City governments can embrace Bitcoin and crypto faster than nations.
Miami Mayor @FrancisSuarez is experimenting with crypto to give Miami a Bitcoin-yielding treasury.
A thread on cities and crypto👇
1/ There are at least two ways city governments can embrace crypto:
(a) cities can put Bitcoin on their balance sheet, and
(b) they can issue a "governance token" to engage their citizens.
2/ Cities like NYC run on billions of dollars. Like public companies, city governments can also diversify their cash balances into Bitcoin.
@michael_saylor wrote the book for Bitcoin corporate treasuries; forward-looking mayors like Suarez might write a similar book for cities.
3/ Beyond Bitcoin holdings, cities can experiment with using crypto to engage their citizens. A simple idea is to have 'city futures' that can trade.
SF just made another horrible local policy? SF futures 📉
Suarez just brought more business to Miami? Miami futures 📈
4/ City futures are interesting, and you can extend them by using the asset as a "governance token" (it's a loaded term, but the design space is fascinating).
After all, the citizens or stakeholders (who don't necessarily live in the city) should have some say in local policies.
5/ These city futures or governance tokens might start off looking like toys.
They don't have meaning if the local government doesn't recognize them.
But what if they do? That’s happening in Miami with MiamiCoin!
6/ @mineCityCoins project is actively developing the above ideas.
Their focus is on enabling crypto treasuries for cities. Audacious goal of on-boarding city governments to crypto!
7/ They've designed the governance/futures tokens to have a Bitcoin yield.
The Bitcoin yield is a game-changer.
The BTC yield gives the new asset a floor value. It is worth at least as much as the BTC yield it can generate.
8/ Mayor Suarez is leading Miami in embracing Bitcoin and crypto.
The project is launching this week, built on Stacks + Bitcoin.
If the experiment works, Miami can have a Bitcoin-yielding treasury, and citizens can trade Miami futures.
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“When everyone zigs, Stacks zags.”
— Nick Grossman, USV
The popular opinion in crypto is that proof-of-stake is the future. Stacks recycles Bitcoin’s PoW and avoids PoS.
Why do we prefer PoW? Tweet thread👇
1/ First of all, intelligent people I respect, e.g., Silvio Micali (Algorand), are working on proof-of-stake, so clearly, I think it’s a design space worth exploring.
Given that enough smart people are already exploring PoS, I’m more interested in researching other designs.
2/ I don’t like slashing conditions in PoS. An event like a network partition (however rare that might be) can slash funds of honest nodes.
That’s why in Stacks, we had a design requirement not to have any slashing conditions.
Coindesk reported that USDC is planning to expand to Stacks.
This is a narrative violation that DeFi is not possible in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
So what are the benefits of USDC on Stacks? Thread👇
1/ USDC transactions would benefit from the security of Bitcoin.
USDC transactions on Stacks automatically settle on Bitcoin. To rewrite the history of these transactions, you’d need to rewrite the history of Bitcoin.
2/ Availability of USDC would open doors for USDC/BTC atomic swaps, i.e., with BTC on the main Bitcoin chain.
(@fmdroid already has a prototype of STX/BTC atomic swaps.)
How and when did NFTs start? How are they evolving? Tweet thread👇
1/ Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are crypto assets that are one of a kind.
The value of one unit of cash or Bitcoin is the same as another. NFTs are the opposite of that and are unique.
It might seem like NFTs are a recent thing--they're not. NFTs have been around for a decade.
2/ Decentralized domains were the original crypto NFTs.
A decentralized domain is unique, i.e., non-fungible. Namecoin pioneered decentralized domains in 2011, launching at Bitcoin block 19,200 with merged mining.
Bitcoin is often misunderstood within the crypto industry. Here is how:
Tweet thread👇
1/ People don’t think beyond the Bitcoin base layer.
L2s in Ethereum or subnets in Avalanche bring additional features to base layers.
Similarly, Bitcoin layers, like Lightning for payments or RSK/Stacks for smart contracts, bring additional functionality to Bitcoin.
2/ Bitcoin is for settlements, not payments.
The additional layers, like Lightning or Stacks, is where payments happen. On Lightning, people use sats, and on Stacks, people can use stablecoins like xUSD or Bitcoin-based assets like xBTC.