Author Topic: A new currency DAC - the future of Bitshares PTS  (Read 4623 times)

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Offline alphaBar

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And while some confidence in a DAC or any company can come once it achieves a dominant stable position only one that has inflexible supply rules will gain true confidence and trust.

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Offline arhag

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I personally describe money as something that has to operate within the limits of its initial supply rules. So a crypto-equity with no/defined inflation is what I'm personally distinguishing as a crypto-equity operating within the framework of a money.

I think that is an odd definition of money, but okay.

And while some confidence in a DAC or any company can come once it achieves a dominant stable position only one that has inflexible supply rules will gain true confidence and trust.

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this point.

Gold has been a decent store of value for thousands of years never mind 20.  I'm sorry you feel people don't deserve that. I think less well educated and resourced people deserve options like gold they can save in long term for themselves and also pass onto their children.

I'm not talking about people not deserving a long-term store of value. I am just saying they need to be aware of changing social conditions so they aren't left holding the bag. That will always be their responsibility. For example, it is theoretically possible for the value of gold to severely drop (even without an increase in supply due to say asteroid mining) simply because people do not value it anymore for anything other than its intrinsic value (corrosion resistant electrical contacts, satellite coating uses, some medicinal uses, etc.). That intrinsic value is much less than its current value because people are speculating that it can be a long-term store of value (with good historical evidence backing it up of course). But it is possible that this consensus could radically shift as people rely on alternatives, such as cryptocurrency, as a better store of value. Someone in a coma for 20 years during this transition who stored a lot of gold in his basement could wake up to find the majority of his purchasing power has vanished.


Offline Empirical1.1

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It's about not having to trust people to suddenly change the rules on shareholders or adjust the supply.

Currency is stable but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding it. 
Flexible companies are competitive but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding their stock or BitAssets which are backed by them.
Gold, while not stable, is your best option as a store of value, but asteroid mining will change that.

There is a gap for a true crypto-money alternative imo.
(I will also feel a lot more secure owning BitAssets long term that are backed by a crypto-money not a crypto-equity that could make some well intentioned but poor short term decisions.)

There will not be any BitAssets backed by "crypto-money" only crypto-equity. Some of the DACs will be more conservative in their attempt at world domination, and therefore may not need to dilute their crypto-equity. But that doesn't mean they will be more likely to survive against the competitor. Quite the opposite. If they don't fight hard enough, they are more likely to go bankrupt. Then the BitAssets held on that blockchain will be undercollateralized.

The confidence in a BitCurrency can come when a DAC becomes dominant and doesn't appear to have any serious threat of being displaced. Even then, you should never expect to sleep for 20 years and expect to have the same claim on the resources of the planet you had 20 years ago. If you are not willing to adapt to the changes in society, then you do not deserve to hold those claims on resources (money).

I personally describe money as something that has to operate within the limits of its initial supply rules. So a crypto-equity with no/defined inflation is what I'm personally distinguishing as a crypto-equity operating within the framework of a money.

And while some confidence in a DAC or any company can come once it achieves a dominant stable position only one that has inflexible supply rules will gain true confidence and trust.

This is demonstrable just by the PTS/AGS BTS allocations. Some people feel the rules have been changed and so there is some loss of trust and confidence. There is a market demand for what I call a crypto-money provides.

Gold has been a decent store of value for thousands of years never mind 20.  I'm sorry you feel people don't deserve that. I think less well educated and resourced people deserve options like gold they can save in long term for themselves and also pass onto their children.

« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 01:11:51 am by Empirical1.1 »

Offline arhag

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It's about not having to trust people to suddenly change the rules on shareholders or adjust the supply.

Currency is stable but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding it. 
Flexible companies are competitive but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding their stock or BitAssets which are backed by them.
Gold, while not stable, is your best option as a store of value, but asteroid mining will change that.

There is a gap for a true crypto-money alternative imo.
(I will also feel a lot more secure owning BitAssets long term that are backed by a crypto-money not a crypto-equity that could make some well intentioned but poor short term decisions.)

There will not be any BitAssets backed by "crypto-money" only crypto-equity. Some of the DACs will be more conservative in their attempt at world domination, and therefore may not need to dilute their crypto-equity. But that doesn't mean they will be more likely to survive against the competitor. Quite the opposite. If they don't fight hard enough, they are more likely to go bankrupt. Then the BitAssets held on that blockchain will be undercollateralized.

