I've seen quite a bit of confusion regarding the DESO and FOCUS prices and how they relate to each other so I wanted to make a post to summarize.

DESO is required to purchase FOCUS.

Imagine you're an outside fund who just discovered the ecosystem and you want to invest $1 million in FOCUS. How do you do this? First you send $1 million USDC to your wallet and purchase $1 million worth of DESO. This will increase the DESO price. Note the FOCUS price in USD will also go up (because FOCUS is based on DESO) but the FOCUS price relative to DESO will not change.

Now you use the DESO you just bought to buy FOCUS. What happens to the prices now? FOCUS price goes up in both DESO terms and USD terms. No change to the DESO price.

For the reasons outlined above, if new demand comes in and wants to buy FOCUS, there is direct buy pressure on DESO.

A helpful way to think about exposures is as follows:

*If you buy DESO and hold it, you want the price to go up. Easy.

*If you buy FOCUS and you're only interested in thinking about your FOCUS in DESO terms, then all that matters to you is the FOCUS/DESO price. This is listed directly under the FOCUS/USD price on openfund and is currently around 0.0000658.

*If you buy FOCUS and you want to think in USD terms, then you've got exposure to both DESO/USD price and FOCUS/DESO price. If DESO/USD goes up and FOCUS/DESO doesn't move, you make USD. If FOCUS/DESO goes up and DESO/USD doesn't move, you make USD. Vice versa if they fall.

Note the exact logic above applies to the OPENFUND token as well. This is precisely why the core team refers to FOCUS and OPENFUND as DESO sinks.