Author Topic: How to make Bitshares mineable while creating buying pressure  (Read 26882 times)

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Offline CLains

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Offline santaclause102

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hashrate.org
I dont know if someone pointed to this yet. This is NXT's approach to it.

Offline CLains

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I bet on Blackcoin as soon as I heard it had 100% proof of stake, + this mining scheme you are thinking of implementing. Blackcoin is doing well so far. I suspect all of its success is due to these two factors. Interesting to follow the experiment.  8)

Offline luckybit

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It seems that this is the next trend for purely PoS coins to market themselves to miners.

Miners are primarily interested in ROI.  They will mine for whatever is most profitable in fiat terms.  If they mine for some random alt-coin, they generally want to exchange them for BTC so that they can cash out.

I think that we are already seeing this with the Blackcoin pool.  The BTC price of Blackcoin doubled, but then it dropped back down.  It's still up today despite the fall, and I suppose that over time, it might rise gradually, but the net effect is hard to predict, given miners' proclivity for cashing out.

That is because Blackcoin is technologically inferior to Bitcoin. Bitshares is technologically superior on ever level to Bitcoin. For that reason who would want to go back to BTC from Bitshares?

The only reason would be to buy something which can only be purchased with BTC. If people are using it for their savings as a store of value they won't cash out unless its into their local currency. The dollar is the only threat to Bitshares because people will cash out to pay rent and taxes.

Once Bitshares has a large enough market cap big companies will accept BitUSD. So a short term goal we could set would be to grow the Bitshares market cap to at least 1 billion dollars.

How exactly do we do that? The other question is promoting BitUSD. If you have BitUSD but no where to spend it then you have to cash out into Bitcoin just to buy stuff?


So, let me get this straight...

You're saying that market forces will induce many BTC holders
to move most of their $7,593,530,305 market cap value
from their BTC "checking account"
into their BitUSD "savings account"
until they are ready to spend it?


 ;)

Of course. That is what I intend to do if Bitcoin goes over $1000 again this year. I would wait until the summit of the bubble and that is when I'd buy as many Bitshares as possible because that is when you're supposed to spend your Bitcoin on investments or lock in your profits.

Definitely some of it would go into BitUSD, especially if I know it's a bubble and will soon pop. If it does go down, now I've earned money and I didn't have to cash in and out.

Why would I do this? Because it takes Coinbase 5-7 days to buy Bitcoins. It takes days to transfer your profit into your bank. Wouldn't it be a lot quicker if you could do it in seconds?

What about high frequency trades between BTC and BitUSD during a period of high volatility?

Let the robot make the trades so we don't have to think about locking our profits into BitUSD.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2014, 05:20:49 am by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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I agree with pretty much everything you said.  Yes, BTS is better than BTC or Darkcoin.  I am a "true believer," but I think you will find that most miners are not. 
They will learn from losing money from Bitcoin volatility which is a feature for people who know how to do math and switch their money in and out with good timing. It makes no sense why someone would want to take a loss by holding their savings in something which can crash down for no apparent reason as has happened to Bitcoin in the past.

Until recently we had no choice. Now we are beginning to have a choice. The closest thing I've ever seen to Bitshares was Asicminer. It went from 0.1 BTC to almost 5 BTC a share, so let the profits of the early adopters of Bitshares act as a price signal for those who find out about it later.

They are A) trying to pay off their investment in hardware, and B) trying to pay for more hardware after paying their electricity bills.  They are not "buy and hold" investors, for the most part.  (Even the ones that are, might hold 10% of their earnings and sell 90% for fiat.)
I'm a miner and I can confirm this is not true. I want as many Bitshares as I can get. I'm not an industrial miner. I suppose industrial miners are always trying to buy new hardware and you're right about them. Additional of course people are going to pay off their hardware investment, but then what? The miners who are doing it right mine any coin which is the most profitable, but they also save some coins which they think will have a long term future.

If you don't have any savings you don't win at mining.
Now of course I am painting with pretty broad strokes here, and of course there are exceptions, but from my time in the scrypt and SHA256 mining world, the primary concern is ROI, ROI, ROI.  Once ROI is achieved, it's BMH, BMH, BMH (Buy More Hardware).  Mining is a source of income, they need cash flow. 
You're not in that world right now though. Mining is seasonal. When Bitcoin is doing well then everyone stocks up buying new hardware, because all the alt coins are becoming so profitable.

