Author Topic: [Provocative] BitUSD Isn't Worth The Trouble  (Read 6997 times)

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Offline Bitcoinfan

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Actually initially i thought the best usecase for
bitshares was to somehow incorporate the merge of features or voting for delegates
based on prediction markets. It might help in more natural selection process leading to faster and
better innovation.

Since we already can vote all it is is putting incentives in place to actually vote.

Its often cited that Prediction Markets were used in Fortune 500 corporations such as Google and GE to name a few.  But what fails to come through is that these programs were quickly dismantled and are no longer in service because of how effective they were in project management.  It became embarrassing how pin-point accurate other teams were at judging another department's work and their progress.  (They had simple questions such as will team ABC finish their workout program by the end of Q1.)  The other employees could make quick work of whether another team was going to succeed or fail and it put that team under more scrutiny.  Within that scope of the experiment, PM's became Key Performance Indicators for how well managers and chief officers were doing at their jobs. 

CEO's observed that information that was being siloed at the top was being squeezed and disseminated throughout the organization, calling into question the strategic moves they were making.  Chief Officers are in positions of decision making because they hold informational secrets that are not beholden to the rest and are trusted to act on that information.  If the company evaluate actions itself without that one person, why was their job needed in the first place?  So in order to preserve confidentiality, the programs were closed down. 

I agree with you that for a flat organizational structure like a DAC, a Prediction Market Model is a key innovation for implementing self-organization.  Right now we are in the infancy of accounting for delegates.  I've seen some frustration with Blackwavelabs for the lack of communication, resulting in their firing and this has inspired others to demand Delegate Reports from the Delegates themselves.  Its a necessary step, but the fact remains, not all of us will read through 101 Delegate Reports every quarter, and as stakeholders we won't always be able to make the optimal votes for BTS just based on Delegate Reports.  There will be extraneous information posted on forums, on twitter feeds, on news articles that we will all never be able to get to.  There is just not enough time in the world. 

The simplicity of internal PM's is that it aggregate all public information.  As a result, in this financial poll that is not linked to votes, we will be able to discern through bad and good delegates quickly.

It solves a lot of problems for us, so yes I'm a little shocked that there as been little effort around Prediction Markets.  Its so closely aligned to our visionary message and at some point we will have to use PM's in this regard.  Will Delegate A be fired by Dec 12, 20XX?  Will Delegate B succeed in their advertising campaign and bringing in 20K new users?  Will a working hardware wallet for BTS reach the hands of consumers by 2016?  I think having questions like this and on other subjects around us is exciting and fun.  It would certainly help bring attention and that critical mass.

By the time we get to this, both Ethereum and Truthcoin would have already had their versions out.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 07:55:35 pm by Bitcoinfan »

Offline edilliam

Great topic for a blog post counter.

 +5%

I'm loving all this back and forth between the communities. This is how progress is made  :D

Offline hpenvy2

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Great topic for a blog post counter.

Offline Ander

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I've been hearing about "prediction markets" tossed around for a while now, but I still don't exactly understand them. Is it just like a massive betting system as to whether or not something is gonna happen?

BM, what are your thoughts on prediction markets as they relate to BTS? Are we even interested in going that route?

We absolutely should have them eventually (and I'm pretty sure I read something at some point that we will).



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Offline jsidhu

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Actually initially i thought the best usecase for
bitshares was to somehow incorporate the merge of features or voting for delegates
based on prediction markets. It might help in more natural selection process leading to faster and
better innovation.

Since we already can vote all it is is putting incentives in place to actually vote.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 04:56:04 pm by jsidhu »
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Offline jsidhu

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I've been hearing about "prediction markets" tossed around for a while now, but I still don't exactly understand them. Is it just like a massive betting system as to whether or not something is gonna happen?

BM, what are your thoughts on prediction markets as they relate to BTS? Are we even interested in going that route?
its huge essentially placing consensus value on outcome or decision.. ie letting bitusd float to 1 usd on consensus using the incentives put in place by the math of pauls predi tion markets
which he did a pHd on I believe. Other use cases are replacing expert oppinion which we pay for by allowing the market to predict the value which will be more right than any one expert who may misguide you.. also for insurance purposes based on likelyhood of an event.

Its taking consensus to Another level and only cause of the blockchain is predicting totally possible.

Bitusd would float with incentives instead of hard limits which I think he hates And figures it ti be fake.. but for us maybe it is what it is.. placing broken fiat on the blockchain and not a dynamic free floating asset with counterparty risk.
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Offline nomoreheroes7

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I've been hearing about "prediction markets" tossed around for a while now, but I still don't exactly understand them. Is it just like a massive betting system as to whether or not something is gonna happen?

BM, what are your thoughts on prediction markets as they relate to BTS? Are we even interested in going that route?

Offline xeroc

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From Vitalik in the discussions on the page:
Quote
I think bitusd has a very simple use case. People want to have their money in cryptoland because crypto is a superior payment mechanism, but dislike bitcoin volatility. The intersection of cryptoland and stable currency basically is bitusd-style mechanisms.

Also, Paul, I think you spend too much time trying to debunk the specific combinations of intricacies and incidental features that various implementations of algorithms happen to have, and treating that as being equivalent to an attack on the fundamentals. I personally have the belief that just about everything in this space is a research project (except for major/stable ones like bitcoin and ripple, where I'm happy to go on and on about the stupidity of bitcoin haphazard mixing little and big endian and fixed ints and varints in serialization, throwing in an extra semi-non-standard hash function instead of just doing sha256(pubkey)[12:], etc), and we should have debates about high-level concepts and then once high-level concepts are deemed valid go down to debates around optimizing mid-level features independently. Individual projects should generally organize around high-level concepts and be willing to adapt to the results of research on medium-level concepts. When I talk about "schellingcoin", I mean "schelling-point-based consensus"; if I was to implement schellingcoin in reality I probably would actually import most features from your scheme.

