I just hope all other DIF supervisor candidates beside Sven actually do have a dash.org/forum account and are reading this thread.
I did email every candidate a link to their respective election proposal on DashCentral and to this thread right after I posted it.
How should the DIF spread its holdings in USD / DASH / Other crypto / Precious Metals (i remember the DIF used to own some gold in the past ?) to reduce its overall risk of investment loss, in what has been and perhaps still is a volatile stock market, crypto market and USD valuta price ?
It would also be nice to have some information on how the DIF is currently operating in that regard.
I wrote last year what I think the DIF should be doing, i.e. what I stand for as a candidate. I've followed that approach during my tenure so far (to the extent I can influence decisions as 1 of 6 supervisors), so it's still current:
The DIF divested out of all gold even before I joined. From what I heard, one major hurdle was custody. Apparently near-impossible to find a broker who would accept a construct like the DIF without human beneficiaries as client. The one we had AFAIK ended up having liquidity problems and it was a nightmare to get the gold, i.e. the money for it out. Darren would know more about it. We're currently almost exclusively invested in equity. One exception is RUNE, which we kept to start a liquidity pool once the ThorChain integration is live. That integration never happened and we still have the RUNE. We are looking into what to do about it, saw some suggestions on Discord.
As for actively trading other crypto or precious metals, it's almost certainly not going to happen for practical reasons: It requires substantial time commitment and comes with governance problems.
We are all volunteers. People have jobs, families, other priorities. None of us so far would be able to follow the market day by day and actively buy and sell - all without being compensated for that time. So we don't trade Dash, much less other coins.
On the governance side, decisions involving money are required to go through a supervisor vote. Normally, we meet once per week, much too slow for the fickle crypto market. The alternative would be to authorize one person to make these decisions alone (and again, that person would have to be doing that for free). I wouldn't be comfortable with putting so much power in the hands of one person.
There are ways this could theoretically be made to work - e.g. limited budget, copy trading, bots etc. - but I don't see it happening in the near future.
