This is getting nuts. I am starting to doubt my investment.

It's all about perspective...

You could also say BTS is the 4th largest crypto in the world. Despite not even releasing  1.0 yet, having very little marketing to date and despite having a lot of big PR snafus in the last few months.
Currently a lot of development is going on and that's despite hardly any of the delegate positions being filled... BTS could be a formidable, unstoppable DAC once it gets off the blocks again.

I have a much lower % investment in BTS, than some other DACs but a much higher $ amount.

So I'm bullish on BTS though not as much as I was on BTSX early Oct, I was happy to bet the farm on that for the next 12 months.

I think it's important to hedge your bets & it's fairly cheap to do so. I'm uncertain whether the community is better served by pushing out every competitor DAC or attempting to keep a greater BitShares brand together in some form.

Bitshares has already cornered the bitasset market. We have 1 million bitUSD and decent liquidity. There is zero chance PTS will be able to threaten us in this area. Their lack inflation means they have no means to advertise the products to real users, and they will only ever appeal to investors who think there's a bigger chance it will get sharedropped on than BTS (which admittedly our own developers have now set a really bad precedent for - but we will be able to fix that easily).

Once we start getting gateways after 1.0 you'll see there's no chance they will catch up as a trading DAC.

That's like saying Bitcoin has a $3 Billion CAP and a monopoly position and they can never be threatened. I agree it's unlikely though especially if BTS retains BM.

Regards advertising their products, I've already offered them my BitAsset video, http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iygIMZL-H-8 instead rebranded for PTS for free if they considered adding BitAssets. That's my first video in 6 years, they will get better and I'd happily create a package of videos and commercials for them to cover all markets. Not much in the grand scheme of things but the point is people will work for less/free for projects they're more ideologically aligned too or were as to get a bigger % in for cheaper, so I wouldn't write  them off completely.

BitReserve realising their business model is pretty weak and they'd do better forking BTSX and directing their business and marketing talents towards building something like that concurrently & creating synergies with their current model is a bigger threat though imo.

I think BitShares is probably more in need of a really good business consultant at this stage.

It could also use a good, general, guiding business plan. 

If BTS gets the PR & vision right though, I think there will be a lot of cachet and kudos associated with being a known delegate that will help attract development talent for less than market value too.

Quote from: Empirical1.1 on December 23, 2014, 11:11:42 pm

If you are going to announce a DAC distribution for something you think the market will give a reasonable value, then you can be reasonably confident that a <$5 million DAC will respond positively to the news vs. a large DAC who's overall value may not move noticeably.

Devs can also acquire a larger % long term stake for less by share dropping on a lower stake coin.

Therefore it's very likely some developers will continue to sharedrop on DAC supportive lower CAP coins too. PTS will be the market leader in that price range as it has proven to be a market acceptable sharedrop token.

This is true.  But it's basically arguing that because PTS is easily manipulated, it's a good sharedrop target becasue Devs can sneak in a higher allocation to themselves using the insider info about the drop.  If the investor population was educated about this, dropping on PTS would be seen as blatent manipulation and a dishonest move.  As you say BTS price is less effected by sharedrop announcements so it forces dev honesty in terms of how much they will get themselves. 

The bigger the market cap, the less important the insider info is.  In future drops devs wont be able to get away with low market cap drops without having to undergo the scrutiny of why they chose to drop on a coin so easily manipulated.

Quote from: Rune on December 24, 2014, 02:00:14 pm

Maybe we should demand that our delegates only use a new 100% BTS sharedropped testnet for testing. They do work for us after all. 3rd party devs are free to use whichever testnet they prefer then, the current PTS/AGS testnet already exists and won't go away.

  

And agreed with politeness + not being pitch forky. 

Disagreements must be encouraged to be shared and discussed, in order to prevent centralisation in thinking.  We are the roots of the BitShares tree, we must extend out far in different directions to build a firm foundation for healthy growth, dependency on any leaders is a weakness.  Diversity within an ecosystem is strength.  We don't want to create competing DACs, but we do want ideas to compete within BTS.

Good analysis. Medium to long term, I'm sure PTS will hope to have a much high value though.
So it gets to be the sharedrop choice because it's been so far and because it currently has the advantages I mentioned and then in future even as it's value grows it keeps that position as it's now the de facto DAC savvy sharedrop token.

Whereas the last PTS was a hollow vessel, slow as hell POW, PTS will be a profitable no inflation DPOS with it's own leaders, principles and vision.  So the Sharedrops will be an advertisement that brings in potential new customers and it can hopefully also become a valuable crypto-currency in its own right.

As the no.2 DPOS like LiteCoin or Stellar it may get to track BTS's success and if BTS fails for reasons other than technical, PTS may have a chance of replacing BTS. (At $200 million CAP BTSX would have had a respectable budget just from fees and once the key development is done over the next 24 months that may be sufficient to maintain a competitive, profitable blockchain. The jury is also still out   on whether people want an all bells and whistles blockchain to store value or just a robust BitAsset focused, limited changes blockchain backed by a no inflation crypto-currency. In which case PTS may mainly just need to add BitAssets in the future.)

Quote from: donkeypong on December 24, 2014, 04:57:10 am

Quote from: davidpbrown on December 19, 2014, 10:49:50 am

I expect 2015 will bring more opportunity to engage media as their curiousity rises.

It will be funny if we need to get Brian Page back for that part. IMHO, handling media was one of his strong points.

maybe i am doing Brian wrong, but with which evidence do you say this? If this is the case, i think it would not needed for him to stepping down. We would already have seen good interviews in none Bitcoin related magazines with Dan etc. . And don't come with 1.0 . Ethereum get this kind of thing without much that is function.

Maybe he means he comes across well.  I think Brian is very personable. I would have like to see him presenting some short simple videos this last year. I think Max does a great job explaining things too, probably better as he seems to understand everything more.

His much did he get paid?

A lot. $100k and I think I heard he had an assistant at one point too plus I assume he still gets BTS bonus payments as the CAP increases. It would be great if NullStreet had a few more crumbs to work with, they've been working with only a couple of bucks up to now.

Quote from: Stan on December 23, 2014, 10:41:42 pm

Quote from: Graffenwalder on December 23, 2014, 08:56:43 pm

Quote from: Stan on December 22, 2014, 01:19:27 am

Just let me publish a feed for all the entries on coinmarketcap...

Its a simple formula, really:

BTS = 10*(BTC = 100*(XRP = 1000*(LTC = ...

 

Congratulations Stan, you're the fourth winner in the 10 * 5 BITUSD Christmas give away.
PM me your BTS account and I'll send you your price.

Your amusement is reward enough for me!    
Please send my winnings to your favorite project on NullStreet.

Great, your generosity is truly in the Christmas spirit.
It seems another familiar name, is thereby the winner.

Congrats Empirical1.1, thanks for what you've done on your recent project.

Thanks, unfortunately I cannot accept your award, while currently using BitShares branding my video/s may not ultimately be released under BTS. You will find a lot of worthy winners at NullStreet though. A lot of people doing selfless, valuable work there.

Congrats! 

Would BitShares be in a better position if the time, effort & $250 000+ spent on VOTE these last few months had been directed at developing BitAssets further?