The Main Problems with Bitshares

[cube]

But of course delegates took their feeds from the one exchange that has been upgraded, the one exchange that has margin trading and can thereby drive down the price of bts such that the price on this exchange is 20% lower than the price on others, the one exchange that is clearly a more speculative market where pump and dump groups do their trading.

Even if it's true that Poloniex is the only exchange that has upgraded, would you really prefer that the 2.0 witnesses took their feed from exchanges that have NOT upgraded?

We, the witnesses, found out a possible bad feed coming from an exchange but it is not poloniex.  It is another exchange.  We are investigating further on this.

[fuzzy]

To be honest, I agree it is time for more people to take the reigns of power in their own places but in order to become one of those people  it first requires we commit effort and gain trust.  Those things are not built overnight :/

Everyone honestly needs to take a breath.  None of us (who think straight) ever thought this would be perfect or easy.  BitShares is NOT just another cryptocurrency--that sits there and just gets passed back and forth.  It is attempting stuff that most cryptocurrencies can't even begin to imagine doing.  So I look at this as a time to buy in because these little changes that cause big waves will eventually even back out and those who held during the storm will come out with a smile on their faces.

[clout]

Furthermore the reason for the short squeeze was a lack of coordination between the dev team and exchanges, particularly those exchanges that provide liquidity for the bitasset market. If a short wished to close his or her position they could not do so because yunbi, metaexchange and transwiser have not upgraded to 2.0. The short squeeze would have been mitigated if this were the case.

Additionally, Dan has made assumptions about which positions would be called by these price movements and this illiquid market that were not at all true. I had short positions that carried over from bitshares1.0 and all of those positions with an initial 3x collateral were margin called. My margin price for my positions was 0.025 cny which is a price that was not seen on exchanges that have been the backbone for bts trading for the past year, mainly yunbi and btc38.

As I understand it, what you are saying is that it's BM's fault that the external exchanges have not upgraded in time.
Also, you knew the migration event could be a bit rough for various technical reasons and were given a 30 day notice to close your positions if you did not want this extra risk. You chose to carry on regardless.

Under the previous system I would not have been margin called and if I had I would not have been subject to an additional 50% loss. The changes to these rules were not well defined. 

But of course delegates took their feeds from the one exchange that has been upgraded, the one exchange that has margin trading and can thereby drive down the price of bts such that the price on this exchange is 20% lower than the price on others, the one exchange that is clearly a more speculative market where pump and dump groups do their trading.

Even if it's true that Poloniex is the only exchange that has upgraded, would you really prefer that the 2.0 witnesses took their feed from exchanges that have NOT upgraded?

No, the bitasset market should not be operational at the moment

I know Dan's intentions are good but time and time again he has been wrong in judging the dynamics of the market that bitshares finds itself, which has subsequently driven the bts price down to the levels we see now. I no longer trust the dev team or Dan to do what is in the best interest of Bitshares. I can no longer promote bitshares to friends, because they have already lost more than $100,000 from this venture and the dev team and cryptonomex have little to know idea how to secure outside funding.

I think BM's only mistakes were these two:
- releasing the GUI a bit prematurely
- not taking enough care of the migration process
So I think your rant is totally off target.

How is my rant off target when I mentioned those as my two biggest concerns. You don't get that I'm not bitching about losing money. I don't care about the money, I care about where bitshares is going to be in the next 5 years. Given Dan and company's inability take care of the little things when they matter most (like coordinating the upgrade of exchanges) their total lack of business acumen I just don't know anymore where bitshares will be in the long term. The market continues to speak to this lack of confidence in their decision making abilities. This isn't a rant about me. This is a rant about the opportunity cost that these blunders create. If you don't get that so be it, but your response to my OP shouldn't be you made a risky bet stop bitching. You clearly don't understand the broader implications of what it means if the most invested members of the community continually getting burned.