But times like right now when Bitcoin and the altcoins are all in downward spirals the miners tend to look for places to store their wealth. They have two options, totally cashing out into USD and there are no dividends or interest in that or cashing in.

In the past miners cashed into various stocks like Asicminer which paid dividends. The stock had no problem experiencing growth as people kept buying it and holding it to receive the dividends. So this is not a completely new situation.

Today miners are talking about going into Litecoin as a way to protect themselves from the rainfall of stolen coins which will suppress the price of Bitcoin for months.

Rather than Litecoin, Bitshares?

A pool that buys an asset on the open market, transfers that asset to miners, and then the asset is dumped on the open market by the miners, has no net effect on the price of the asset, although it does bump up the transaction volume, which can be helpful.

Those miners are less intelligent than the miners who just hold. Of course miners have to cash some out to pay for hardware, but those miners would not choose the Bitshares pool for that. If you're mining on the Bitshares pool to get a payout in Bitshares then you know what Bitshares is for. Bitshares is a savings account, not a checking account, and when you want to get an immediate ROI why not just mine Blackcoin?

On the other hand after you've paid for your hardware already, now you've got a new strategy which is to actually start trying to save. The hardware has paid for itself, and now you see that you can get some Bitshares, and that these Bitshares will eventually be paying a dividend.

Smart miners who want to save can be convinced that Bitshares is the best place to do it. Less smart miners who don't save, they will be angry at themselves for selling the Bitshares which end up being worth $1000 later. It will not matter because Bitshares will continuously be bought by both the Bitshares pools as well as the people who discover it's the best place to park their wealth.

This is why it has to be part of a marketing campaign. Miners aren't automatically going to be smart and know how to save or know where to park their wealth. They have to be told that they should park their wealth in Bitshares.

And not industrial miners, ordinary people who happen to mine and who happen to mine successfully. Typically these people do other things besides mine, so mining is just some extra money they have sitting around.

One more note, there will probably be cpu miners out there who can mine with their laptops. These people are not industrial miners but their laptop cpu can still get them some Bitshares if a cpu coin is very profitable at that time.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2014, 05:13:19 am by luckybit »
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Offline bitbadger

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It seems that this is the next trend for purely PoS coins to market themselves to miners.

Miners are primarily interested in ROI.  They will mine for whatever is most profitable in fiat terms.  If they mine for some random alt-coin, they generally want to exchange them for BTC so that they can cash out.

I think that we are already seeing this with the Blackcoin pool.  The BTC price of Blackcoin doubled, but then it dropped back down.  It's still up today despite the fall, and I suppose that over time, it might rise gradually, but the net effect is hard to predict, given miners' proclivity for cashing out.

That is because Blackcoin is technologically inferior to Bitcoin. Bitshares is technologically superior on ever level to Bitcoin. For that reason who would want to go back to BTC from Bitshares?

The only reason would be to buy something which can only be purchased with BTC. If people are using it for their savings as a store of value they won't cash out unless its into their local currency. The dollar is the only threat to Bitshares because people will cash out to pay rent and taxes.

Once Bitshares has a large enough market cap big companies will accept BitUSD. So a short term goal we could set would be to grow the Bitshares market cap to at least 1 billion dollars.

How exactly do we do that? The other question is promoting BitUSD. If you have BitUSD but no where to spend it then you have to cash out into Bitcoin just to buy stuff?

I agree with pretty much everything you said.  Yes, BTS is better than BTC or Darkcoin.  I am a "true believer," but I think you will find that most miners are not.  They are A) trying to pay off their investment in hardware, and B) trying to pay for more hardware after paying their electricity bills.  They are not "buy and hold" investors, for the most part.  (Even the ones that are, might hold 10% of their earnings and sell 90% for fiat.)

Now of course I am painting with pretty broad strokes here, and of course there are exceptions, but from my time in the scrypt and SHA256 mining world, the primary concern is ROI, ROI, ROI.  Once ROI is achieved, it's BMH, BMH, BMH (Buy More Hardware).  Mining is a source of income, they need cash flow. 

A pool that buys an asset on the open market, transfers that asset to miners, and then the asset is dumped on the open market by the miners, has no net effect on the price of the asset, although it does bump up the transaction volume, which can be helpful.
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Offline Stan

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It seems that this is the next trend for purely PoS coins to market themselves to miners.

