🏦 DEMONETIZING THE STATE

Bitcoin What-If: The State Was Demonetized By Sound Money?
By Ulric Pattillo

Do you know why the governments of today are a danger to humanity? They don’t only possess a monopoly on money, but also on violence. 

If it wasn't for the threat of imprisonment, The State would not be able to generate revenue at all. The services they barely provide would be covered by others, better prepared and under the rules of supply and demand. The State does not create value, but has the strength to take it away in one of three ways: taxation, monetary expansion and confiscation.

Now imagine it is the year 2050 and we are now on a bitcoin standard. For years, Bitcoin did nothing but continue generating block after block, validating transactions. The State, on the other hand, practically destroyed itself by continually increasing the money supply indiscriminately. 

This article is a combination of real world commentary and fan fiction that describes how the world would be after the demonetization of The State.

💻 DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE

Blockstream, Sevenlabs Partner To Launch Decentralized Exchange
By Shawn Amick

Blockstream and Sevenlabs, bitcoin infrastructure service providers, have partnered with Poseidon Group to launch the first decentralized security token exchange for bitcoin in Switzerland.

The new exchange, XDEX, will support assets within the Bitcoin ecosystem and allow peer-to-peer trading, effectively removing intermediaries from the transaction.

XDEX will initially be launched on Android and iOS as a mobile application, and will be further developed into a web-based platform in the future, potentially supporting more assets.

📰 THE DAILY BITS

We’re In A Bull Market For Off-Chain Bitcoin

We may be experiencing a bear market, but off-chains data tells a very different story. Bitcoin adoption in off-chain terms is in its own bull run. 

The off-chain bitcoin label refers to tools and assets that offer uses for bitcoin but that are not directly on the base layer. Lightning Network tools and tokenized bitcoin are good examples of these off-chain assets. Key characteristics for an off-chain tool or asset that seeks to utilize bitcoin's properties is that they are not permissioned or closed-source.

The author of this article shares his findings and data analysis about these open financial tools for alternative bitcoin uses. The point of this data and analysis is simply to show that some people (in fact, a consistently growing number) see value in choosing to use their bitcoin somewhere besides the Bitcoin blockchain.

MEME OF THE DAY