Your recommendations technically make sense, but they wouldn’t accomplish what I’m questioning the ZF about. Their organization is liquidating ~$100,000 worth of ZEC per month (regardless of the exact settlement per coin; its a function of operating expense costs, not trade execution measured down to Bid-Ask spreads and slippage, et al; also note that Zero ETH have been liquidated in 2023, and only about 1-2 BTC have been liquidated - $50,000 from BTC compared to more than $500,000 liquidated from ZEC).
In simple terms, the question is:
Why Does ZF refuse to take the operations costs needed out of the Bitcoin liquidity base first?
BTC are trading quite strongly this year, and the majority of Bitcoiners look at Zcash as a shitcoin bastard child not to be even given a seat at their table. What is the point of holding up Bitcoiners who are so routinely derisive of the Zcash project?
[rhetorical]
Why continue to prop up the Bitcoin and Ethereum treasuries, while burning down the Zcash treasury?
[rhetorical]
In even more simple terms, Where is the Money supposed to come from?
(to prevent ZEC from spiraling to $0)
Liquidating freely received ZEC coins ad-infinitum is not a sustainable model. Particularly when the organizations liquidating the coins, turn their noses up to the idea of promoting the value proposition for ZEC, or taking obvious material actions to demonstrate their faith in the value of ZEC.
could not agree more! To invest in projects like BTC and ETH while building a project going in a different direction doesn’t make any sense. It says we believe in ETH and BTC more than we believe in our own project-ZEC. Now it’s paid off only because the money has been mismanaged at ZEC. but, the boards have the ability to control the direction of ZEC. so the boards should reset the vision/mission so they want to own ZEC above all else! To sell zec to us and then go an invest in ETH/BTC is a contradiction at best!
Right, so, in my idea, we would transparently place those ZEC sell orders above the current price. Some ZEC ~may~X will need to get sold to cover operating expenses. But, instead of ZF being forced to sell into the buy liquidity, place the sell orders above the market price and let the buyers push the price up to get their ZEC. If the supply of ZEC is so much more than the demand that this idea is hopeless, and ZF/ECC/ZCG/we can’t drive demand up sufficiently, then maybe the answer is to downsize everything and/or hard-fork to reduce the free supply to mercenary miners and/or make other drastic changes like bringing back memory-hard hobby mining. Any of these changes would have to be thought out and well planned but I’m not opposed to big changes, if the economics of the status quo just will not work.
I agree with your basic premise that ZF shouldn’t be dumping ZEC. I’d rather see ZF embrace extreme austerity than dump ZEC. Speaking to the OP, there is a decent chunk of Bitcoin available. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to sell the BTC and perhaps institute some moderate austerity. The survival of ZEC should be a top priority and market dumping (IDK if this is how they actually sell it, hopefully it’s all OTC) should be a last resort, not the modus operandi.
Now for something different
How about we sell a strategic partner a bunch at ~$25 or less that is locked for a year or two? I’d like to hear more about how the ZEC is currently sold. Hopefully it’s not just dumping on a CEX directly into the little buy liquidity that is there. Are the nitty-gritty mechanics of how the ZEC is sold published anywhere? Does anyone know?
For security and market reasons, I don’t want to get into the specifics publicly. However, I will say that the process does NOT involve indiscriminate dumps into buy liquidity.
All - @noamchom’s comment should NOT have been flagged. It was respectful and honestly asked why ZF keeps spending down its ZEC rather than the Altcoins.
Why is this something ZF does not want to address? It’s a reasonable question since there are others like myself who continue to accumulate and hold while ZF pushes down the value of its own coin.
Thoughts please? I ask this with complete respect.
Noamchom’s questions have been answered previously, and I have nothing more to add:
@noamchom Please bear in mind that derailing topics is specifically against the code of conduct. It is inappropriate to continually post the same questions in multiple topics.
The topic was your leadership of the Zcash Foundation. My comment was an example to ponder if leadership has had any change of opinions about how it could demonstrate full faith in Zcash’s ZEC.
I’ve recently re-run a community poll, 6-7 months after the original poll. And in the context of continued ZEC weakness, in the face of BTC/ ETH strength. It is reasonable to re-ask a question like that over 6+ month time period, because we’ve got to assume that reasonable people may have changing opinions in the context of changing external variables.
(Notice that community polling results have shifted much more closely to favoring a reallocation)
As @birdify thread ponders a new Foundation leader, my comment speculates that a new leader could give the community hope that the treasury would position out of BTC/ ETH, using those proceeds to alleviate the selling liquidation of our beloved ZEC asset.
I’m stumped that you couldn’t piece together how this logic flows.
Leadership is given in many different forms, sometimes speeches and other times by actions. Hedging out of BTC/ ETH, and into USD/ ZEC would be a leadership behavior to increase optics around faith in ZEC. (At the possible risk of missing out on additional BTC/ ETH rally gains)
Is it correct to assume that your position on Zcash Foundation treasury holdings is unchanged until otherwise noted (regardless of changing market valuations or any other external factors) ?
Exactly, my point of re-asking the question, is because market valuations of ZEC/ BTC/ ETH are radically different now than in Q1 of 2022!
@Dodger Jack - I’m an early investor in Zcash for full disclosure. I believe my involvement pre-dates your involvement and threatening a code of conduct claim against me is outrageous. Please check yourself. I am supporter and holder of ZEC and I have questions and the only forum is the only such place where I can ask these questions. I made no attempt to derail this topic and I encourage to read all of my former comments over the years where I am nothing but respectful and thoughtful.
