Announcing BTCST’s Implementation of τ (/ˈtaʊ/), a Protocol to Synthesize Proof-of-Work Assets

BTCST
3 min readMar 19, 2021

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Dear Community,

As Binance LaunchPool’s First Hashrate token, BTCST has always committed to be the benchmark asset protocol to bring hashrate assets to Bitcoin. Today, we are proud to announce our protocol upgrade to implement τ (/ˈtaʊ/), a way to synthesize proof-of-work assets.

τ protocol is created by Mr. Tim Swanson in collaboration with the Standard Hashrate Group. Tim Swanson is the founder and director of research at Post Oak Labs and Head of Market Intelligence at Clearmatics. Before Clearmatics, Mr. Swanson served as the Director of Market Research at R3. He was previously a visiting research fellow at the Singapore University of Social Sciences as well as at Sim Kee Boon Institute at Singapore Management University. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is the author of three books. He worked in East Asia for more than six years and is currently based in the United States.

Mr. Swanson’s 2015 paper: “Consensus-as-a-service: a brief report on the emergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems” popularized the term “permissioned” blockchain (or ledger), a topic which remains a mainstay at fintech conferences globally. It has been cited by more than 200 academic papers. He is also frequently quoted in media including: Wired, MIT Technology Review, Reuters, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New Republic, American Banker, and International Business Times.

Introducing τ Protocol

Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are storing significant amounts of value. At this moment, the market capitalization of Bitcoin alone is about $1 trillion. Most PoW blockchains, however, have limited support for DeFi. A gap therefore exists between DeFi as a set of nascent financial protocols and PoW assets as the primary value stores for cryptocurrencies.

Current iterations of synthetic asset protocols have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to maintain price pegs. This is particularly the case when prices of synthetics drop and are lower than their non-synthetic τ protocol harnesses proof-of-work mining to synthetize new assets. By using this “synthetic mining” process, the τ protocol creates synthetic crypto assets with provable backing and strong mechanisms to restore price pegs.

For more details, see τ Protocol whitepaper here.

About BTCST

BTCST is the blockchain industry’s first Bitcoin leveraged hashrate token and the first hashrate token to launch on Binance LaunchPool. BTCST creates an efficient market for Bitcoin mining power and is the benchmark protocol to bring hashrate assets to DeFi. BTCST is transparently governed has passed the scrutiny of CertiK and Armor Labs, two of the world’s leading blockchain security firms. Since BTCST launched, it has ranked first among Binance LaunchPool projects as measured by TVL.

BTCST is backed by BTC.TOP, Easy2Mine, Genesis Mining, Atlas Mining, and Hengjia Group, five leading institutional miners that collectively represent 12% of Bitcoin’s global hashrate. BTCST is available on Trust Wallet, MathWallet, TokenPocket, SafePal, and other wallets. At present, BTCST is listed on Binance and PancakeSwap.

Binance CEO and founder CZ (Changpeng Zhao) commented that “BTCST is already deployed on the Binance Smart Chain as a cloud mining platform, and we support the project through our mining pool. We are happy to continue working with BTCST on its further development through Binance Launchpool.”

TRON CEO and founder Justin Sun commented that:“We are very excited to welcome the first Binance LaunchPool hashrate token BTCST into the TRON ecosystem. Together we will usher in a new era of decentralized Bitcoin mining on TRON Blockchain.”

Standard Hashrate Group

March 19, 2021

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BTCST

Bitcoin Standard Hashrate Token (BTCST) brings exchange-grade liquidity to Bitcoin mining. Each BTCST is collateralized by real Bitcoin mining power.