Miners are primarily interested in ROI.  They will mine for whatever is most profitable in fiat terms.  If they mine for some random alt-coin, they generally want to exchange them for BTC so that they can cash out.

I think that we are already seeing this with the Blackcoin pool.  The BTC price of Blackcoin doubled, but then it dropped back down.  It's still up today despite the fall, and I suppose that over time, it might rise gradually, but the net effect is hard to predict, given miners' proclivity for cashing out.

That is because Blackcoin is technologically inferior to Bitcoin. Bitshares is technologically superior on ever level to Bitcoin. For that reason who would want to go back to BTC from Bitshares?

The only reason would be to buy something which can only be purchased with BTC. If people are using it for their savings as a store of value they won't cash out unless its into their local currency. The dollar is the only threat to Bitshares because people will cash out to pay rent and taxes.

Once Bitshares has a large enough market cap big companies will accept BitUSD. So a short term goal we could set would be to grow the Bitshares market cap to at least 1 billion dollars.

How exactly do we do that? The other question is promoting BitUSD. If you have BitUSD but no where to spend it then you have to cash out into Bitcoin just to buy stuff?


So, let me get this straight...

You're saying that market forces will induce many BTC holders
to move most of their $7,593,530,305 market cap value
from their BTC "checking account"
into their BitUSD "savings account"
until they are ready to spend it?


 ;)
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline luckybit

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It seems that this is the next trend for purely PoS coins to market themselves to miners.

Miners are primarily interested in ROI.  They will mine for whatever is most profitable in fiat terms.  If they mine for some random alt-coin, they generally want to exchange them for BTC so that they can cash out.

I think that we are already seeing this with the Blackcoin pool.  The BTC price of Blackcoin doubled, but then it dropped back down.  It's still up today despite the fall, and I suppose that over time, it might rise gradually, but the net effect is hard to predict, given miners' proclivity for cashing out.

That is because Blackcoin is technologically inferior to Bitcoin. Bitshares is technologically superior on every level to Bitcoin. For that reason who would want to go back to BTC from Bitshares?

The only reason would be to buy something which can only be purchased with BTC. If people are using it for their savings as a store of value they won't cash out unless its into their local currency. The dollar is the only threat to Bitshares because people will cash out to pay rent and taxes.

Once Bitshares has a large enough market cap big companies will accept BitUSD. So a short term goal we could set would be to grow the Bitshares market cap to at least 1 billion dollars.

How exactly do we do that? The other question is promoting BitUSD. If you have BitUSD but no where to spend it then you have to cash out into Bitcoin just to buy stuff?
« Last Edit: March 20, 2014, 04:48:39 am by luckybit »
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Offline bitbadger

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It seems that this is the next trend for purely PoS coins to market themselves to miners.

Miners are primarily interested in ROI.  They will mine for whatever is most profitable in fiat terms.  If they mine for some random alt-coin, they generally want to exchange them for BTC so that they can cash out.

I think that we are already seeing this with the Blackcoin pool.  The BTC price of Blackcoin doubled, but then it dropped back down.  It's still up today despite the fall, and I suppose that over time, it might rise gradually, but the net effect is hard to predict, given miners' proclivity for cashing out.
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Offline toast

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Offline luckybit

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What do you mean when you say Bitshares won't be volatile? Do you mean BitUSD won't be volatile? XTS itself will be extremely volatile at first while the markets are figuring out how powerful it is, which could take a couple years.
You have to buy BitUSD with Bitshares. Bitshares is far less volatile than Bitcoin if you know how to use it. I wouldn't necessarily choose BitUSD but you could use that. I also don't think it would take a couple of years, that depends on the marketing and education effort.

Mastercoin isn't very volatile either. I think the reason has to do with the fact that there is no mining and that the value proposition isn't changing constantly. Also the fact that there isn't a lot of reasons to sell Bitshares. If you can cash out into BitUSD within Bitshares why would anyone sell them unless they had to pay taxes or some bill they can only pay with fiat?