[fuzzy]

The thing I find extremely suspicious is why this change was kept secret from everyone... every other change was announced.
So it is not only " Dan arbitrarily decides the rules needs to stop. " but "decides the rules and keeps them secret."

What change which "was kept secret" are you referring to?

BM's new  reinvented, better and improved square wheel -  aka the new margin call rules.

Can we talk a little bit about what solutions are?  I would love to learn about that from people who know their stuff on the trading floor.

sure...after I see my brownie equivalent BTS + 750,000 BTS losses from the secret new rule for stealing money out of the shorts, both safely deposeted in my wallet.

Did you attend the hangout? They discussed it there.  I don't know it was a "secret"...or at least not intentionally.  Not that it feels any better :/

[clout]

My problem is that over the past two years, every change that was supposed to be good for bitshares has driven the price down to where we see it now. I can't in good conscience tell anyone else to invest in bitshares because I can't say that there won't be an arbitrary change that confuses the market and drives down the price of bts further.

You totally ignored my response clout, and I feel it is central to the issue of how will BitShares become successful. So why don't YOU step up and do something about it? YOU can, if only you choose to do so. Don't just armchair quarterback and and let others shape BitShares, be responsible and help make it happen with a meaningful contribution.

What I so often see when it comes to issues of marketcap / BTS price is a total lack of commitment to the vision of BitShares. It is that vision that has kept me here despite the many blunders BM & team have made. I too become disillusioned at times when I see the same mistakes repeated.

But WE can end that if we take the responsible role of governance away from CNX and into the hands of a committee of those who are committed to the BitShares vision and can lead the community by setting goals and priorities.

That can probably not happen in the short term, as CNX is this community's only source of programming talent with enough knowledge, time and resources to make significant changes in the near term. What CAN happen now is identifying specific people from this community to serve on the committee, to draft worker proposals, and identify specific problems and a plan to solve them. Consensus starts with discussion.

Fuzzy has a separate thread aiming to identify the problems and hopefully a plan to resolve them.

It all starts with proactive individuals. Will you be one of them or just a nay saying armchair quarterback?

What you just said is "You can be the difference, but oh wait CNX actually controls the network so you probably wouldn't be able to make a difference at this time." That's what I got out of your comment.

Not everyone has the time to be central role in the governance model. People raised concerns about having the bitasset market operational while exchanges had not upgraded and Dan said no that's not a problem so witness went along with it. Witnesses just do what dan says other wise they get voted out. Dan shouldn't be in charge of business decisions. He's smart but not business savvy and definitely doesn't understand the difference between theory and practice.

You're right to say that we need new committee members. That's something i advocate for in the OP. But what happens when those committee members disagree with Dan? Will they be voted out before any proposal has a chance to take affect? What we need first and foremost is to establish a robust network of proxys which Dan/CNX should divide their voting power between. This is where the real decentralization occurs. Dan should at this point rely more on the community to make decisions and stop this paternalistic mindset where he feels he knows best of all how business should be conducted and the market should be defined, because he doesn't and we've seen that with iteration after iteration of the market engine.

The problem I really have with your response is that you say YOU can do this, YOU should do that, not taking into consideration the tragedy of the commons we have before us. It is not in my best interest to expend my energy and resources if others will not do the same. It is not YOU and ME  that must do these things, it is WE as a collective that must do these things, otherwise none of these haphazard attempts at changing the management and structure of this project will work.

[rajarush]

I know Dan's intentions are good but time and time again he has been wrong in judging the dynamics of the market that bitshares finds itself, which has subsequently driven the bts price down to the levels we see now. I no longer trust the dev team or Dan to do what is in the best interest of Bitshares.

Initially I thought the same. He has good intention, then every decision he made sucks made me doubt his intention now. From the beginning, no matter what he said, he never pay less to himself. He changes company name three times, project name four times just to suck more money from outside. Larimers have become the dictators and change the rule whenever they want. Bullshitting a lot and sell before you realize. I'm not surprise they are thrown into jail in near future.