@noamchom Please continue to speak your mind and ask hard questions. This project can only thrive with folks like you. Please do not leave - stay the course.
hows it all in when the ZF and ECC are both sitting on a ton of other cryptos? doesnt look like anyone is all in on zcash at this point. hell even Zooko is backing away from it
what does this look like today @joshs is runway for the org 24 months or more
I don’t believe we have 24 mo at the current pace and coin price. I’m digging into the budget, forecasts, scenarios and options. One of the three near term priorities I outlined.
No good financial advisor would tell you to put retirement savings all into one stock or cash, ever. The key is diversification. USD is deflationary, have you seen prices for goods lately?
The amount that ECC and ZF could potentially buyback would barely make a short term dent in the market price, so what’s the gain? The future salaries of the developers that are working on transitioning Zcashd to Zebra codebase and adding functionality to Zcash is not worth the risk.
We need to focus more on building utility and expanding the userbase and less on optics that won’t make a difference to the average end user.
Somebody else already made the point. Neither the ECC, ZCG, or ZF, are intended to be crypto hedge funds. They’re not receiving the block rewards to operate as crypto hedge funds.
They all share mission statements about empowering and advocating for Zcash/ et et al. So what are the optics for Zcash when none of the organizations are even maximizing their own balance sheets for the sake of the project.
Your point about the relative small size of their altcoin holdings, that furthers my point… What is gained today by keeping these altcoins?
Let’s suppose our hypothetical CFA looks at the balance sheets and says well - ZEC is high risk so we’re hedging fully into USD.
The outcome would only bolster the cash balances equal to about 5-6 months worth of spending. Removing 5-6 more months of ZEC liquidation is much more valuable to Zcash at this point in time, than it is to keep on another 5-6 months of altcoin exposure.
Leadership in these big organizations really seem to be clueless about how silly Zcash looks these days as a 7 year old project, with about $200,000,000 spent in total… And what are the results? 6k transactions a day and -98% relative value performance compared to Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, pick your favorite altcoin.
Ideology needs to change at the C-level or else this project risks floundering for all eternity.
There are obvious, logical, material actions that could be taken right now to defend the project from irrelevance, if new leadership decided to change some of this Leave it All As Is thinking.
What you are suggesting is basic virtue signalling to somehow show that they “really care” about Zcash. It won’t work. The overall market and average user will see that it happened, and shrug, because it has no bearing on them. Or worse the smart big investors will see it and dump ZEC because they know putting your eggs all in one basket is a bad idea and risks future development funding.
Wether ZF or ECC hold or sell over the next 6 months will have little market impact. Why? Because the majority of the downward pressure comes from major miners like Antpool that have said they mine ZEC for the sole purpose of selling it for BTC. With 80% of the coins going to people that are selling it then it makes no difference how ECC, ZF, or ZCG spend or hold because they are a tiny part of the market. Again, they would be virtue signalling for little real world gain.
Rather than ECC, ZF, and ZCG playing shell games with whos holding what currency in what format the real goal should be to ensure long term viability to give them time turn things around.
Agree, which is why I’m participating in these forums again.
Josh is saying that they are ditching the “Leave it as is” approach to Zcash development on the ECC side. He has the support of the Bootstrap board to do so, and they are working on a plan to move forward, quickly. This will be in close coordination with the ZF.
My proposal to you @noamchom is this: how about helping by focusing your brainpower on the upcoming Zcash turn around I see coming early next year? Put effort into concrete examples of how Zcash can attract new users and reduce barriers, that’s the real way we can put Zcash back on the map again. More users, more use cases.
Its the marginal buyer and seller that sets the price. 20% is not small. Plus, changing the mission to focus on Zcash as a holder coin/digital gold and reducing block rewards will also make a major positive difference. The idea of Zcash as a coin for day to day transactions results in nothing but sellers. Even the people buying ZEC for spending end up being net sellers because the end retailer or receiver needs to sell for fiat. And the person using ZEC to spend ends up losing money and realizes its not a coin to use for spending because of the Vol. Most importantly, I believe you are also directly acknowledging this fact in your answer as to why you need to hedge. The mission and ideology of ZEC as a trustworthy coin for day to day transactions needs to change. Its causing a misallocation of resources.
ZEC is for holding and building wealth over time. Its not a short term spending vehicle. Focusing on Zcash as a short term spending token for day to day transactions and spending so much on marketing and development projects looks like this. We need to plug the holes and stop the bleeding.
Spending money on the retail edge and funding so many wallets will likely end up being a massive money pit and ultimately likely fails as a standalone ZEC only solution. We need to refocus on ZEC as a store of value first and foremost by improving the blockchain. Many of these important improvements have been deprioritized; but fortunately many are on the roadmap. Now, we need to cut back massively on the failed projects that never resulted in more transactions to reprioritize.
I truly hope ditching the Leave it as is approach is the realization that ZEC is not a coin with the attributes for short term day to day transactions and we can refocus the spending and development accordingly. We need a solid base of ZEC holders (70-80%) to build the foundation and leverage the Zcash blockchain for the future. Right now, at a roughly $400-$500m market cap, ZEC is basically trading on its option value to do something meaningful.
