Welcome!

DIF is an entity that fits into a very complex context in my opinion. To date it may be misunderstood and not very useful but I think it could become very useful and interesting in the coming years with the advent of the Platform and the broader Evolution project and all the opportunities it will bring. It could be that link (although not directly connected) between people who "speak different languages", therefore between the Fiat world and the Dash/Crypto world. Thinking in the long term, I will prefer to see the DIF remain alive rather than the DCG and the Trust. We will see later if this is true. For now, for me it's YES.

Expanded discussion + Q&A about this proposal on the most recent Incubator WEEKLY: https://www.youtube.com/live/GbTvR9ijA4Q?si=ITw3cVOc-WdO6txf

This proposal changes its text more times than my wife changes her shoes on our Friday night out! I can barely keep up!

Does your wife change her shoes on your Friday night out?
I only noticed one update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN-S6mN427g

Why did you buy something that can't be sold? And so, you have a piece of shit that no one needs.
You're arrogant that you ask for more money and you think everyone is a moron.
Sell a piece of shit now and apologize to the DASH community!

Seems to me you, and many people here have NO conception of what the DIF is about! How do we fix this? Have you watched this?

https://www.youtube.com/live/GbTvR9ijA4Q?si=NTD_yGTWDsRhig86

Of course I watched! And I say DIF are scammers who can't sell their shit!
Sven admits that his investments are crap.
Who will punish those responsible for the disastrous DASH situation?

Bitcoin is the best investment and hedge for DASH.
But DIF is so stupid and squandered his money that DASH is going to hell...

Where did Sven admits "that his investments are crap"? He doesn't and they aren't. And it's not "his" investments. Many were made by our previous set of supervisors.

Not only BTC. There are other cryptos much more profitable

Helium mobile's price increased 635.5% this week, 2618.6% this month.

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/helium-mobile

...and the stupid masternodes keep ignoring the gold I proposed, and keep paying for Evo development .......


https://www.dash.org/forum/index.php?threads/pre-proposal-integrating-low-power-iot-devices-to-a-dash-blockchain.52043/page-3#post-237165

I think the naysayers are viewing the purpose of the DIF incorrectly. It's not really to make money, though that should be an objective, but to create partnerships with services that the Dash ecosystem can benefit from. These types of partnerships usually require a lot more value (money?) than the DIF ever collected. That is the reason for the war chest, to build it up so that when opportunity strikes, the DIF can haul in the fish. Please reconsider. It's been a long hard bear market, and I don't think we can survive without actively wooing relationships in the future. Lets use this one thing that I think Ryan did well, the DIF.

The price is $30.50, we are kinda REKT right now, The DIF can raise cash later in the bull market and foster those partnerships in the bear market when it will be cheaper to do so.

No they can’t, by that point, if they don’t already have tens of millions of USD worth of DASH, they won’t be able to take advantage of a bullish market. And the real players are in that range of funding! We absolutely need to build our war chest yesterday, but it wasn’t possible.

If DIF is not to make money, then why do they call it Dash INVESTEMENT Foundation?

In what do they invest, if not in money?

I can’t even…. Ugh, you have no clue or just have to FUD constantly.

I totally agree with this.

We're somewhat surprised by the number of No votes so far. If the community sees no value in the DIF then we'll have to accept that.

We just wanted to point out that, at least as of now, our funding request is not in competition to anyone else's. There are over 8500 Dash in the budget this month. All the proposals so far (minus that scam affiliate marketing bounty) amount to just over 6200 Dash. Is letting the remainder go unused preferable to creating value from it?

Honestly, I think you've been too quiet, and people forgot the real purpose of the DIF, please do some PR, post and answer questions. Is there time to talk to someone with a show like TDL or Incubator? I myself think this is essential for Dash growth, as much as I think marketing will be (another project that I'm hoping is building a war chest) Things are about to happen and we need to get prepared.

Before asking a war chest, you guys from the DIF should disclose, whether the 10 current investments yield any returns or regular income?

Please do watch the portfolio review in the presentation above, starting from around 11:50 min.

