There may be a fundamental mismatch in the product and the customers who are likely to use BitShares. Cryptocurrency users are risk-taking technophiles. But the USD, EUR, CNY, GLD are all "old man" investments. Getting into the BitShares system in order to store my USD as a bitshares-based CFD and getting a 1-3% yield is not something that's interesting.
The old, conservative hard-money guys like Peter Schiff or Jim Rogers who like gold are not coming anywhere near something like BitShares. They don't even trust bitcoin. They would trust bitSILVER even less.
Honestly, I'd be far more interested in peer to peer lending on BitShares at usurious rates. Or trading exotic assets like leveraged Chinese tech stocks. I don't have access to those markets and they are thrilling. bitUSD isn't thrilling or lucrative to me. It looks good on paper, but how many of us actually want to hold bitUSD. Obviously not that many, given its market cap.
I just saw this in another thread and I'd like to hear these concerns discussed
I'd like to hear more about who the target audience for BitShares is, and whether they are likely to be early adopters of a cryptocurrency - do they need to be early adopters?
Or are our products worth speculation by financial investors?
What do you think is our first route to market?
Who do you think our first customers are going to be?
Do you think they will be:
Average consumers looking to spend bitUSD at merchants I don't think so. Merchants don't seem to love bitcoin because it's volatile and hardly anyone wants to spend it.
bitUSD is almost done solving the volatility problem but it's still unpopular. I'm think BitShares needs to be in the spotlight first then become popular enough for the average consumer to care enough to use it for every day mundane spending. Unless it could be advertised by merchants who would rather their customers pay in bitUSD or crypto.
Merchants wanting to accept it as it provides convenient banking servicesContent creators and global freelancers on the internet could be a good fit. But most people still want to pay for things online via traditional methods. Could there be a way for bitshares to help facilitate this transaction? I'm thinking a merchant wanting to accept PayPal without a bank account (they just need bitshares) could enter a new special type of trade where they put up sufficient collateral to cover the charge-back risk or something.
I'm not sure how this could work with the need for a traditional bank account to accept the paypal funds. Who would run the bank and could it be any different than just plain PayPal? I think the change from majority of users using PayPal/traditional methods to them switching over and paying for things online in crypto will be rapid. It might not even be worth the time to develop the system.
I doubt it will be used by brick and mortar merchants until they can easily get cash for their bitUSD as well access to banking.
Perhaps brick and mortar stores could be incentivized to sell their bitUSD for cash to customers in store when their cash register is running low. This way they could completely sever their ties to banks and stay P2P.
I think there could be a way to kill two birds with one stone here and allow brick and mortar stores to the be easy cash in and out to BitShares instead of ATM infrastructure.
The DAC quickly matches opposing parties of a trade on the blockchain but could it be coded to match parties offline as well? Something like what Abra is doing for bitcoin.
Arbitrage traders using gateways UIA to profit from the spread across bitcoin exchanges I'm excited for Moonstone to bring this functionality - I think it could be very attractive to traders worried about getting Gox'ed and legally trading traditional stocks. Ripples recent fine highlights the opportunity a decentralized exchange has - if bts can get it right then the 'compliance' issue for cryptocurrency can be solved and our DAC could well be the platform the 'big fish' want to use to get exposure to bitcoin and crypto.
Can we convince them that we can better meet their needs than a winklevii ETF and similar instruments?
IPO's and crowdfunding by issuing an asset promising to be bought back at a premium from company profits (like the MOONFUND Moonstone crowd funder) are also very promising I think.
Individuals in countries with capital controls using BitShares to move wealth abroad I think doubtful. I'm not sure what the P2P cash trading of bitshares is like at the minute but if you can't anonymously buy bts easily then it can't be used for putting money where it's 'not allowed'. I think this is another situation that needs popularity first.
I can envision how BitShares could jump from moderately popular to
massive but I can't as easily see how we get from
right now to moderately popular.
I think a lot of the demographics for our products need bootstrapping to popularity before general users will bother to seek them out. Do you think that is a fair assessment?
EDIT: I'm assuming most of us aren't 100% bitshares or 'all in'.
For storing fiat value have you switched your bank account and taken advantage of the DAC's banking services yet?
I haven't - I can't get bitAssets into the 'real world' yet.
Is there yet a market for bitAssets before gateways come out?
EDIT 2: What about targeting the whatsapp messaging market. Maybe a marketing delegate could give out free bts or some other means to pay for a few weeks worth of transaction fees to send messages.
Do people care enough about privacy to want to pay to message people? I don't think so.
But I think they care about in-game app currency/items enough to want a system that integrates their cash (bitUSD), encrypted messaging/email services, their in-game currency type UIA's and other coupon/gift vouchers into one easy to navigate app. Is this what Moonstone is aiming for? As well as gateways and ID
The fact that we can actively participate in the running of the business we've invested in is amazing. That's another hugely profitable market for BTS. People will be able to set up shared ownership companies with DACS and save a fortune on lawyer fees. Ownership rights and permissions to company decisions will be codified and the blockchain will never poorly write a contract leaving you open to legal trouble.
Amazing times are ahead
Topic: Hangout Questions for Bytemaster (Due Friday @ 10:00am EST) (Read 2421 times)
