TL;DR: BTC maximalists (maxis) met over the weekend for the third-annual Baltic Honeybadger conference in Riga, Latvia. Most well-known maximalist personalities gathered for two days of price talk, panels, meme wars, and urged a new, ironic, less toxic tone. It operated in stark contrast to another recent cryptocurrency conference, where merchant adoption and user experience were paramount.

BTC Maximalists Meet in Riga, Latvia

Cryptocurrency conferences are a decidedly mixed bag. They can often be little more than infomercials, come-ons from sponsors, with no light shed on the point and purpose of the revolutionary digital, peer-to-peer electronic cash idea. Refreshingly, the Baltic Honeybadger 2019 gathering in Riga, Latvia stressed, “We’re not promoting various so-called altcoins, ICOs, banks and other blockchain-based ‘snake oil.”

Talk titles such as “Unpopular opinions in Bitcoin,” “Physical security in Bitcoin,” “Designing a Hardware Wallet,” “Open-source upgrade to the BTC mining stack,” and “REKT: how to survive the bear market” attempted to show BTC involved in a kind of battle or war. BTC maximalists insist only one coin within the ecosystem will prevail, and, of course, it will be BTC. Anything else is either a “shitcoin,” a scam, or both.

Put together by cryptocurrency exchange Hodl Hodl (a play on the term “hold,” as in never sell or use, turned inadvertent meme from a drunken subreddit post), the Baltic conference did have at least one panel discussion on actually using BTC in payments. In fact, during the conference it was announced the Jack Dorsey-headed company Square gave payments platform BTCPay Server a $100,000 grant to help its service to merchants. There was also a lecture on BTC’s primary scaling solution, “Lessons from the Trenches: using Bitcoin & Lightning in commerce,” along with a proper Lightning Network panel during Day 2.

More Irony

Much more of the conference tone, however, was an attempt at irony, of embracing BTC maximalism and its notorious “toxicity” online and in public. The second day began with a presentation claiming to clear up a previous year’s concept of tongue-in-cheek principles for maxis, The Four Universal Truths. Maxis heartedly believe last year’s talk on the subject triggered and rattled non-maxis, scandalizing other projects, showing the humorlessness of those not in on the grand and clever joke.

This year, that brand of humor was back in full force, opening the final day’s events with, Shitcoin Apologism: Steelmanned. Some of the conference talks seemed earnest and at times technical. The rest of the Baltic presentations had a Two Minutes Hate feel. Maxis will seize on the word hate here in sheer delight, but the word in this context has nothing to do with a modern cultural reference. Instead, it’s the Orwellian version, as in 1984’s line, “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”

That was in evidence during the Shitcoin talk especially. Maxis laughed hysterically at the images and thundered at the speaker’s irony. He hoped to change from his “toxic” and “scary” ways, embracing a more “inclusive” tone, winking at the audience. BTC maxis ate it up, describing the bit as nothing less than stomach-cramping hilarity. Posts online lauding the talk giggled about how non-maxis would become again obsessed with BTC maximalism’s inside joking, succumbing to their trenchant wit.

Contrast

A decidedly more serious take came from philosophical presenters who seemed eager to explain how “if governments improved their monetary policy to point where their currencies became sound money, it would eliminate the need” for bitcoin, and how that development “is the only thing which could kill it,” one conference observer summarized. An increasingly popular theory among BTC maximalists is that governments will eventually adopt BTC as a settlement layer between central banks.

From insular tries at humor to embracing fiat central banking, the Baltic Honeybadger 2019 conference was in stark contrast to another recently held cryptocurrency gathering, the Bitcoin Cash City Conference (BCCC). Whereas the currency aspect of bitcoin was deemphasized if not purposefully altogether missing in Riga, at the BCCC attendees were encouraged to use bitcoin cash (BCH) in real life: airline flights purchased with BCH, along with accommodations, meals, and entertainment — not to mention tickets to the actual event. Bitcoin Cash City Conference organizers insisted on making all of it possible.

The Baltic affair was noticeably different. There was a way to purchase conference tickets with BTC, but it was alongside other prominent fiat systems … its sole mention in relation to usage of any kind. BTC maximalists gathered in Latvia to shore one another up fraternally, which is probably at least one point of every conference. Baltic speakers set out to create memes, to feed the base, and prompt social media fights and Twitter dunking. The Bitcoin Cash City Conference emphasized lifestyle, showing those who might be interested in the cryptocurrency phenomenon how the likes of BCH might make financial life easier, freer. One conference leaned more toward an old-style tent revival and hope for a Lambo-filled future; the other focused on downloading a wallet, getting ahold of some satoshis, and experiencing crypto here and now.

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DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.