Startups do not typically pay dividends. It would be highly unusual for us to receive regular income and we don't. For an overview of the nature of what we do, please watch from 8:05.

They have to the best of their abilities. Have you not watched or read the reports?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC3t8q_4Y2Y&pp=ygUIRGFzaCBESUY%3D

https://www.youtube.com/live/KUZE69vLxZE?si=fN13tsFnLAUh_C5b

You might be reading the no votes incorrectly.

I for one am having a very hard time with this proposal. I support the DIF, and I am very grateful for the work that DIF members do, but I also don't think this is the right time to be building a war chest. I would however support a proposal to pay for ongoing expenses.

In my opinion we should be putting money towards the DIF when the Dash price is relatively high and we have more money than things we can effectively spend it on. Then in crypto bear markets we should sell non crypto investments to be able to help the Dash price.

From your other reply: "Our mission is to ensure Dash gets to benefit from commercial successes paid for by treasury money and to help expand the Dash ecosystem."

In the end I believe the DIF should be seen as a valuable tool for the network. So far we have only put money into the DIF but in the last bear market the DIF didn't help Dash. To me this is a failure, the DIF shouldn't be a place where we just send money to never see a return. I believe we need to learn from those mistakes to not repeat them.

You seem to have have a very different understanding of the purpose and reason for existence of the DIF than the current board of supervisors. None of the currently active supervisors were there when the DIF was conceived, and I know you've been around a long time yourself, so feel free to correct me if you recollect things differently. The way we understand it is explained in the first few minutes of the video above.

The DIF was and is first and foremost a way to safeguard treasury payouts from bankrolling someone else's commercial success without Dash getting its fair share and without being able to enforce any conditions post-payment. An example was shown in the video, there have been many more, as I'm sure you're painfully aware. With the DIF, a startup promising to create anything for Dash doesn't just get a no-strings-attached gift directly from the treasury that it can take and run. Instead, the DIF takes money from the treasury and provides it to the startups in the form of legal equity with all enforceable rights of a shareholder.

The DIF's mission is not to be an active trader to support or level out the Dash price. Sure, we also do want to create a financial gain in the process and if our startups become successes, yes, we can use those gains to support the Dash price. Ryan Taylor during the inception of the DIF offered the idea to buy back and burn Dash when the time comes. But a) such price support is not by itself the main driver and b) the time hasn't come.

I already explained a) and my justification for b) is that we're simply still at a much to small scale to really move the needle of the Dash market. Even if we were able to liquidate everything at the estimated $3+m quoted in the video and threw all this at Dash, it would go up in a poof and barely move the needle for more than a day or two. And we'd be left with nothing afterwards.

> in the last bear market the DIF didn't help Dash ... DIF shouldn't be a place where we just send money to never see a return

Two things:

1) If you follow the reasoning above, you'll see that the return is not in helping Dash out of a bear market. Then what is it? Without the DIF, there wouldn't have been a Dash Direct. That product got killed due to external factors, but the community sure was proud of it while it ran and it was a great asset to our ecosystem. Without the DIF, there wouldn't have been an IRA-compatible Dash Trust. Yes, that got killed too, but again, the community sure was enthusiastic about it when it was launched. The fact that it ultimately didn't get enough subscriptions is a different story and outside the DIF's control. Without the DIF, Dash wouldn't be featured in the Edge wallet. Without the DIF, Crowdnode possibly wouldn't have trustless masternode shares. 88i came to us and wanted to build a backend business process on Platform. What a great asset that would be to show off a high-volume real-life use case in a successful business! Unfortunately, Platform was delayed, and then delayed some more, and then delayed again due to a certain other Dash org you may be familiar with.

2) Our first investment, Ready Raider, was done at the end of 2020. Just three years ago. And, btw, the decision to invest in Ready Raider, our first flame-out, came directly from the MNO community, not from the DIF itself, see also video from 13:15. All our other investments are even younger. Now please also watch from 8:05, the very first point: "long-term". As an angel investor, you need to be prepared to stay in your investments 5+/- years. Some companies may offer a fat exit faster, some never. But if you want to yank the rug out from under your entrepreneurs after two years because you have no patience or liquidity problems, this business is not for you. Whether we want to be in this business, also in light of 1) above, is ultimately something the Dash community must decide. But in any case, "never see a return" is simply way too premature.

