Skip to main content
Bitcoin was designed as sound, deflationary digital money with predictable scarcity. This makes BTC excellent as a store of value and medium of exchange—digital gold. However, using BTC for application-layer services creates fundamental problems. Some projects attempt to use BTC as “gas” for computational services or try to fund long-term data storage with one-time BTC payments. These approaches misunderstand what BTC is and create economic problems. Kontor addresses this by introducing KOR, a token with economic properties purpose-built for application-layer services—gas metering and storage incentives. This allows BTC to remain what it is (digital gold) while enabling the functionality that applications need.

​
BTC is Digital Gold, KOR is Digital Gasoline

Gold’s value comes from scarcity and durability—you hold it, you don’t burn it. Gasoline’s value comes from consumption—it powers activity, and its price reflects supply-and-demand balance. If gold were used as fuel, either it would be too expensive to use (making services uneconomical), or its consumption would be too high (destroying its monetary properties). The solution is to separate the store-of-value function from the utility function. How it works in practice:
  • BTC remains the unit of account—assets are priced in BTC, exchanges quote pairs against BTC, settlement happens in BTC
  • KOR is a metered input—users acquire what they need for immediate use through atomic swaps
  • Users pay both BTC fees (to miners for inclusion) and KOR fees (to the protocol for execution and storage)
  • The dual-token model ensures neither fee cannibalizes the other

​
Economic Alignment with Bitcoin

Every Kontor operation requires a Bitcoin transaction that pays Bitcoin miners. This is direct and unavoidable. The more successful Kontor becomes, the more valuable Bitcoin blockspace becomes. This stands in contrast to sidechains and rollups, which explicitly aim to move transaction volume off Bitcoin. Kontor’s architecture is not parasitic—it strengthens Bitcoin’s fee market and contributes to long-term security.
For the perpetual emissions model that funds storage, see Perpetual Economics.