# Counterparty Foundation Election 2015 (March 19th - April 16th) **URL:** \ **Category:** Counterparty\ **Created:** [March 19, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://forums.counterparty.io/t/counterparty-foundation-election-2015-march-19th-april-16th/951 "2015-03-19T12:47:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![brighton36](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex004/user_avatar/forums.counterparty.io/brighton36/32/83_2.png) [@brighton36](https://forums.counterparty.io/u/brighton36)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2015, 8:28pm UTC](https://forums.counterparty.io/t/counterparty-foundation-election-2015-march-19th-april-16th/951/7 "2015-03-21T20:28:43Z")
## Hello Everyone, it’s me! Chris DeRose here… What’s up party people! If you’re reading this, you probably know who I am already. But in case you don’t recognize me, I’m the incumbent Community Director of the Counterparty foundation. [https://www.chrisderose.com/assets/profile-c5752821cd35dcd0d30b5729e0c51014.jpeg](https://www.chrisderose.com/assets/profile-c5752821cd35dcd0d30b5729e0c51014.jpeg) - [Proof of Stake](http://counterpartychain.io/address/186sRhi5Ux1eKGzx5vRdq1ueGGB5NKLKRr) (Wallet) - [Proof of Indentity](http://www.blockscan.com/txInfo/11611932) (Broadcast) ## Who am I? I’m a journalist, a programmer, and a public advocate of crypto-currency that lives in South Florida. I’ve run a technology consulting company in Fort Lauderdale for a little over ten years, and have been programming in some form or another for almost twenty years. I discovered Bitcoin sometime in late 2010, and have been increasingly investing my time and attention to the crypto-currency space ever since. For a more detailed account of who I am, head on over to [chrisderose.com](https://www.chrisderose.com). ## What have I done for you thus far? Besides the normal day-to-day job of representing counterparty’s interests online, in chat rooms, and forums, I have also provided consultation to various members of industry, bitcoin companies, and venture capitalists. In a more public capacity, I have achieved the following in my very short three-month interim term thus far: - Published a number of articles on Counterparty public journals, representing counterparty’s values - Wrote a [counterparty\_ruby](https://github.com/brighton36/counterparty_ruby) gem for interfacing with the Counterpartyd server in ruby - Delivered [numerous talks on Counterparty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lErE0qcXoWw&list=PL_tKdX3tRrh4PeZETiPR7LFLbEl1X8vyH#t=1214) at conferences - Started a [youtube channel dedicated to educating the public about Counterparty](https://www.youtube.com/user/cderose36), which has (at the time of writing) 75 videos and a bit over ten-thousand views - [Won the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon](http://www.miamibitcoinhackathon.com/) with [a submission that is primarily designed around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlmk5tnoKBQ) the Counterparty software ## My Values and Beliefs I think the values of all candidates for this position should be delineated in a formal capacity, and as such, I’m going to outline my values below. Additionally here’s my [long-term forecast of our Bitcoin future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31XbdzNsNcg). **Bitcoin Maximalism** I am an unapologetic Bitcoin maximalist. I have seen countless alt-chains come and go, and while there may be room for a chain other than Bitcoin’s, I don’t believe it’s worth our time to be distracted by this remote possibility at the current time. **Meta-coins are with us, not against us. Alt-chains are against us** I do not make disparaging statements about Omni, or Colored Coins. While I believe Counterparty is the superior technology in the metacoin space, I also believe that there is benefit in competing metacoin implementations. I believe our actual competition exists with technologies such as Ripple and (maybe) Ethereum/Bitshares. **Counterparty is Bitcoin** Central to all my advocacy is the equivocation of Counterparty and Bitcoin. Counterparty is to Bitcoin what CSS is to HTML. This is the primary reason I gravitated to Counterparty in the first place. **Mobile Integration should be a primary focus** I believe that the best place for Counterparty to grow is via integration with the mobile Bitcoin wallet designers. This integration may take a while, but I do believe that Counterparty has a very immediate ability to provide “killer apps” once tokens are send and receivable in user’s preffered Bitcoin wallet software. **Counterparty’s primary source of growth will come from its developers** Developers, developers, developers! While competing 2.0 platforms are primarily focused on growing their community via fundraising and stock-ownership, my belief is that the way to grow a 2.0 community is by courting to developers, and their projects. **XCP is not a pump** I do not pump XCP. Frankly I’d prefer XCP to stay ‘cheap’ as I believe this will aid in our ability to court developers. I don’t discourage people from purchasing XCP, but I don’t encourage people either. I don’t believe that we should be pumping counterparty as an altcoin. **Counterparty is Open Source. Not a company.** Ethereum, Bitshares, and countless others in this space “fundraised” for their development. This makes them, IMO, companies and not open-source platforms. Counterparty is a sustainable project in the same way Bitcoin is a sustainable project, because it never raised money. There is a uniquely egalitarian structure to what we’re doing in the 2.0 space. This is an important feature of Counterparty, and should be expressed at such. **Bitcoin is not a currency** To be clear, Bitcoin does all of the things that currencies do, but Bitcoin does so much more! As such I have adopted the opinion that Bitcoin is a protocol for settlement and value transfer. Bitcoins themselves are a useful commodity, which will be expended as the protocol grows. Counterparty is a logical outcome of this belief. **Having fun and taking our time!** There are many advocates in this space which feel that cryptocurrency should be presented as a imminently disruptive technology that will cause the incumbents to fail spectacularly and in short time. Or alternatively, there are those that feel Bitcoin will be co-opted by suits from wall street, and that professionalism and conformity is the path towards adoption. I believe that this movement will take a good while to manifest into the disruptive force it’s being billed as. I further believe that a message that provides quality content, coupled with responsible fun, will be more accessible to the general public and provide a more sustainable growth path for us, as our community matures. ## Ain’t no party like a Counterparty! Hopefully you like my platform and I can continue working for you! I do this work for fun, the challenge of understanding the world around me, and the satisfaction of making a difference. Thank-you for your consideration everyone! It’s been an honor to be your director for this short time thus far, and I would love to keep the party going all year long. (Later Party People!) --- _[View the full topic](https://forums.counterparty.io/t/counterparty-foundation-election-2015-march-19th-april-16th/951)._