To start off I did say: "I support the DIF, and I am very grateful for the work that DIF members do, but I also don't think this is the right time to be building a war chest."

If a proposal is made by a DFO that asks for funding for a goal you can support the cause of the DFO without thinking it's a good time to pursue that goal. I think because this proposal groups multiple uses for the money requested for the DIF, if someone is against one of those things, they will have no choice but to be against the entire proposal.

I strongly believe it is not the right time for the DIF to be building a war chest. I'll provide my reasoning as to why. Let's simplify things and say that there are 3 ways the Dash price could go, stable, up or down.

Stable or Down: If the Dash prices stays at around 30$ or even goes down the best thing we could do with money that the treasury provides is invest in people, either for development, research, marketing or biz dev. Every dollar spent here is important, having less money to spend and instead putting money in the DIF away for later use increases the chance that the goals of the project would not be met.

Up: If the Dash price goes up from 30$, let's say to 100$, it would be much better to put money towards the DIF at that point, not now.

Since this proposal lists the first reason you are asking for money as "[...] we'd like to start building a war chest for potential future investment opportunities" based on the reasoning above I do not support this proposal.

----------------------------

I probably do indeed have a different understanding of the purpose and reason for existence of the DIF. My belief was basically that the mission was very broad and basically that it should be "through investments help Dash".

You have raised a few ways that investments can help Dash.

"The DIF was and is first and foremost a way to safeguard treasury payouts from bankrolling someone else's commercial success without Dash getting its fair share and without being able to enforce any conditions post-payment". I agree that this is one of the powerful use cases for the DIF. On a side-note my recollection is actually that that was not even part of the original mission of the DIF when it was conceived, but instead that it came very slightly later after a few times where DFOs did not live up to their end of the bargain. I might be wrong though, it's been quite some time.

I think that another way investments can help Dash is diversification. Having all lived through very painful bear markets we should ask ourselves how can the DIF help in those situations. It's obviously not selling illiquid investments in crypto companies as some here would suggest. I don't want anyone to think that's what I was suggesting.

However I do think that the DIF should be used to invest out of the crypto industry when the price of Dash is relatively high, and sell those investments if the price of Dash goes way down. Just having this tool would most likely give investors greater confidence that Dash can support their teams during bear markets causing bear markets to be less severe as less investors would pull out.

On the other hand with all of the crypto space often in a bear market together, if all DIF investments are in crypto projects well everything looks bad causing confidence to be even lower.

How would the DIF help in that case? Look, it's been a long hard road, but they are right, we need to be ready for partnering again. We haven't been in that position in a long time, but this is very important for reaching out for more users via other projects, working with traditional businesses, I don't know what is going to pop up that could benefit Dash, but heck, lets be ready in case something good happens! Don't throw the baby out with the RT water, he had an amazingly good idea here! This is Dash's secret weapon, lets get ready to use it!

And why is he reading the NO votes incorrectly?

Because YOU, as a CEO/CTO, you do not allow the masternodes to "vote the numbers", witch means you do not allow the masternodes to vote numbered distinct poll options that will clarify everyone's subbtle position on this specific subject. In your rude governance system, only Yes/No is allowed.

So you are the real responsible for this mess.

https://mnowatch.org/votethenumbers/

Also, instead of asking 600 dash (that are likely to be rejected), why dont you alternatively allow the masternodes to vote for a range between 0 dash and the budget remaining?

That way you may get some money to cover the expenses.

You can use a tool in order to set the masternodes free to vote that way. This tool is extremely hated by the DCG, they refuse the idea since 2016. But I coded it, so you can use it.

https://mnowatch.org/votethenumbers/

And you can see below the reason of the extreme hate of DCG when I ask to put the "vote the numbers" functionality into the core of the dash protocol.

https://www.dash.org/forum/index.php?threads/pre-proposal-would-you-like-to-be-able-to-vote-with-number.9081/

Would you like to be able to cast votes using numbers and extract the results as an average?