The confidence in a BitCurrency can come when a DAC becomes dominant and doesn't appear to have any serious threat of being displaced. Even then, you should never expect to sleep for 20 years and expect to have the same claim on the resources of the planet you had 20 years ago. If you are not willing to adapt to the changes in society, then you do not deserve to hold those claims on resources (money).

Offline Empirical1.1

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It's about not having to trust the majority to suddenly change the rules or adjust the supply.

Currency is stable but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding it. 
Flexible companies are competitive but I don't want to fall asleep for 20 years holding their stock or BitAssets which are backed by them.
Gold, while not stable, is your best option as a store of value, but asteroid mining will change that.

There is a gap for a true crypto-money alternative imo.
(I will also feel a lot more secure owning BitAssets long term that are backed by a crypto-money not a crypto-equity that could make some well intentioned but poor short term decisions.)
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 12:55:53 am by Empirical1.1 »

Offline arhag

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Repeat after me: BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency. The fact that BTS can be diluted is irrelevant, because BTS is not a currency. If people want a currency they should be using BitUSD, BitEUR, etc. The goal of a currency should be price stability (not too inflationary and not too deflationary). If you want an asset that isn't in the control of central banks you can even use BitGLD (even though that is not as stable in price).

We are in agreement that BTS is not a currency. In fact, that was the entire point of this initiative. As for any of the BitAssets being suitable as a global currency, that is where we disagree. Fiat based BitAssets have all of the flaws inherent with fiat and commodity based BitAssets inherit the same deficiencies that make BTS itself unsuitable as a currency. Hence the argument for a currency-DAC.

I disagree that any core crypto-asset is a good currency either. Its fixed supply means that it cannot have price stability. In other words BTC and PTS do not make a good currency either (and not just because of POW). BitAssets supply can dynamically grow and contract from market forces to maintain its desired price. And I understand some of the hesitation on relying on a BitAsset that tracks the price of a national currency managed by a central bank we have no control over. This is why I am most excited about a BitAsset tracking the price of some basket of goods and services (like a BitCPI).

Offline alphaBar

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Repeat after me: BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency. The fact that BTS can be diluted is irrelevant, because BTS is not a currency. If people want a currency they should be using BitUSD, BitEUR, etc. The goal of a currency should be price stability (not too inflationary and not too deflationary). If you want an asset that isn't in the control of central banks you can even use BitGLD (even though that is not as stable in price).

We are in agreement that BTS is not a currency. In fact, that was the entire point of this initiative. As for any of the BitAssets being suitable as a global currency, that is where we disagree. Fiat based BitAssets have all of the flaws inherent with fiat and commodity based BitAssets inherit the same deficiencies that make BTS itself unsuitable as a currency. Hence the argument for a currency-DAC.

Edit: BitAssets will probably have great success as a stop-gap measure to onboard new users to the crypto space, but no BitAsset will reach global status as a store of value or as a transactional currency.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 12:31:38 am by alphaBar »

Offline oco101

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Further to this post, the killer app in the crypto-space has always been and will always be one thing: currency. The Bitshares superDAC has attributes that make it poorly suited for use as a global currency including weak scarcity and suboptimal distribution.

Any cryptocurrency hoping to dethrone Bitcoin and ascend to become a global currency must be stable, predictable, fairly distributed, and non-inflationary. If you have any interest in PTS, join me in forking the Bitshares Toolkit and creating a new DPOS version of Bitshares PTS that launches using the November 5th snapshot.

Repeat after me: BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency. The fact that BTS can be diluted is irrelevant, because BTS is not a currency. If people want a currency they should be using BitUSD, BitEUR, etc. The goal of a currency should be price stability (not too inflationary and not too deflationary). If you want an asset that isn't in the control of central banks you can even use BitGLD (even though that is not as stable in price).

I think BTS is well distributed enough to ensure that the BitShares DAC will become sufficiently decentralized and won't be in the hands of a tiny group of individuals that can be corrupted. It will become even more decentralized over time as the stake is distributed to more (new) hands. Either a BitCurrency, BitGLD, or maybe BitCPI on top of this superDAC will have the properties that you are looking for. You don't have to care about what the BTS stakeholders are deciding to spend their diluted BTS on.

That all said, you have every right to fork the BitShares toolkit and compete. So, good luck with that.
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Offline arhag

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Further to this post, the killer app in the crypto-space has always been and will always be one thing: currency. The Bitshares superDAC has attributes that make it poorly suited for use as a global currency including weak scarcity and suboptimal distribution.

