- Why is there an entity called Bitshares Munich? It has an own website, but that looks a bit amateur/basic to be honest.
BitShares Munich is one out of multiple companies that work **on top**
of BitShares. They have a stake in BitShares and try to profit from its
products. To my knowledge they build an android app, a POS terminal and
other quite cool stuff. They are also doing some business development
for BitShares.
Other companies that work on BitShares are Openledger, BitKapital,
ChainSquad, Blocktrades, ShapeShift, etc. ...
It's an open system and anyone can do business on it.
- What are the most important topics that are currently under development?
Depends, are we talking frontend, backend, or maybe middleware? There
is:
- btsbots
- pybitshares
- bitshares.eu
- stealth
- smartwallet
- bitshares-trezor
- tapin
- ...
- I heard something about an upcoming fork. Is that true and if yes, why is that needed and when will this happen?
There is no hard fork planned currently and if there was, it would be up
to the shareholder to approve it or now. In contrast to other chains,
BitShares **does** have a governance system!
- What is the reason there are already so many products ready, but Bitshares marketcap is still so low (low usage)?
- BitShares is more complicated than bitcoin
- BitShares is in a market niche that is *HIGHLY* regulated which slows
down businesses and startups
- BitShares suffers the chicken/egg problem: No Traders -> No Liquidity -> No Traders
- What marketing efforts is Bitshares making in order to get more usage of the many products that already exist and with that receiving more fees?
Currently mostly grass roots efforts (still). Different businesses have
different goals on how to fund further marketing, but keep in mind that
there is **no** central entity/foundation that owns BitShares and is
willing to throw money at marketing. That's why there never was a lot of
marketing. It's also questionable if you actually *want* to market
BitShares. My company at least would rather want to market the products
it offers such as price stable crypto currencies, fast exchanging, yada
yada ..
- The pool of BTS for paying workers is quite large. Who owns access to that pool and how safe is it to protect for theft by people why do have access?
The pool is owned by all BTS shareholders. The only way to get money out
of there is
* Via witnesses (paid a fixed per-block-rate)
* Via workers (paid as requested)
Both require shareholder approval. The rate of the witness-pay is
committee controlled whose members are also shareholder approved.