YES Votes: 9 -16.1%
demo Cointastic Leonidas revelations86 healey cibrigue blockchaintech ICJR Mateus Medeiros

NO Votes: 41 - 73.2%
aleix splawik21 tungfa itscrazybroy idakee JGCMiner RYANTAYLOR TaoOfSatoshi GNULinuxGuy qwizzie QUANTUMEXPLORER bandidorl camosoul dotbeee spatula kot joe zippy martinf jarroyo JZA halso piggy DashNation Schnuppdog Darren Balwin bigshort KevinStalker MichaelQ Dima GuerraDiValute solarguy Acedian slava_m Biltong Chadrick GoodVibe TheSingleton AnttiKaikkonen Ftoole Coqui33

OTHER Votes: 4 - 7.1%
noobtrader GrandMasterDash TroyDASH TheDashGuy

yes, but only for the MEDIAN average Votes: 2 - 3.6%
dashly PietroSperoni

Total voters 56


The 2 CEOs (the previous RyanTaylor and the current QuantumExmplorer) are among the vast majority of the NO voters.

I think the remain of the budget should be used in order to increase the number of the real persons that participate into the Dash community.

Because we are very few persons around, and a lot of bots and (binance type) funds.

So if you have a vote, vote for:

https://mnowatch.org/encointerUBI/

So glad to see that the DIF is awake and hungry to get back in there!

That you guys are VOLUNTEERING is absolutely unreal to me.

Thank you and godspeed.

Agreed

Volunteering means you offer money, time and effort for something.

Volunteering does not mean you to invest other people's assets, without having financial consequences in case these assets vanish.

Do you believe investing other people's assets doesn't require time and effort? It just magically happens by itself?

And can you not hold a thought for more than five minutes to consolidate your drivel into one post instead of spamming these discussions with your endless chains of self-replies?

Sorry mate, but demo nailed this one
There is no reason whatsoever to trust those individuals to make proper investment decisions which benefit us

There is even a certain risk, that we could fall victim to unfaithful conduct, meaning:
Overpriced acquiring of assets, while they secretly collect a portion as commissions from the seller.

I guess that is a hypothetical risk. That's why there are six supervisor slots that are filled by an open election. That means I can't just bring my buddy on board to vote with me. And to get at least 4 out of 6 strangers to collude would probably be very hard. Not that anyone ever tried, lol.

In any case, wouldn't you have the same risk with pretty much any investment fund? All I can tell you is, when I went to Salt Lake City to give the presentation in the video above, I paid for my own travel expenses. So much for benefiting from this role.

I guess to nuclear solution to eliminate that risk would be to kill the DIF. If you have any other idea, please share.

> "There is no reason whatsoever to trust those individuals to make proper investment decisions which benefit us"

Please read my response to quantumexplorer above, at 1). Even strictly financially speaking, given where we are in the life cycle of seed investments, I think we've done pretty well. Not enough reason? OTOH, investment decisions made directly by the DAO have turned out much worse, see Ready Raider.

If you dont have financial or legal consequences when investing other people's assets, probably you spend neither time nor effort, or if you spend it is just too little, because you are not afraid at all of the failure.

whats

your

problem

with threads?

Please take profits from the shares.
Spend your profits on powerful advertising!

Startup shares are not traded on a stock exchange where you can "take profits" as you wish. Please watch the presentation from 8:05 min.

And the DIF is not a marketing organization. We have neither expertise nor capacity to do advertising.

That’s not the purpose of the DIF.

Voting NO on filling the war chest and repeating what we did last bull market, which was to dump Dash to buy over priced asset in the bull mania and then hold them through the bear market. You had the entire bear market to buy assets, instead you didn't because you didn't have the money.

Please float two separate proposals, one which covers your OPEX and the other for your war chest to enter new investments. I would at least consider voting to cover your ongoing expenses.

Also, while the $CACAO LP is going nicely, you missed the boat with the liquidity auction which would have netted you much more value than simply buying the cacao later like you did and I believe you got the $RUNE at about $6.50, so you are now approximately at break even.