Any cryptocurrency hoping to dethrone Bitcoin and ascend to become a global currency must be stable, predictable, fairly distributed, and non-inflationary. If you have any interest in PTS, join me in forking the Bitshares Toolkit and creating a new DPOS version of Bitshares PTS that launches using the November 5th snapshot.

Repeat after me: BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency, BTS is not a currency. The fact that BTS can be diluted is irrelevant, because BTS is not a currency. If people want a currency they should be using BitUSD, BitEUR, etc. The goal of a currency should be price stability (not too inflationary and not too deflationary). If you want an asset that isn't in the control of central banks you can even use BitGLD (even though that is not as stable in price).

I think BTS is well distributed enough to ensure that the BitShares DAC will become sufficiently decentralized and won't be in the hands of a tiny group of individuals that can be corrupted. It will become even more decentralized over time as the stake is distributed to more (new) hands. Either a BitCurrency, BitGLD, or maybe BitCPI on top of this superDAC will have the properties that you are looking for. You don't have to care about what the BTS stakeholders are deciding to spend their diluted BTS on.

That all said, you have every right to fork the BitShares toolkit and compete. So, good luck with that.

Offline Empirical1.1

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So there is an opportunity for a decentralised crypto-currency. It is a medium to long term goal & may ultimately be a great benefit to mankind if it gets it right.

For the sake of argument, let's just say you're correct and there are no good currencies available and you're able to create one and there's a market for it.  What's it priced in?  If BTC is required to purchase it then the currency's price movements will be vulnerable to BTC.  If you're somehow able to get an on/off ramp then what's the incentive to hold or use the currency if it doesn't earn interest?  Why would people want to use it?  And what's to prevent the currency from being listed on the BTS market as a bitAsset and pulling the rug out from under it by actually offering interest?

- On ramps are possible for popular digital currencies to get and will perhaps become easier over time.

- There is a limit to the demand a derivative can soak up before the market views the underlying asset as undervalued, and therefore sees the derivative as a poor proxy. In commodities this gap is extremely wide as the value is hard to determine & the underlying physical is often hard to realistically trade but in a fairly frictionless digital economy the damage a BitAsset with interest can do is limited. Also as BTS rate of growth slows so too will the interest it offers.

Think of the digital currency as BitShares but with the disadvantage of being 6 months behind & having a much smaller initial market. The advantages are that it will have no/defined inflation & will only copy the best of BitShares and avoid its mistakes.

Most importantly it will limit the mistakes of human consensus. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10251.msg134519#msg134519 As an example, the current BitShares deal is a good one for shareholders but some people's short term thinking and inability to see other perspectives (like the fact that the real value is the key talent like Bytemaster, everyone who gets to be a part of that is winning.)  puts massive long term rewards (less than a year away) in possible jeopardy. Which is why for all our collective wisdom, our best long term store of value & a $7 trillion + market is a lump of metal, simply because our ability to manipulate its supply & mess it up is limited. Which is why a crypto-money passing BitShares & any other contender is an inevitability. Also the long term could play out very quickly in this space.

Just my personal opinion.

Edit: I'm not for this PTS play necessarily, just going off on my own tangent here.

Also BitShares + dilution is definitely the best play. It is the pioneer and needs to be an adaptable and flexible company. It should help it gain network effect, constantly bring in the best talent and become the market leader. At some point though the rate of change and growth in this space will start to stabilise. At which point a crypto-currency which will have copied the best features will be at less of a disadvantage and may ultimately surpass its rivals for the reasons listed above.




« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 12:31:24 am by Empirical1.1 »

Offline alphaBar

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So there is an opportunity for a decentralised crypto-currency. It is a medium to long term goal & may ultimately be a great benefit to mankind if it gets it right.

For the sake of argument, let's just say you're correct and there are no good currencies available and you're able to create one and there's a market for it.  What's it priced in?  If BTC is required to purchase it then the currency's price movements will be vulnerable to BTC.  If you're somehow able to get an on/off ramp then what's the incentive to hold or use the currency if it doesn't earn interest?  Why would people want to use it?  And what's to prevent the currency from being listed on the BTS market as a bitAsset and pulling the rug out from under it by actually offering interest?

In the short term, the new PTS would be correlated with Bitcoin in terms of price just like any other crypto. There is a lot of money on the sidelines just waiting to jump into cryptocurrency, but worried about the flaws of PoW mining centralization and inefficiency. If a superior alternative came about, it would gradually dissolve any price relationship to BTC. I consider all of the things built on top of the core functionality of the Bitshares Toolkit to be secondary in terms of their importance to "big money" investors. The primary factors are those I have outlined above.

