I understand why there is a heavy reluctance to consider a bitShares product with a BTC underlying. It seems like we are "supporting the enemy". Being dirty. And throwing away our capital gain potential. But if we get past the initial moral disgust, we might see that none of these things are actually true.

Who made BTC our enemy? What is the point of even having an enemy? BTC is really just the industry benchmark that we are seeking to exceed. It need be no more emotional than that. Using it as a form of collateral does not take any credibility from bitShares, nor add any to BTC. It is merely a statement that BTC is by far the most commonly held form of available collateral at this time.

There is also much scope to challenge the idea that BTS derives its growth potential by backing bitAssets.

I've demonstrated previously that bitAssets can be issued via self-creation, with funds raised from the sale of the bitAsset being used for any general purpose the borrower desires. In fact, my view is that using these funds to arbitrage against the real asset is the preferred motivator for issuers. This merely requires participating BTS users to move their existing tokens to the collateral pool. It does not require anybody to increase demand for BTS - BTS leverage is just one potential application of the borrowed funds.

I've also argued (without convincing many people yet!) that the market value of BTS is determined by supply and demand at any time, irrespective of any prior market trades that may have been initiated by new purchases of bitAsset. That is, the market needs to be convinced that any price BTS is forcibly bid up to is a reasonable price given its future return prospects, or it will simply realign the price at a lower level again.

This then gets to the essence of what really does drive the BTS price. In my opinion, its the utility that BTS can provide to owners through the prospect of income, or the potential utility of being able to access opportunities to earn income within the bitShares system. If there is real value there, does it really matter if a source of credit growth is removed?

So if we did offer a product to the market that had much greater demand potential and capacity (BTC>100x the market cap of BTS at this point) in the medium term, and we structured it so as to earn an income stream for BTS owners from that product, that could actually be a very good thing for owners of BTS. This would seem a lot more robust as a business model to me - earn income from a product, rather than the product concept merely being to compound the credit available to BTS bulls.

I believe the theoretically optimal model is to actually offer flexible collateral, where BTS, BTC or other digital collateral can be held as a mix to back bitAssets. Perhaps that will be more palatable to bitshares because its not seen as directly supporting any specific "competing" token and offers maximum flexibility.

Now this is a big shift for many given the previous paradigms held in bitShares, and everyone will have a different opinion on it. So what's to stop us doing both? With privatised bitAssets, the purists can still have BTS backed bitAssets, and there can be a parallel market for bitAssets backed by BTC or other combinations of collateral. Better us earning the reward than a competitor. And to be truly self-funding, bitShares ultimately needs to earn reward by delivering value to the market and meeting its needs.

If you go to bter or btc-e or cryptsy, the thing they all have is a trollbox.

This is why wallet.bitshares.org should have one:

-They allow new users to help each other with the basics.
-They give the impression of activity.
-They are fun and make people want to stick around when they are not trading.

We have a great website that almost looks just like a regular crypto exchange, except it has no trollbox.

Back when we used to do mumbles, Bytemaster was asking for ways to make BitShares fun. I think this is it