It takes away the necessity to store your mining profits as fiat. It removes a lot of the reasons people have to cash out.
I think BitUSD has excellent potential to replace BTC and LTC to be the default base currency on the centralized exchanges. I think your mining pool (which is an excellent idea, btw) should pay out exclusively BitUSD. Fundamentally, demand for BitUSD will be the main driver for Bitshares value; if there's demand for BitUSD, then the value of XTS will climb as people buy into it to short BitUSD.
If you look at the Bitshares code it supports gold, silver, usd, euro, pound, crude oil, there is no reason for anyone in their right mind to choose fiat over all these options. Most people cash out to pay for their bills but beyond that there is no reason to and if bills could be paid with BitUSD no one would ever cash out. I could see companies like Invictus paying their employees in BitUSD.
Imagine a world where BitUSD has taken over today's BTC market: $7B worth of BitUSD would mean that the market cap of XTS will be over $10B (at a 1.5x margin call threshold), which is $2500 per XTS. That is, simple back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that wide-scale acceptance of BitUSD would make us all rich (I realize this is obvious, I just really like simple calculations that make the potential profits look really stark). Thus, I suggest that the mining pool try to promote BitUSD acceptance as much as possible. :)

That will happen easily. $10B is not a lot of money. Once people figure out that BitUSD can be used by businesses to avoid the volatility issues of Bitcoin then the business world will switch over. Bitpay might be convinced to deal with BitUSD and if not then a competitor will come along.

Some businesses might want to hedge into gold and silver and now they can.

Thus, I suggest that the mining pool try to promote BitUSD acceptance as much as possible. :)

This would be easy. Just let people choose to receive their payout as whatever Bitasset they want. Bitshares should be the standard but if people think it's too volatile they could set it to receive BitUSD.

The real important part is getting businesses to accept BitUSD and getting employers to pay in BitUSD. Once that happens it will be a success, but that could take a while. The corporate acceptance part is something Brian should be working on, along with the ATM support and the ability to pay our bills and taxes.

If I could pay my bills, taxes, rent, with BitUSD, I would never cash out of Bitshares because there would be no reason to.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2014, 12:56:18 pm by luckybit »
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Offline biophil

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And unlike Bitcoin, Bitshares wont be volatile. You can save your profits in such a way that it's safe even if the price of Bitcoin crashes. Bitshares is really the only coin anyone should want to store their value in and they just don't know it yet.

Let's make Bitshares the defacto cryptobank for miners to store their wealth.

What do you mean when you say Bitshares won't be volatile? Do you mean BitUSD won't be volatile? XTS itself will be extremely volatile at first while the markets are figuring out how powerful it is, which could take a couple years.

I think BitUSD has excellent potential to replace BTC and LTC to be the default base currency on the centralized exchanges. I think your mining pool (which is an excellent idea, btw) should pay out exclusively BitUSD. Fundamentally, demand for BitUSD will be the main driver for Bitshares value; if there's demand for BitUSD, then the value of XTS will climb as people buy into it to short BitUSD.

Imagine a world where BitUSD has taken over today's BTC market: $7B worth of BitUSD would mean that the market cap of XTS will be over $10B (at a 1.5x margin call threshold), which is $2500 per XTS. That is, simple back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that wide-scale acceptance of BitUSD would make us all rich (I realize this is obvious, I just really like simple calculations that make the potential profits look really stark). Thus, I suggest that the mining pool try to promote BitUSD acceptance as much as possible. :)
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Offline luckybit

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Doesn't mining almost certainly centralize the issuance of tokens?  I mean, sure, anyone can "mine", but only a very few people will be able to do so profitably, and those people will not necessarily be dictated by their technical skills...but more by their connections to ASICs manufacturers.  And, if in the next 10-20 years the mining of all these tokens becomes centralized how is that system going to be any better for the common man than the current centrally-controlled one? I personally think it would be worse due to the fact that the necessary level of technical skills that would be required to fight against it would largely make this impossible.

The only way I can see mining as being worthwhile is if it utilizes something like the BOINC protocol, which makes the mining perform a task that serves to benefit all humanity (protein folding, searching for extraterrestrial life...etc)...but that still wouldn't fix the centralization issues. 

The reason for this is that even though you might have 30 different ASICs to choose from in order to mine the algo of your choice, it still is centralized to those 30 algos (unless we are looking at a world where a couple thousand algos and 10's of thousands of ASICs manufacturers exist).