Ultimately, I think the charter needs to be adjusted to invest, or trade in such a way that is de-correlated to this market so the DIF can put money into Dash when it is cheap and raise money when it is expensive. Raising 600 Dash now for the next three months to sell so you can invest is God knows what, because you won't tell us, has no positive impact on Dash because you have never realised any gains into Dash is not something I am keen to do.

Would you mind elaborating on which overpriced assets we bought in the bull mania? And how you determined they were overpriced?

Dash's bull mania peaked in May 2021. We made some investments before, we made some after. Did you watch the presentation?

I'm not sure, what actually your argument is. Are you saying we should have sold Dash for fiat during the bull run, not made investments but kept the fiat, waited for the bear market, and then acquired assets from the saved fiat during the bear? Sure, with 20/20 hindsight that sounds like a great "should have".

However, we don't have a crystal ball. Our mission is to ensure Dash gets to benefit from commercial successes paid for by treasury money and to help expand the Dash ecosystem. Our mission isn't to speculate on the markets. Without the DIF in between, things like Dash Direct would either not have happened or they would've gone directly to the treasury, taken the money just the same, bull or bear, and turned into another Living Room of Satoshi. With the DIF, even though the Dash Direct service ultimately got yanked, we as Dash community are due a nice chunk of cash regardless.

So yes, to fulfill our mission, we invest funds when they are avaiable to us and good opportunities present themselves. Plus, Dash used during a bull market also goes further, offsetting potentially higher valuations if that should in fact be the case.

But we evaluate investment targets on their own commercial merit. Startup shares at any given time are not necessarily overvalued just because the crypto markets are bullish that moment. Similarly, the exposure of a company's business model to the crypto markets and what that means for its expected success is only one of many factors in our evaluation.

Blaming us for not buying assets during the bear market "because you didn't have the money" is uncalled-for for a number of reasons.

1.) We DID buy assets during the bear market. Not as many, but we did.
2.) We intentionally decided not to put strain on the treasury to allow DCG more breathing room. We refrained from asking for funding since March 2022. So yes, of course that means our coffers weren't filled to the rim. Are you going to fault us for that?
3.) During a bear market, deal flow for crypto-relevant businesses also dries up. What Sven explained in the video about there not being a liquid market to sell equity on demand also applies to buying it. We don't have the capacity to aggressively generate deal flow, so we're mostly relying on opportunities from referrals and word of mouth. There simply wasn't much to speak of as crypto in general fell from grace and made room for an AI craze.

> you missed the boat with the liquidity auction which would have netted you much more value than simply buying the cacao later

We didn't miss the boat. We consciously decided not to participate. We had a call with the Maya team back in March, but they refused to reveal their identity or allow any kind of KYC even under NDA. The Maya protocol had not launched yet and was unproven. We were supposed to transfer our funds not to a smart contract that could be audited, but to a multisig address with mostly unknown key holders. Blame us for being too risk-averse if you want, but we didn't want to take the risk of a rug-pull or a technical bug (remember The DAO?) leading us to do this to you guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2yfW16ghg

> Ultimately, I think the charter needs to be adjusted to invest, or trade in such a way that ...

You seem to have a lot of good ideas. The problem with realizing most of them is that we simply don't have the man power. We have a supervisor slot open. Would you like to volunteer?

Thanks for the answer, I was referring to the $RUNE purchases and then subsequent death hold through the bear market despite me begging you to sell it at $13 the final blow off for $RUNE. I will change my votes to YES on this proposal when the Dash price is well in bull market territory.

ok.. And now tell us about Ionia/Craypay company.

Can you find a buyer who is willing to buy the 1,760,000 USD worth Ionia company shares that the Dash community currently holds?

Because if you cannot find that buyer, then the Dash community holds 0 USD in shares rather than 1,760,000 USD.

And, by the way, where is Ionia/Craypay headquarters? What address?
In their website https://www.ionia.io/contact-us they just mention Tempe, AZ.
Do I have to search the whole town to find them?