[tonyk]

The thing I find extremely suspicious is why this change was kept secret from everyone... every other change was announced.
So it is not only " Dan arbitrarily decides the rules needs to stop. " but "decides the rules and keeps them secret."

What change which "was kept secret" are you referring to?

BM's new  reinvented, better and improved square wheel -  aka the new margin call rules.

Can we talk a little bit about what solutions are?  I would love to learn about that from people who know their stuff on the trading floor.

sure...after I see my fare share of brownie equivalent in BTS + 750,000 BTS losses from the secret new rule for stealing money out of the shorts, both safely deposeted in my wallet.

[fuzzy]

My problem is that over the past two years, every change that was supposed to be good for bitshares has driven the price down to where we see it now. I can't in good conscience tell anyone else to invest in bitshares because I can't say that there won't be an arbitrary change that confuses the market and drives down the price of bts further.

You totally ignored my response clout, and I feel it is central to the issue of how will BitShares become successful. So why don't YOU step up and do something about it? YOU can, if only you choose to do so. Don't just armchair quarterback and and let others shape BitShares, be responsible and help make it happen with a meaningful contribution.

What I so often see when it comes to issues of marketcap / BTS price is a total lack of commitment to the vision of BitShares. It is that vision that has kept me here despite the many blunders BM & team have made. I too become disillusioned at times when I see the same mistakes repeated.

But WE can end that if we take the responsible role of governance away from CNX and into the hands of a committee of those who are committed to the BitShares vision and can lead the community by setting goals and priorities.

That can probably not happen in the short term, as CNX is this community's only source of programming talent with enough knowledge, time and resources to make significant changes in the near term. What CAN happen now is identifying specific people from this community to serve on the committee, to draft worker proposals, and identify specific problems and a plan to solve them. Consensus starts with discussion.

Fuzzy has a separate thread aiming to identify the problems and hopefully a plan to resolve them.

It all starts with proactive individuals. Will you be one of them or just a nay saying armchair quarterback?

If the community can back my efforts here I know what I'm doing.  Ironically most of this is not new to me.  Never in my entire life did I think I would say that leading guilds in WoW would eventually lead me to do something with a paradigm changing technology...but it is as true as anything I know. 

But regardless my knowledge on this subject, this is not a gaming world where I have read books on how the in-game mechanics work--we still need those basic books written.  So I need you all to help me put together a monster manual (problems) and their attributes so we can define the weapons (expertise) and resources (capital) we need to get the job done. 

Thank you for your vote of confidence thom...but I will need others to eventually step up to help me create quests (goals).  I work a full time job, watch my baby during the day (while my wife works) and do this when they are both sleeping and throughout the day when Jericho is sleeping.  My personal resources are low in both time and investment capital, but if people help me with their own efforts, I think we can not only build a solid infrastructure, but brownies will represent the demographic who BUILT it...

So lets think of this a little differently:  if brownies are sent out to the community members who build the basic infrastructure and perform other critical tasks for bitshares (in the absence of obvious 3rd parties to do so), they would be one hell of a sharedrop target...wouldn't they?  And if BTS becomes huge, wouldn't that mean that brownies might someday be like a Berkeshire Hathaway stock of sharedrop tokens in the BitShares ecosystem? 

[jakub]

Furthermore the reason for the short squeeze was a lack of coordination between the dev team and exchanges, particularly those exchanges that provide liquidity for the bitasset market. If a short wished to close his or her position they could not do so because yunbi, metaexchange and transwiser have not upgraded to 2.0. The short squeeze would have been mitigated if this were the case.

Additionally, Dan has made assumptions about which positions would be called by these price movements and this illiquid market that were not at all true. I had short positions that carried over from bitshares1.0 and all of those positions with an initial 3x collateral were margin called. My margin price for my positions was 0.025 cny which is a price that was not seen on exchanges that have been the backbone for bts trading for the past year, mainly yunbi and btc38.

