Core DAO: Transforming Bitcoin from a Simple Means of Value Storage to a Productive Asset through Innovative Scalability Solutions

Bitcoin, a value storage asset, is now managing about $2 trillion in wealth, and various countries are considering using Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. Against this backdrop, PANews exclusively interviewed Rich Rines, an early contributor to Core DAO, to discuss in depth how to promote the transformation of Bitcoin from a simple means of value storage to a productive asset through innovative scalability solutions.

Background

PANews: How did you get into the Bitcoin field?

Rich:

I was first introduced to Bitcoin in 2013. Although I had heard about it from a college professor in 2011, I did not truly understand its significance until 2013, when I was attracted by the potential of Bitcoin as a non-sovereign store of value (or digital gold).

By 2017, I had been working in cryptocurrency full-time, working as the head of fund flow engineering at Coinbase for four years. I later joined Core because I saw that no one was solving the scalability problem of Bitcoin. We believed that cryptocurrency had deviated from the original decentralized concept, so we decided to start with Bitcoin, the most decentralized asset, and work on solving its scalability problem.

PANews: Our experiences are very similar. I studied Crypto in 2014, devoted myself to the crypto industry in 2017 and launched PANews. Bitcoin breaking through $100,000 is an important milestone. What do you think drove this achievement?

Rich:

Bitcoin is now "too big to fail". Its legitimacy has been recognized and it has become part of the traditional financial system, no longer just an alternative. It is now mainly used as a store of value asset, managing about $2 trillion in wealth. Bitcoin has now become a 10,000-coin collateral asset, and even countries are considering using it as a strategic reserve. I think its market value will at least catch up with gold in the future, or even higher. Bitcoin has become more accessible through tools such as ETFs, and Core further provides a faster and lower-cost expansion solution.

Motivation for Building Core DAO

PANews: The approval of the Bitcoin ETF is like a watershed moment for Bitcoin. What motivated you to establish Core DAO?

Rich:

Core was co-founded by a group of initial contributors. We have observed that the entire cryptocurrency industry has deviated from the original intention of decentralization. It is worth noting that Bitcoin is the first stop for most people to enter the cryptocurrency field. Even if some people later turn to Ethereum or Solana, Bitcoin is still the common starting point for everyone. We hope to return to the original mission of Bitcoin. But after in-depth research and analysis, we found that it is impossible to implement certain functions on the Bitcoin base layer. Bitcoin as a settlement layer does have the characteristics of being slow, expensive, and inflexible, but it is precisely these characteristics that make it a high-quality value storage tool.

I've bought some very expensive Bitcoins over the past decade. But now, Bitcoin has moved from being a medium of exchange to a collateral asset. People can use it to borrow stablecoins, which is the right way to make Bitcoin accessible to billions of people. Core's mission is to make Bitcoin accessible to billions of people. Although we are still in the very early stages, we are very passionate about it. We believe that the model of using Bitcoin as a collateral asset to obtain stablecoins can truly achieve mass adoption of Bitcoin.

Introduction to CoreDAO

PANews: Can you introduce Core DAO to Chinese readers in a simple and easy-to-understand way?

Rich:

Core actually consists of two main parts. The first part is the Bitcoin staking product, and the second part is the Bitcoin ecosystem built on the EVM. In terms of ecosystem, Core is currently the largest Bitcoin ecosystem on the EVM, with more than $1 billion in total locked value (TVL) and hundreds of thousands of daily active users.

In our ecosystem, there are already more than 100 decentralized applications running, and more are under development and expected to be launched soon. Our goal is to make Bitcoin work and allow users to participate in Bitcoin DeFi. At present, about 80-90% of the TVL of the Core ecosystem exists in the form of Bitcoin. Users can use Bitcoin for staking or use Bitcoin as gas fees. These are typical L1 public chain mechanisms, but our ecosystem is built on Bitcoin.

We launched the world's first Bitcoin staking product in early April 2024. Currently, about $800 million of Bitcoin is earning passive income on our platform. The special thing about this product is that it is non-custodial, and users don't need to worry about multi-signature or trust issues. In November 2024, we also launched a dual staking mechanism, where users can hold CORE and BTC at the same time to