Having read Jill Carlson’s Coindesk opinion piece, “Stop Treating Bitcoin as Risky. It’s a Safer Asset Than Most,” I was dumbstruck. I agreed with almost everything she had to say, but something felt off. So I read it again. And again.
Jill evaluates Bitcoin as an investment.
But the most compelling arguments Jill makes are as follows:
“This perception misses bitcoin’s most important properties. Bitcoin is, in many ways, the ultimate safe haven asset. It can be self-custodied, so even when systems of trust and rule of law breaks down, it can be held. It is open and borderless, with…
On Saturday, February 8th, the Decred blockchain will have been adding blocks for 4 years. #DecredGlobalMeetups are taking place across the world in at least twenty different cities across five continents. The heartbeat of the community and its thriving ecosystem has never been stronger, as Decred continues its long-term approach to re-building the financial system in a fairer way.
The robust and decentralized community of OG cypherpunks and intellectuals embody the core principles of the project and represent its greatest strength. They have built hardware, started stakepools, and represented Decred at events. They have staked their coins in exchange for…
de — a prefix from Latin (decide); used to indicate privation, removal, and separation, negation, reversal, etc.
It’s a negative — straight up.
cred — short for credit, as is credit cards, credit crisis, credit history, credit score.
You still there, or did your financial anxieties get the best of you? There’s obviously meaning in the name, Decred, other than to torment you in perpetuity. Though you may be one to enjoy that kind of thing — you’re in crypto, after all. Many have defended the name, short for Decentralized Credits, arguing it correctly focuses on decentralization and is futuristic…
“Intelligent design.” It’s invariably my response when people ask why Decred is different or better than Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Decred is constructed in a way that simply and elegantly aligns interests to make it more secure, adaptable, and sustainable. This carefully thought-through design is why it will be funded for decades and outlast so many flawed iterations of digital currency to become a superior store of value. It often takes significant time for the implications of the design to become internalized, but when it does, people become true believers and often join the project as contributors or contractors.
Privacy, liquidity, and availability. According to a user survey from exactly one year ago, the Decred community overwhelmingly identified these three areas of improvement. While the embers of privacy smolder and tease against the silent backdrop of excitement and anticipation, I’d like to focus on solid progress on the other two fronts. Last year, the community was emphatic that the project needed to gain listings to major exchanges, explicitly Binance and Coinbase.
While Decred is yet to be listed on Coinbase, it has made impressive progress towards increasing liquidity and availability. The way this has been accomplished is remarkable and…
October marked a landmark for Decred: the launch of Politeia, its policy and budgetary proposal system. In the first week, six proposals were introduced, which the Decred community actively debated and voted upon. Voter participation topped 50%, a greater rate than we saw in the U.S. midterm elections. In the first round of proposals, the Decred community overwhelmingly passed an open research project that will enable investments of time into areas that would have otherwise been unlikely to find funding, as well a proposal for nomenclature changes to ticket voting.
However, for this blog post, my focus will be two…
Politeia marks a major inflection point for Decred, imparting a major increase in stakeholder sovereignty over matters of treasury and policy. This leap forward marries the powers of a financial system with those of a nation state government, all while dissolving oracles that previously controlled power and permission. This is big.
Decred’s principles are, to some degree, guided by the early interactions of its founders while developing on the Bitcoin project. In what was supposed to be an open-source, permission-less system where contributors could participate where they felt they could add value, politics, power and centralized censorship froze out our…
Dustin LeFebvre
Decred Contributor