As I understand it, what you are saying is that it's BM's fault that the external exchanges have not upgraded in time.
Also, you knew the migration event could be a bit rough for various technical reasons and were given a 30 day notice to close your positions if you did not want this extra risk. You chose to carry on regardless.

But of course delegates took their feeds from the one exchange that has been upgraded, the one exchange that has margin trading and can thereby drive down the price of bts such that the price on this exchange is 20% lower than the price on others, the one exchange that is clearly a more speculative market where pump and dump groups do their trading.

Even if it's true that Poloniex is the only exchange that has upgraded, would you really prefer that the 2.0 witnesses took their feed from exchanges that have NOT upgraded?

I know Dan's intentions are good but time and time again he has been wrong in judging the dynamics of the market that bitshares finds itself, which has subsequently driven the bts price down to the levels we see now. I no longer trust the dev team or Dan to do what is in the best interest of Bitshares. I can no longer promote bitshares to friends, because they have already lost more than $100,000 from this venture and the dev team and cryptonomex have little to know idea how to secure outside funding.

I think BM's only mistakes were these two:
- releasing the GUI a bit prematurely
- not taking enough care of the migration process
So I think your rant is totally off target.

[fuzzy]

The thing I find extremely suspicious is why this change was kept secret from everyone... every other change was announced.
So it is not only " Dan arbitrarily decides the rules needs to stop. " but "decides the rules and keeps them secret."

What change which "was kept secret" are you referring to?

BM's new  reinvented, better and improved square wheel -  aka the new margin call rules.

Can we talk a little bit about what solutions are?  I would love to learn about that from people who know their stuff on the trading floor.

[tonyk]

The thing I find extremely suspicious is why this change was kept secret from everyone... every other change was announced.
So it is not only " Dan arbitrarily decides the rules needs to stop. " but "decides the rules and keeps them secret."

What change which "was kept secret" are you referring to?

BM's new  reinvented, better and improved square wheel -  aka the new margin call rules.

[Thom]

My problem is that over the past two years, every change that was supposed to be good for bitshares has driven the price down to where we see it now. I can't in good conscience tell anyone else to invest in bitshares because I can't say that there won't be an arbitrary change that confuses the market and drives down the price of bts further.

You totally ignored my response clout, and I feel it is central to the issue of how will BitShares become successful. So why don't YOU step up and do something about it? YOU can, if only you choose to do so. Don't just armchair quarterback and and let others shape BitShares, be responsible and help make it happen with a meaningful contribution.

What I so often see when it comes to issues of marketcap / BTS price is a total lack of commitment to the vision of BitShares. It is that vision that has kept me here despite the many blunders BM & team have made. I too become disillusioned at times when I see the same mistakes repeated.

But WE can end that if we take the responsible role of governance away from CNX and into the hands of a committee of those who are committed to the BitShares vision and can lead the community by setting goals and priorities.

That can probably not happen in the short term, as CNX is this community's only source of programming talent with enough knowledge, time and resources to make significant changes in the near term. What CAN happen now is identifying specific people from this community to serve on the committee, to draft worker proposals, and identify specific problems and a plan to solve them. Consensus starts with discussion.

Fuzzy has a separate thread aiming to identify the problems and hopefully a plan to resolve them.

It all starts with proactive individuals. Will you be one of them or just a nay saying armchair quarterback?

[jakub]

The thing I find extremely suspicious is why this change was kept secret from everyone... every other change was announced.
So it is not only " Dan arbitrarily decides the rules needs to stop. " but "decides the rules and keeps them secret."

What change which "was kept secret" are you referring to?

[clout]

From my sight, problem is lack of business mind, and aim too high but solve no real business problem for now.
Must admit the dev team have done a lot good work.

I agree with you entirely.

[xiahui135]

From my sight, problem is lack of business mind, and aim too high but solve no real business problem for now.
Must admit the dev team have done a lot good work.