Serious investors are not looking for a crypto equivalent of a CD so they can have a 3% return on their liquid cash. They are trying to find the horse that will win this race to global adoption. I like the concept of BitAssets and I think they will play a huge part in bridging that gap, but let's not confuse them for the end result. In fact I think currency and commodity based BitAssets are better suited for implementation (maybe canonically) in a stable and reliable currency-DAC, while BTS is probably better suited for user-issued BitAssets. Anything issued as a BitAsset on the BTS platform will suffer from any weaknesses inherent in the underlying token itself.

Offline yellowecho

So there is an opportunity for a decentralised crypto-currency. It is a medium to long term goal & may ultimately be a great benefit to mankind if it gets it right.

For the sake of argument, let's just say you're correct and there are no good currencies available and you're able to create one and there's a market for it.  What's it priced in?  If BTC is required to purchase it then the currency's price movements will be vulnerable to BTC.  If you're somehow able to get an on/off ramp then what's the incentive to hold or use the currency if it doesn't earn interest?  Why would people want to use it?  And what's to prevent the currency from being listed on the BTS market as a bitAsset and pulling the rug out from under it by actually offering interest?
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Offline amencon

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Variation, imho, is good and gives those who feel strongly in the minority against the move to the BTS superDAC to have an outlet that willnbring more value to the space.  Freedom...do you smell it in the air?  Damn it smells good...
Agree completely.  Thanks for taking the initiative alpha.  I'll be following and supporting both forks.

Offline Empirical1.1

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The Bitshares superDAC has attributes that make it poorly suited for use as a global currency including weak scarcity and suboptimal distribution.

Then it's a good thing that the BitShares superDAC isn't a currency and isn't intended to be used as a currency!  The currency in BitShares is bitUSD (and bitCNY) while BTS is a crypto-equity.  I still fail to see what value your proposed fork brings besides a different distribution model which itself doesn't add value at all.  Don't get me wrong, as a PTS, AGS, and BTSX holder I support getting free stake and would likely benefit from such a fork but this just seems to be muddying the water.

Also, I fail to see what this DAC offers that bitBTC and the like doesn't already.

Yes the Super DAC isn't designed to be a currency, that's why there's a gap in the market for one.

Fiat currencies are flawed for numerous reasons. (They have a lifespan of 35 years, suffer from constant inflation and controlled by central banks.)

Bitcoin is a weak currency, it is centralised, has poor distribution and expensive inflation used to pay pointless mining.

Gold is better, however its price can be and is artificially suppressed, particularly right now to help prop up & mask the currently collapsing fiat money system.

So there is an opportunity for a decentralised crypto-currency. It is a medium to long term goal & may ultimately be a great benefit to mankind if it gets it right.

Offline alphaBar

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Your plan for this is featureless DPOS+TITAN, right? A plain and simple fixed-supply store of value? Why not piggyback the network effect of BTS and just issue it as a user-issued asset on BTS? You'd be able to achieve your goals that way without the hassle of a second blockchain.

Edit: What's your dividend plan: are you planning to burn fees, or redistribute them as yield (like the current BitAsset scheme in BTSX)? That could impact whether a UIA on BTS would do the trick for you.

Yes, featureless DPOS+TITAN for now. Later I think we can own the currency and commodity-type BitAssets and let BTS own the user-issued assets. BTS folks may disagree with that but I think that makes the most sense given the different properties of each DAC. For now I don't want to position this as a competitor to BTS.

One of the biggest issues I'm trying to leapfrog here is the allocation and distribution stigma. By sticking with 100% PTS distribution we may be able to onboard some of the "purists" who believe that proof of work is the only fair distribution method (it is the only provable one, that's for sure). I want to emphasize that this is not a new DAC and therefore there will be no changes to allocation of funds. This is simply an "upgrade" to PTS and should be honored as such.

I propose that the delegate fee structure be the same as BTSX - absolutely no inflation and delegate pay ranging from 0-100% of transaction fees. I think most fee structures (including BTSX) are arbitrary or flawed in their incentive structure. The simplest solution is to eventually eliminate fees entirely and I have some ideas on how that can be achieved, but I wont pollute this discussion with any more detail on that.

« Last Edit: October 25, 2014, 10:20:02 pm by alphaBar »