BUIP127: (closed) Partially re-weight funds, 50% BTC to BCH

How much of BU's BTC should be converted to BCH?


  • Total voters
    11

jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
BUIP127: Partially re-weight funds, 50% BTC to BCH
Submitted by Jonathan Toomim
Date: 5 June 2019
edit: title info

Background:


The Bitcoin Unlimited organization ("BU") is relatively well-financed. BU received $500k in donations in 2016 alone, which it held primarily in BTC and which has both been partially spent and which has appreciated over time.

Since late 2017, BU has been focused on development for the BCH platform. Since the May 2019 BUIP vote, BU has ended development support for all platforms other than BCH.

However, BUs funds are still balanced in roughly equal numbers of BTC, BCH, and BSV coins. This means that approximately 93% of BU's wealth is tied to BTC's success, 5% is tied to BCH's success, and 2-3% is tied to BSV's success.

One partial conversion from BTC to BCH was performed in 2017-2018, but BCH funds have been preferentially spent since then causing a return to approximate coin-count parity.

Proposal:

BU shall convert 50% of its BTC holdings into BCH.

The conversions will be performed by the President. Before making any conversions, the President will provide a description of the strategy and tools (e.g. exchange accounts) that the President will use to perform the conversion to the Developer and Secretary, and the Developer and Secretary must provide their approval before the conversion begins. This conversion shall happen over a time period no less than 6 weeks, and no more than 24 weeks. The President is authorized to have up to 5 BTC (or the BCH proceeds therefrom) under his sole custodianship at a time during these transfers. The President may use OTC trading desk, centralized exchanges, or decentralized exchanges, as long as the Developer and Secretary approve of the method used. The Developer, Secretary, and President may also use a multisig wallet approach if they prefer; in this case, conversions up to 30 BTC at a time may performed.

The President shall publish progress reports of the conversion at least once every 2 weeks while the conversion is in progress, and shall publish the percent of BU's original BTC holdings that were converted during that period and overall, and the average exchange rate received during that period and overall.

The total number of BTC, BCH, and BSV in BU's possession need not be publicly disclosed at any time.

Separate BUIPs may be issued to modify the total amount of BTC sold under this BUIP. If such alternate BUIPs are proposed and one passes but this BUIP does not, then the terms of this BUIP modified according to the passing BUIP will be used. If multiple of these BUIPs (including this one) pass, then the BUIP with the highest approval/(approval + disapproval + spoil) vote percent shall be chosen. In the event of a tie, the percent to be sold shall be the average of all of the tied BUIPs.

Rationale:

BU is working to make BCH into a platform that can replace BTC as the dominant cryptocurrency. Should BU begin to succeed in achieving that, BU would not be in a financial position to grow with the BCH economy. In such a scenario, BCH would only have about as much financial strength as it does now.

On the other hand, if BU goes to a 47/50/3% ratio now, and if BCH ever reaches price parity with BTC, then BU will have approximately 10x more real wealth than it currently does, and will be in a much better position to sustain the elevated level of development that will be needed to keep BCH operating successfully.

Given that BCH is BU's focus, an argument can be made to sell all of BU's non-BCH holdings (including BSV) in favor of BCH. However, BU's long-term goal is not necessarily to promote BCH per se, but instead to promote on-chain scaling for Bitcoin, and it's possible that BCH might flounder in that goal and BU may need to pivot to BTC, BSV, or another fork that has not yet risen to visibility. Furthermore, as the BCH community and market is still quite a bit smaller than BTC's, BCH is more volatile than BTC, and BU needs to be able to weather temporary financial setbacks like we saw during Nov 2018-April 2019, after the BSV fork. Keeping a portion of BU's funds in BTC for now is a conservative step that allows BU to both survive hardship as well as to capitalize on success.

This BUIP does not include the sales of BSV, if for no other reason than the 2-3% value is more drama than it's worth at this time.

Conversions are limited to 30 BTC per phase in the case of multisig transfers in order to mandate time-averaging of the exchange rate and to minimize the potential for market-moving behavior, not for security. Conversions are limited to 5 BTC in the unisig case for funding security.

Publicly disclosing the amounts of BTC, BSV, and BCH is a security and privacy risk, and could deanonymize BU's wallets or attract unwanted attention from hackers. Consequently, this BUIP neither requires nor forbids the President from publicly or privately disclosing absolute amounts. Members who wish to know BU's current finances are encouraged to ask the President (@solex) directly via forum DM.

Comments:

Please vote on the straw poll at the top of this thread, as it will inform us whether to create alternative BUIPs for different quantities. You may (and should) vote on as many options as you find acceptable.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
@jtoomim We did have a couple of BUIPs related to this after BCH launched and a partial rebalancing occurred, however for over a year, funded BUIPs (development, conferences, research) were paid out in BCH which has moved the ratio back. So, it is reasonable to have a vote on another rebalancing. The poll is a good idea to gauge opinion.

Agreed, we do need to maintain a conservative position as much as possible, with a focus on capital preservation for funding BCH onchain scaling and enhancements, and avoid indulging in outright speculation.

