Yesterday we had a thrilling AMA on the Binance Telegram community where users and fans alike were able to chat with our co-founder and CEO Alex Zhao. Participants asked wide ranging questions about BTCST and our roadmap, as well as about our partnerships and team. To give readers a brief summary would not do justice to the interesting conversations that Alex and the participants had. Therefore, we have have included below in full length the Q&A section of the AMA. Some parts were edited for clarity. We hope the information below can give readers a decent understanding of the BTCST project. Let us dive into it.
Question 1: Why Binance Chain?
Answer: A project like BTCST is only possible on Binance Smart Chain. For our hash rate token to function, we need 1) a programmable mainnet that rivals the functionalities of ETH, 2) with low transactions fees so that anyone can participate in mining, even with small amounts of funds, 3) with fast confirmation time for ideal user experience, and 4) wrapped BTC for seamless, accurate and transparent profit distribution.
At the moment, ONLY BSC meets all of these criteria. It is like ETH 2.0, but already deployed. Binance Pool is our mining hash rate auditor. It audits our hash rate sufficiency and acts as a service provider to provide FPPS BTC distribution. BSC is where we deploy our dApp, so we can bring DeFi to mining, along with the advantages of transparency and accuracy. Binance BTC (BTCB) is how we distribute profits, so that even small amounts of BTC can be easily withdrawn. This is not possible with the BTC native chain. So that’s why we picked BSC. 🙂
Question 2: How will the BTCST network profit sharing model differ from other DEFI projects? What incentives does BTCST offer to members of the DEFI ecosystem?
Answer: BTCST is different from almost all DeFi profits in a couple fundamental ways. First, most DeFi projects rely on certain public/private sales to raise funds, because they don’t have a product yet and need funds for future development. That’s not us. We are some of the largest miners in the world. And our product is done. And we are very profitable everyday. So we have no needs to raise funds. The result is that we have no team token. No advisor token. No ecosystem token. Nothing.
The second way we differ, is that we have no impermanent loss. Many DeFi projects are really just mathematical games, where you don’t know what’s going to happen in the end. In most cases, you get FEWER tokens back than what you put in, because of impermanent loss. That is never going to happen with BTCST. Staking in our dApp is equivalent to mining in the real sense of word. You get net profits in BTC. And you are guaranteed to get all of your BTCSTs back.
Finally, unlike some cloud mining tokens, we distribute at least 60% of daily rewards. That means most staking participants will make much more than directly mining BTC with mining machines. You can read more about this “boost factor“ on our Medium site.
Question 3: What are your major goals to achieve in the next 3–4 years? And what are your plans to expand and gain more adoption?
Answer: Standard Hashrate Group is intended to be an open association, where we, together, provide a service to ALL eligible miners to tokenize their hash rate. Our goal is to be the Grayscale Trust for Bitcoin mining hash rate. In a few years, we hope to be working with all the major miners and mining facilities around the world, so we can bring meaningful liquidity to mining hash rate, which is the foundation upon which Bitcoin is built. For miners interested in joining us, please find our contact information on our official site (can email satoshi@1-b.tc).
Question 4: Staking seems to be popular right now on many blockchain projects to encourage investors to hold tokens and create a healthy project ecosystem. Does Bitcoin Standard Hashrate Token support this as well? If yes, what will be the requirements of a Node and a Validator node? And what are the rewards based on?
Answer: Holding BTCST has very very real use. When you hold BTCST, you literally own real hash rate. And by staking BTCSTs in our dApp on BSC, you get very very real BTC every day. And because of our boost factor (read more on our Medium site), the BTC mining returns will most likely be much more than direct mining. This is not like other DeFi projects, where you are staking BTC or ETH in hope of attaining project tokens with sometimes questionable values. With us, staking gives you real BTC.
Question 5: Given that most retail users are not aware of hashrate values, how do you believe BTCST will ultimately work as a leveraged token?
