@Charlescarilla - This is a tweetstorm aimed solely at you. A tweetstorm because I appreciate your vision of deploying blockchain technology in a useful way, rather than talking about pies in the sky. A tweetstorm because I agree that a crypto could become a store of value.

I admire what you are doing for the ecosystem which I believe adds legitimacy to the space, and I admire how you seem open to looking at projects since something better can always come along. With that in mind, allow me to explain to you how $NANO could be a better digital gold.

It's a bold claim. I believe scarcity, decentralisation, immutability, security and predictability over time to be the primary determinants in what makes #Bitcoin a store of value that can compete with gold.

Aside from scarcity, all these factors ultimately boil down to the PoW consensus method, which is the primary innovation in Bitcoin. Competition for rewards leads to a high hashrate, which effectively protects the network from 51% attacks. I see issues with this in the long term.

Mining, as you know better than most, is an industry where focusing on cost above all else is paramount. Whether that be electricity, equipment cost, access to cheap capital or efficiency in maintenance of ASICs, optimizing these factors leads to profit.

This leads to constant innovations - more energy efficient ASICs being the largest area of competition. While this might seem great, I see danger in the fact that Bitcoin mining is effectively the ultimate "economies of scale" market, since this leads to centralization over time.

I am not alone in this - there is ample research on ASIC manufacturer consolidation. An oligopoly or monopoly on manufacturing the backbone of this immense store of value is, to me, a major danger in the long run.

The danger doesn't end there. Centralisation in mining seems as big a threat. While currently only 4 mining pools need to collaborate for a 51% attack, people often point to mining pools consisting of many different individuals and mining farms.

However, recent research suggests that there is also centralization within mining pools, with a small number of actors (<20) simultaneously operating across mining pools and receiving >50% of the BTC payouts. See https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_30.pdf.

My point being that Bitcoin centralizes over time in theory, but also in practice. Decentralization is one of the pillars of security in Bitcoin, and this trend, which is incentivized by the base protocol in Bitcoin, is a danger to its status as a store of value.

Enough about Bitcoin. I believe Nano solves these problems and is far better suited as a store of value, as digital gold, in the long term. Nano does so by incentivizing decentralization in the protocol itself.

Nano uses a consensus mechanism called Open Representative Voting (ORV). Essentially, 1 Nano = 1 Vote, you can either run your own node or vote for a node to represent you, and nodes then validate transactions. These nodes do not receive any fees, which is important.

Because Nano has no fees, there is no direct monetary incentive to run a node. Because there are no fees, there is no advantage to being responsible for 10% of consensus rather than 1% of consensus.

Any node that aims for a large share of consensus is suspicious, causing Nano holders to delegate to a different node. To 51% attack the network, you therefore need to convince people to act against their own interests, or buy up a majority stake in the network.

If you choose to buy a large stake, then by attacking the network you are destroying your own value. Because there are no fees, everyone's interests are aligned. The value is not in what can be taken out of the network (fees), but in the network itself.

This alignment of interests removes centralization over time in theory, and this is borne out in practice. See https://nanocharts.info/p/01/vote-weight-distribution - you can literally see decentralization increasing. This leads to a more stable state of decentralization in the long run.

You might be wondering why people would run nodes, if there is no monetary incentive. The answer is in the value of the Nano network. Nano has no fees, but also has other great properties. Due to its lightweight nature, transactions are confirmed within a second.

It's a very efficient, scalable value transfer system. A feeless, instant value transfer system has great value for merchants. It's also great for remittances, FX, and many other usecases. Any business using Nano, and profiting from the network, has incentive to run a node.

Nodes are relatively cheap - the network can currently handle 200 TPS running on nodes that cost $10-$20 monthly. This is also no theoretical exercise - the biggest node is a forum that uses Nano (Nendly), the second a payment processor (Kappture).

Many exchanges (Kraken, Binance, Huobi, Kucoin) also run nodes, both because they profit from the network and because running a node allows them to confirm Nano deposits, independently and trustlessly.

To dispel any possible doubts - Nano has no inflation. As opposed to Bitcoin's bad image in terms of energy usage, Nano is so energy efficient the network could run on a single windmill. Nano is fully distributed, and the dev team holds only 0.3%.

I hope I've made clear why Nano's incentivization of decentralization makes it a strong contender for a store of value, possibly moreso than Bitcoin. Either way, everyone should have at least a 1% allocation to Nano, in case this does happen.

What I would obviously love to see is for you and @PaxosGlobal to look into Nano and add it to your list of supported currencies. I believe having an institution such as yours validate Nano would be a huge boon to it, and I believe you can see the value in what Nano offers.

In case you're looking for ways to get in touch, @Nano and @ColinLeMahieu should have you covered. https://nano.org/en/connect  has more contact information, and obviously if you have any questions I'm also available (though not part of the team).

If you've taken the time to read this far, then thank you very much for your time and for your consideration. Thank you for what you're doing with Paxos, and I wish you all the best!