Perhaps I am incorrect, but transactions as proof of stake seems to allow people to purchase tokens (or mine them through PTS--including multipool mining PTS), and as stake holders, automatically have the ability to largely overcome the centralization that would otherwise occur. Why?  because I could go work as a waiter somewhere and turn that proof of work (tips) into PTS through an exchange purchase, which gives a larger number of non-techies the ability to meaningfully contribute to the ecosystem. 

I understand that mining is a huge deal to people, but if we want this to become a BROADLY accepted tech, it has to be available to everyone interested in it.  Why would we ever want to change the Gatekeepers of the banking cartels to instead be mining cartels? 

Interested to hear responses.
It has no centralizing impact on bitshares just on the most profitable to mine coin and only at the moment it is profitable to mine it

thats why people mine altcoins mostly, to get more Bitcoin in the long run (or in my case Bitshares :))

And unlike Bitcoin, Bitshares wont be volatile. You can save your profits in such a way that it's safe even if the price of Bitcoin crashes. Bitshares is really the only coin anyone should want to store their value in and they just don't know it yet.

Let's make Bitshares the defacto cryptobank for miners to store their wealth.

I set up a poll, I encourage everyone to vote. If there is enough demand for it then we know there is a market for this kind of service and can take it to the next stage. If you want to mine Bitshares go vote. Additionally create some inspiring threads, infographics and feature requests so that if it does get built that it can be done right.

Some example questions to debate
1. Should this be built into the Bitshares client itself so that users can connect to these sorts of pools by entering it into the client?
2. Should it be a stand alone application?
3. Should it be multipool style like what Blackcoin is doing?
4. Should it be P2P style?

What sort of interface should the pool have? What should of information? What should be configurable? The obvious should be the user should be able to mine whatever coin is the most profitable and should be abl to choose between different coins or algorithms.  We know the user should enter their BTS address in place of their BTC address for the payout.

How about a troll box? How about graphs which track the price of BTS in real time?

How can we convince miners that BTS is the best store of value, even better than BTC?
What charts, graphs, numbers, visuals, do they need to see to understand why it's a better store of value than BTC?

How can we make it as simple as possible, a point, a click, and mining for BTS?
« Last Edit: March 15, 2014, 10:06:49 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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Doesn't mining almost certainly centralize the issuance of tokens?  I mean, sure, anyone can "mine", but only a very few people will be able to do so profitably, and those people will not necessarily be dictated by their technical skills...but more by their connections to ASICs manufacturers. 
Who ever said the mining should only be for ASICs?
There are many different algorithms other than SHA-256.
The only way I can see mining as being worthwhile is if it utilizes something like the BOINC protocol, which makes the mining perform a task that serves to benefit all humanity (protein folding, searching for extraterrestrial life...etc)...but that still wouldn't fix the centralization issues. 
Of course it can use BOINC -> XRP -> BTC -> BTS.
It can use anything which can be sold for BTC -> BTS.

The reason for this is that even though you might have 30 different ASICs to choose from in order to mine the algo of your choice, it still is centralized to those 30 algos--unless we are looking at a world where a couple thousand algos and 10's of thousands of ASICs manufacturers exist. 
That is the world we are looking at. There isn't an ASIC for memorycoin2 yet, or for a lot of these coins. It's unlikely there will ever be an ASIC for the vast majority of them and anyone can make any altcoin with any algorithm in the future which we could all mine and get BTS.

Even with this, though, what is stopping ASIC manufacturers from colluding to centralize manufacturing into the hands of a few?
The fact that anyone can make a new algorithm at any time and we can use that new algorithm to mine BTS.

I think you misunderstood what I'm expressing. The mining pool is algorithm independent, it takes whatever coin you're mining and gives you a payout as BTS. It doesn't matter what you mine as long as it's the most profitable coin at that time. So it uses the profits of the altcoin being pumped at the time and turns it into fuel for your Bitshares wallet. Since Bitshares is the best store of value in the crypto-community everyone is going to want to store their profits as Bitshares and not whatever they mined.

Mining altcoins is not centralized. Only Bitoin is and that is because of the ASICs.
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After reading this thread I went to buy a few Blackcoins. Halleluja.. Thanks luckybit! Bora Bora I'm coming..

Edit: Oh now the price is falling.. Anyway, I want to gamble!
« Last Edit: March 15, 2014, 07:58:50 pm by 38PTSWarrior »