technological, philosophical, and social base needed to understand the innovation is so vast, the potential for scams is unmeasurable. So, chances are shitcoins will always be there in one form or another, waiting to relieve dupes of their money.
All shitcoins are depreciating assets when compared to Bitcoin. However, these coins can soar in value and outperform the real deal for short periods of time. This is the moment every trader chases, and some manage to catch it and make millions. However, a rug pull is the most likely result of their adventures. The fact of the matter is that shitcoin creators have an unfair advantage, an exorbitant privilege if you will, and will always come on top.
Blink already published a comprehensive and hilarious guide to “What Is A Shitcoin?” and in there we further explain this point:
“Most of the activity in the crypto ecosystem comes from people just trying to make a quick buck on the latest trendy narrative. Even the so-called "serious" projects are scams, funded by VCs who dump their tokens at the first chance they get.
The problem with cryptos other than Bitcoin is that all of them, including Ethereum, claim to be building decentralized infrastructure or applications, yet they are EXTREMELY centralized and the U.S. government could easily censor transactions whenever they want.”
How can a shitcoin with a public creator making all of the decisions be decentralized? It can’t and it isn’t, but those project’s marketing departments will spend millions trying to convince the public otherwise. How can a shitcoin with a foundation financing all the development they want to see materialized be decentralized? It can’t and it isn’t.
Even worse, developers who might be honest fall for the marketing and create “decentralized” projects over shitcoin protocols. They can’t or don’t want to see that they’re building their castles on quicksand and that shitcoin creators could pull the rug from under them at any time.
Bitcoin critics usually lump the real deal with all the shitcoins, call it the crypto industry, and accuse it of taking advantage of the greater fool theory. The thing is, they’re not completely wrong, because that’s what shitcoins are doing. Why is Bitcoin different? We’ll get to that in the next section.
First, let’s quote the appropriately named The Motley Fool for a definition of the theory:
“Greater fool theory states that investors can achieve positive returns by buying an asset without concern for valuation fundamentals and other important factors because someone else will buy it at a higher price.
Investors employing this theory may even think assets that they are purchasing are overvalued based on fundamentals or long-term performance outlooks, but they still expect to make a profit because another investor (the "greater fool") will be willing to pay even more.”
Everybody who sincerely studies Bitcoin’s fundamentals for 100 hours or more ends up putting it all on Bitcoin. That’s how we know Bitcoin critics haven’t done their homework, only a fool would lump Bitcoin and shitcoins together. They are worlds apart. Let’s learn why.
Bitcoin is a miracle and miracles are hard to explain. For help, let’s turn to Adam Back, a cypherpunk, the inventor of Hashcah, and one of the people quoted in the Bitcoin Whitepaper. This comes from “Bitcoin Is The ONLY Digital Scarcity That Matters — Here's Why”:
“Adam Back has a “distributed systems background,” so at first he thought he could improve the bitcoin protocol. He worked on a number of variables for four months and discovered that it was not possible. “You could improve one aspect of it, but typically you’d make two or three other things worse.”
That’s exactly what shitcoins did. Changed one aspect of the original design thinking that they would strike gold and finding problems and more problems instead. Back to the story:
“He’s not claiming that “these magic numbers are perfect.” The explanation is much more down to earth: “If you think about the design space of potential distributed electronic cash systems, it’s like a very narrow pocket of design surface that works, and everything else is worse.” The cypherpunks tried to create a viable electronic cash system for decades. They failed each and every time, until one fine day Satoshi Nakamoto stumbled upon the exact formula.”
The proof is in the pudding. What are the odds that a 9-page document and a relatively simple program would to start the biggest economic and cultural revolution the world has ever seen? None. What are the odds that millions of users, the ASIC industry, the mining industry, the Lightning Network, a hundred books, and institutional adoption of the asset would spring from Satoshi Nakamoto’s idea? Zero.
And yet, here we are.
Why? Because we perceive that we’re dealing with something out of the ordinary. An anomaly. A mathematical artifact that shouldn’t exist, but does.
Just in case the last section was too abstract, here are some concrete characteristics that separate Bitcoin from its cheap imitators.
Let’s start with Bitcoin:
Remember, all so-called altcoins are shitcoins. Why? Because they all have most of these characteristics:
As Giacomo Zucco tweeted, shitcoins are the “single major obstacle to Bitcoin growth and adoption.” However, besides education and articles like this one, there’s not much we can do. Scammers are going to scam, that’s what they do. And people will fall for stories about getting rich without putting in the effort because they want to believe it’s possible.
The history of shitcoins goes back to this Bitcointalk forum thread from 2010, in which user Ribuck wrote to Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin’s lead developer at the time:
“You say that now, but if bitcoin really takes off I can see lots of get-rich-quick imitators coming on the scene: gitcoin, nitcoin, witcoin, titcoin, shitcoin... Some of them are sure to attract users with promises like "Why use bitcoin, where you can only generate 50 bitcoins every few months? Use shitcoin instead, and you'll get 51 shitcoins every 2 minutes".
Of course the cheap imitators will disappear as quickly as those 1990s "internet currencies" like flooz and beenz, but lots of people will get burned along the way.”
That the first mention of “shitcoin” as related to Bitcoin, a historic moment. The inevitability of the threat also goes back that long ago, as Gavin Andresen responded:
“I agree-- we're in the Wild West days of open-source currency. I expect people will get burned by scams, imitators, ponzi schemes and price bubbles..
I tend not to worry about things that are out of my control; I don't think there's a whole lot that can be done about scammers, imitators, and ponzi schemes besides warning people to be careful with their money.”
The fact of the matter is that Bitcoin is complicated, it’s going to take time and education for the general population to realize the magnitude of the invention they’re dealing with. Until then, they’ll be vulnerable to shitcoins created out of thin air and the marketing teams that promote them.
However, your friends and family don’t have to be. Do your part and share this article with them.