Agreed that this should be for operating expenses as opposed to war chest at this time.

There is a serious accusation by drkrooster, who is a dash member since Dec 26, 2014, against the DIF.

drkrooster said about the DIF: "$2,154,978.87 down the drain, and nothing was done."

https://www.dash.org/forum/index.php?threads/dif-election-2023-candidate-q-a-thread.53524/#post-235209

What DIF answers to that? Is drkrooster telling the truth or lying?

Can someone contact Ionia, the company that Dash is holding 1,760,000 USD in shares?

https://www.ionia.io/contact-us

Do you doubt this company exists? Or that we hold shares? Or what are you trying to get at?

Where is Ionia/Craypay headquarters? What address?
In their website (https://www.ionia.io/contact-us) they just mention Tempe, AZ.
Do I have to search the whole town to find them?

Email: contact@ionia.io
Location: Tempe, AZ


Location Tempe? where exactly?

https://www.linkedin.com/company/ioniaplatform

Locations Primary
7890 S Hardy Dr
Ste 104
Tempe, Arizona 85284, US

Can a Dash representative go there an meet with Ionia people?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B020'44.1%22N+111%C2%B057'17.4%22W

Take a google street view. Can you find Ionia company around?

Watch carefully of what Sven said about Ionia.

https://youtu.be/KUZE69vLxZE?t=867

A great company, but he cannot disclose any information about it.

And what if we want to fire sail Dash's shares of Ionia.

As Sven said " we have to find a buyer for the shares"

https://youtu.be/KUZE69vLxZE?t=1054

> fire sail
https://www.sailmagazine.com/.image/t_share/MTQ4OTg4MDgwODAzMjI2Njc5/sailboatgalleyfire.jpg


I mean fire sale!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbAqWA-dxvw

After the Valkyrie fiasco, that costed a fortune for the Dash community, how do you dare to ask for more funding?

And what kind of irrational beasts are the ones who will vote "yes" for this proposal?

Why do you call Valkyrie a fiasco? And how has it "costed a fortune for the Dash community"?

Look at this:

https://youtu.be/KUZE69vLxZE?t=1100

I see an estimated 67% gain there. What's your point?

Thats the problem. It is estimated gain, not real. Can you make it real? Can you take the money?

The same with Ionia/Craypay. You invested 300k, you estimated of having 1700k, but is this money real?

Here you are, the irrational beasts.

https://mnowatch.org/latestlink_theresultsdashd.html?1=DIF_FUNDING_2024Q1-3_MONTHS

https://paragonpress.co.uk/works/animal-spirit-large


"Here is wisdom, and whoever has a mind in him, let him vote the number of the beast, for it is the number of a human."

I would like to note that this proposal, IMO, is very separate from the DCG proposal and should be about the DIF strategy / support in general. The costs to merge two financial statements is trivial (I estimate a couple of hours of a person's time). Unless someone can clarify what other costs are involved with the DIF owning DCG, these two proposals should only be related in the sense that if the DIF doesn't continue to exist because of lack of funding it will obviously aren't them from owning DCG. To clarify a little more, I am in full support of the DIF getting its required funding but as previously explained, their operations and existence are for two very different purposes.

Brian is motivating a "Yes".
Why does that cause; RobbyDash, Sergio87, johndude to vote No?
That seems counterintuitive :-)

Does the DAO want DIF to have enough cash-flow to:
- Stay long on the Maya LP that is currently there?
- Have funds to invest in new startups if logic/good opportunities emerge, or help DFOs that are in their portfolio, e.g. DCG (soon), if critically needed?

Just to clarify, I was not suggesting that the DIF doesn't need funding (and I do not think this is asking for an unreasonable amount), I just wanted to make it clear that very little of the funding associated to this would be associated to the ownership of DCG. I support this proposal.

Thanks for your support!

Yes the costs to take on DCG aren't that significant in the big picture. It's more like the likelihood of it happening helped push us over the edge to ask for funding again. But it's only one of several reasons as outlined in the proposal. We never claimed it to be the main one.