Note that BU's Secretary is @Peter R, and @solex is BU President.

I will assign a BUIP number.
 
Last edited:

jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
I've edited the BUIP to replace Secretary with President, and replaced Developer with Developer and Secretary.
 
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freetrader

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Dec 16, 2015
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@jtoomim did you intentionally make the poll such that one can choose multiple options?

doesn't make sense to me - will distort the results.
 

freetrader

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Dec 16, 2015
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I like it. You are counting on stoopid to not know how to play a game. This is a WIN.
 

cbeast

Active Member
Sep 15, 2015
260
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While I have some hope for BU, I'm buying the delisted BSV while irrationality, fear, and hate dominate the market.
 

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
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@jtoomim
Based on the poll participation, do you want to revise your proposed 50%?
I assume you wish this included this in the upcoming vote?
 

jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
Poll results look equivocal; there's one camp who wants 100%, and another who wants 0%, plus a few stragglers who prefer something intermediate. I think intermediate is politically the best option. Let's keep it at 50%.

Yes, let's include this in the vote.
 
Last edited:

bitsko

Active Member
Aug 31, 2015
730
1,532
JToomim, can you show how BCH will outperform BTC?

Now that the narrative has shifted and even haipo yang has recognized the price superiority of BTC, it would be folly to buy BCH with BTC. It could potentially weaken the organization greatly.
[doublepost=1566878598][/doublepost]oh gosh, part of your thesis actually is 'altseason'

>On the other hand, if BU goes to a 47/50/3% ratio now, and if BCH ever reaches price parity with BTC, then BU will have approximately 10x more real wealth than it currently does, and will be in a much better position to sustain the elevated level of development that will be needed to keep BCH operating successfully.
[doublepost=1566878657][/doublepost]>This BUIP does not include the sales of BSV, if for no other reason than the 2-3% value is more drama than it's worth at this time.

This BUIP isn't more than the drama of a bagholder.
 

trinoxol

Active Member
Jun 13, 2019
147
422
Germany
> but BCH funds have been preferentially spent since then causing a return to approximate coin-count parity

This should not happen. The proportions of BTC/BCH/BSV should be decided and stuck to. If it is necessary or desired to spend one of the coins the portfolio must be rebalanced afterward.

> Given that BCH is BU's focus, an argument can be made to sell all of BU's non-BCH holdings (including BSV) in favor of BCH.

That would be a symbolic act. It would not have any real impact on the market, adoption or the economy. The portfolio contents should be decided on financial outcome alone.
 
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jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
JToomim, can you show how BCH will outperform BTC?
No, I cannot predict the future. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

That's also not the point of this BUIP. The purpose of this BUIP is to (a) ensure that BU's resources grow with BCH's pupularity and the demand for BU development activity should BCH catch on, and (b) align BU's financial incentives with its stated mission. It's important that BU be able to weather an economic downturn in BCH, which is why I don't support 100% BCH holdings; but it is also important that BU be able to scale up if BCH catches on (as per BU's mission), and that will be much harder to do if BU's holdings are e.g. 5% BCH.

Basically, my argument is that BU needs to have a financial plan for success as well as a financial fallback option in case of setbacks.
 
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bitsko

Active Member
Aug 31, 2015
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I disagree that bitcoin unlimited's stated mission is to release a client for a chain controlled by developers who decide when it is safe for the miners to act.

Such activity is clearly limited by the whims of the development collective, as shown twice now with BTC and BCH
 

theZerg

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
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As the officers are essentially volunteers, BUIPs authorize but do not enforce or dictate officer time. This process is laid out clearly in the Articles WRT the Developer's work, but I think it can be naturally extended to other officers. In particular the officers are required to facilitate someone else's implementation of a BUIP, but cannot be forced to do it themselves (but they may volunteer to). This is an important check-and-balance. The community has to authorize the action, and then somebody has to step up and actually do it.

I didn't notice the first time reading thru that this BUIP mandates certain very strict timelines and procedures (and it's technically Solex's job to point this out for operational BUIPs), which require actions on solex's part that exceed what he is required to do as President.

Given that I'm posting this quite late, I think that we should vote for the spirit of this BUIP (to eventually convert as much as 50% of the BTC into BCH) and ignore that there are specific aspects of it that are not enforcable.
 

kyuupichan

Member
Oct 3, 2015
95
348
The best and fairest idea, and one that is also positive-gamma, is to target 1/3 each by value, within a few percent.

Of course, that wouldn't suit the BU agenda at all.
 
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jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
the officers ... cannot be forced to do it themselves ... I think that we should vote for the spirit of this BUIP (to eventually convert as much as 50% of the BTC into BCH) and ignore that there are specific aspects of it that are not enforcable.
I support this interpretation.
 

Norway

Well-Known Member
Sep 29, 2015
2,424
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Can anyone share BU's current holdings in BTC, BCH and BSV?

It doesn't make much sense to me to vote for this without knowing the status quo. @Peter R ?
 
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