TLDR: the incidental-vs-fundamental distinction is very important.


Offline jsidhu

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I think hes saying bitusd is useful for prediction market but not for spending.. i thought we were going to add predictio markets ? I was thinking about recruiting this guy cause he wanted to do a new coin

I proposed this to BM a year ago.  Toast was interested then, but there was not enough bandwidth to work on it. 

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=3916.0

Disappointing really as this would have been so immensely profitable to Bitshares if they got to it first.  And we would have avoided this discussion about how BINGO is meant to be value-added to bitshares in a fun innocent way.  We could instead have had viral interest generated (transactions as well!) from NCAA Bitshares Tourneys. 

Paul did say Syscoin was interested in Truthcoin.  Are you still working for Syscoin?

PS.  I think BM and Team are doing outstanding work.  Bitshares has the core ideological values that matter for establishing an perennial organization but at the same time drives to stimulate change off those values.  Its an important formula for visionary companies to get down.  Just wished things could have worked out differently.  Maybe it still can...
yup thats what i was talking about.. the other sys dev lost his job so i wad going to recruit both of them to do truth markets for bitshares.. i emailed stan about it but he said he never got it.. now he found another job and he seems like he wants to just do it in sys which has assets too just not pegged which is what paul wanted
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Offline Empirical1.1

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I give the guy some credit. He at least understands the power of rivalry marketing.

Quote
I am planning to start a blog here, to give this project some context, and heavily criticize the microeconomics of rivial cryptocoin projects, as most contain (or are based on) the purest nonsense. I hope to take criticism in return!
   http://www.truthcoin.info/
We are starting to reap what we sowed with that "NuBit is a ponzi scheme" blog post.

I agree NuBits was an example of how not to employ this strategy.

Timing - They were making big gains and ergo we looked threatened & had just done critical blogs on BTC & NXT.
Language - The ponzi language while currently pretty accurate should have been softened from the outset.
Bitcointalk - Someone originally titled the main thread  'Sell your NuBits for BitUSD before they become worthless' - No subtlety, tact and pretty FUD-ish, later changed to 'NuBits are operating on a fractional reserve'- much better.

In Truthcoin's case, it's a good strategy though as he has literally nothing to lose so he can be as critical & controversial as he likes in the hopes of getting a reaction. If Truthcoin had a bigger audience it would be great to engage them as being attacked is a great excuse to educate people about your product. However Truthcoin has no audience and no third party investors would be drawn into viewing the debate so 'taking the bait', would only benefit them from a publicity POV.

How debates should be done is polite, respectful and measured, while hoping your opponent fails to observe those rules. The NXT vs. BitShares threads on Bitcointalk as well as Daniel's articles on NXT and interchange with Come-From-Beyond was a great example of how it should be done - It was interesting, entertaining and informative, giving us top billing on BitCointalk alternative section for weeks & getting 10k+ combined views. There's nothing like seeing the heavyweights debate the merits of their systems.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 11:32:01 am by Empirical1.1 »

Offline Bitcoinfan

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I think hes saying bitusd is useful for prediction market but not for spending.. i thought we were going to add predictio markets ? I was thinking about recruiting this guy cause he wanted to do a new coin

I proposed this to BM a year ago.  Toast was interested then, but there was not enough bandwidth to work on it. 

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=3916.0

Disappointing really as this would have been so immensely profitable to Bitshares if they got to it first.  And we would have avoided this discussion about how BINGO is meant to be value-added to bitshares in a fun innocent way.  We could instead have had viral interest generated (transactions as well!) from NCAA Bitshares Tourneys. 

Paul did say Syscoin was interested in Truthcoin.  Are you still working for Syscoin?

PS.  I think BM and Team are doing outstanding work.  Bitshares has the core ideological values that matter for establishing an perennial organization but at the same time drives to stimulate change off those values.  Its an important formula for visionary companies to get down.  Just wished things could have worked out differently.  Maybe it still can...   
 
« Last Edit: January 31, 2015, 04:23:51 am by Bitcoinfan »

Offline klosure

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I give the guy some credit. He at least understands the power of rivalry marketing.

Quote
I am planning to start a blog here, to give this project some context, and heavily criticize the microeconomics of rivial cryptocoin projects, as most contain (or are based on) the purest nonsense. I hope to take criticism in return!
   http://www.truthcoin.info/
We are starting to reap what we sowed with that "NuBit is a ponzi scheme" blog post.

Offline jsidhu

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I think hes saying bitusd is useful for prediction market but not for spending.. i thought we were going to add predictio markets ? I was thinking about recruiting this guy cause he wanted to do a new coin
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Offline roadscape

+5%

BitSharesX?  Oh, that was those OTHER guys...  :)

Man you're good :)
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Offline gamey

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Wow, shout out to Vitalik for standing up for BitUSD. 

It is one of those things I wouldn't even want to start arguing. Honestcoin guy spent a lot of time on graphics and ignores the basic reasons people want bitUSD then builds all these assertions off assumptions where he is very selective.

Much like Preston Burne's article I could not make it past the first 1/3 or so of the article..
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