Brian i appreciate your assessment,
gonna vote against it according to your advice.

me too voting no, thank you for the clarification Brian

Thanks for explaining Brian, will vote NO then

How soon is the Coinshares acquisition of Valkyrie going thru, can't you pay your Director fees out of that? Thanks for agreeing to hold DCG shares until a better solution is worked out, but 600 Dash/cycle is too high and ask for me.

From reading the announcement carefully, it's pretty clear that it will not lead to a cash inflow for us before we have to pay our bills.

Quoting from the official press release at
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coinshares-secures-strategic-option-to-acquire-valkyrie-funds-301990745.html

It says "CoinShares ... secured an exclusive **option** to acquire Valkyrie Funds". The option will remain active until March 31, 2024. "Option" means it's not a done deal yet. They still have to complete their due diligence without uncovering major stumbling blocks and obtain regulatory approval for this deal. And Valkyrie has had a strategic investor not follow through on a signed agreement before: https://valkyrieinvest.com/press/an-update-from-the-office-of-the-ceo/ These things happen, so we don't wanna get ahead of ourselves and will have to wait until the deal is really in the bag.

It also says they are acquiring "Valkyrie Funds LLC, the U.S. digital asset manager's investment advisory business ..., from Valkyrie Investments Inc." So it seems they only buy part of the whole company. We need to get more clarity how the LLC and the Inc. relate and what exactly that means for our stake. We contacted Valkyrie to find out more and we will update the community as soon as we have more clarity. With the holidays around the corner, don't expect any news this year though. Stay tuned!

I think this DIF budget proposal is coming a bit too early and is asking too much funding.

* Dash price is still very very low
* DCG decision proposal has just popped up on the network, yet this DIF budget proposal seems to consider it as passed already and is already looking to offset costs to owning DCG shares
* building a war chest for potential future investment opportunities with high risk & high reward profiles, should be done when Dash has recovered more from the bottom. Not when Dash is still bottoming out.

My view with regards to priority with increased DAO budget :

1 - DCG (who will increase their requested budget proposal amount from now on)
2 - Dash Incubator (they are also likely to increase their requested budget proposal amount from now on
3 - Dash Marketing and Promotion (to prepare for promoting upcoming Dash Evolution)

And pretty much at the bottom right now :

The DIF

I don't know if DCG over the years had other proposal owners, but the two big ones I'm aware of alone took over $17 million from the treasury over the years:
https://mnowatch.org/proposalowners/?po=glennaustin
https://mnowatch.org/proposalowners/?po=quantumexplorer

Seventeen million. What have we gotten out of that money? Instant send and chain locks - years ago. Other than that? Promises, delays, more promises, more delays. Platform may be around the corner. Maybe. Has been around the corner for years. If it does come, what will it look like? And is that worth 17 million USD and counting?

Most of that money went to support the private life of people in the form of salaries and other compensation. Would be fine if they delivered more than $17 million worth of value in return, but I'm not seeing it. One could even be cynical and say they have a vested interest in keeping Platform "around the corner" or releaseing it piecemeal just so they can keep suckling the sweet sweet treasury teats a bit longer. Looks to me like we're throwing good money after bad.

OTOH, here we have an organization that, if the POs are to be believed, doesn't take a dime privately. Nobody lives off of our treasury money at the DIF. No conflict of interest. Yet they deliver. I watched the video. I know there hasn't been a payout, but I also know this takes time and they are on the right track. I've worked at a startup, we needed several financing rounds and it took years before the early investors got their payday. That's just how it is. Maybe the 8x figure should be discounted, some of the other investments he didn't talk about could be worth less than that book value. But even if the return is 5x or even 2x, it's still a lot better than what I've seen from DCG or many other proposals around here. So wouldn't it make sense to put our money where we get something in return?

If the DCG decision proposal passes, then i would not have a problem supporting the DIF with increased costs for holding the DCG shares. But in my view that should not amount to 3x 600 dash and should not include the building of a war chest right now for the DIF.

I don’t understand the no votes, why did we build this entity if not to use it? People who don’t want DAOs, especially ones that the network owns itself, shouldn’t be in DASH.

Let’s fill the war chest!!!