Answer: We are confident that the price of BTCST will track the price of BTC. It will be a BTC leveraged token. If you long BTC, you should long BTCST. This is because when BTC goes up, BTCST goes up even faster. Think of BTC as eggs. If eggs are increasing in price, the hens that lay the eggs will go up in price even faster. 🐣
During the time period you are holding BTCSTs, you get additional BTC that you mine from our dApp. So we are confident that BTCST will perform as a leveraged BTC token. Even better, because our token does not rely on financial products, it does not face any liquidation risks.
Question 6: Why should miners sell their power on your platform instead of mining directly on pools?
Answer: Miners are not selling their mining power to us. When miners work with us, we tokenize their hash rate into BTCSTs. And THEY (not us) receive the generated BTCSTs. So they never sold their hash rate. They just converted it to BTCSTs so that they can trade their hash rate at any time and enjoy price discovery and liquidity on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Users can participate and exit mining easily as well. This is an efficient market.
It is for this reason, there is NO TEAM TOKEN. Again, we do not have team token, advisor token, private/public sale token, airdrop tokens. Nothing. It is for this reason that the rewards (for this AMA) today are given away in BTC. BTCSTs can only be minted when miners go through our due diligence and tokenize their hash rate. And THEY receive the tokens. Not us. This is how we aim to be the Grayscale Trust for mining power.
Question 7: What are your plans for global expansion, is BTCST focusing on only one market at this time?
Answer: We are working with some of the largest industrial miners around the world to establish geographically decentralized hosting facilities to host tokenized hash rate. There are more details to come. You can follow our progress by following our Twitter and Medium.
Question 8: Who are your investors? How do you generate revenue to sustain the project? What are your goals to the end of 2021 and beyond?
Answer: We do not have investors. We do not have public or private sales. We provide hash rate tokenization to miners so that they can convert their hash rate into BTCSTs. Our profit model is to help miners who have tokenized their hash rate to continue to provide their hash rate in the most efficient and reliable way possible. As established industrial BTC miners, our founding members are already very profitable and have no fundraising needs from BTCST.
Question 9: In the beginning, BTCST will mainly focus on the Asian market, including Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and other south Asian countries. Tell me, why ? And what is the next market you intend to target?
Answer: BTCST does not focus solely on the Asian market. We have partners in the pipeline from Europe and North America. We welcome miners from around the world to join our open association so that we can collectively improve our standardization protocols. You can read more about our tokenization protocols here. https://btcst.medium.com/btcst-protocols-of-bitcoin-hashrate-tokenization-78a7f13c64e1
Question 10: Could you please tell me just a little more about the team and some of their backgrounds? I have personally seen many projects launch with inexperienced team members, and some of those didn’t go so well due to easily avoidable mistakes.
Answer: We would like to use this opportunity to clarify that we are not a “startup” team. We also want to clarify how we address DeFi security.
Based in Hong Kong, our company Standard Hashrate Group is a joint venture between Mishuibeian Tech. Co., Ltd. (Ke Wo Ying) and Power360. Our founding members are some of the largest single-entity miners in the world with thousands of BTCs in reserve.
We have been constructing and managing industrial scale mining facilities for over 2 years. The intention of BTCST is not to fundraise, but to bring DeFi to BTC mining. To bridge the two so that a new market can be made. You can read more about our team and founding members here: https://btcst.medium.com/our-current-and-future-tokenization-partners-6360f1cf51e0
Secondly, security is very important to us. We have passed the audit by CertiK. Our CertiK audit report is available here: https://www.1-b.tc/static/Certik_Final_Report_for_BTCST.pdf
About BTCST
BTCST is a token collateralized by real Bitcoin mining power. By staking BTCSTs, holders of the tokens will receive daily Bitcoin distributions that correspond to the mining power staked. With BTCST, you mine Bitcoin the DeFi way.
Email us for general inquiries: satoshi@1-b.tc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BTCST2020
Telegram: https://t.me/BTCST_Community_EN
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/BTCST_Announcement_En
