I was doing some thinking into the value proposition bitshares has for the average non crypto user. Which is prob around 99.9% of the population.

Most people wont care that the solution is decentralized, the assets unseizable and requires no trust. Infact many people prefer a centralized, solution that requires regulation.

To work out what the value proposition of bitshares for the majority of people, we need to  compare it to the current centralize services.

And we need to pretend for a moment we are providing a centralized service and then ask why people would use it.

lets pretend:
- We are a centralized service, like PayPal.
- We are providing a service for the exchange of IOUs dollars/gold and other commodities and currencies.
- People can put money onto the system and exchange IOUs with other users at low transaction costs.
- People can trade IOUs for IOUs of a different kind to gain exposure to different commodities and currencies.
- Transactions are fast and global.

This looks like a decent traditional centralized service but, regulation aside, is not too difficult to create.

So lets pretend we have created this centralized service and we are direct competitor to the likes of PayPal. What are the next steps to gain user adoption.

- there needs to be a very small barrier to entry (paypal users can easily link their credit card).
- users need to be able to draw their cash back into their bank accounts quickly and easily.
- merchants need to start using bitshares as a way for their customers to pay them (this is different from saying they need to accept bitUSD).
- user conversion should involve zero need to understand the mechanisms of how the system works.

I thought this would be an interesting way of looking at things as we need to be better or at least as good as current centralized services (and being decentralized and trust free doesnt count

why such a difficult password. Struggled on my small phone

Anyone want to do an over/under TTG (Time Till Goxed)?

Haha love it!

The thing is, people want something that is simple and that they can understand.
The concept of physical gold in a physical location that can be redeemed makes sense.

Bitshares will need to somehow convince people that our bitGold is that.

This would be easier to do with bitUSD where there are on/off ramps.

People dont want to be told about the prediction market, the market peg, collateral etc. That just makes the whole thing sound scary, and like they going to loose their money if one of these things they dont understand doesnt work.

People should just be told to put their money into their Bitshares account because they can then transact with it globally and for less. anything more makes things confusing

Quote from: MrJeans on April 17, 2015, 02:08:18 pm

Wouldnt we just be passing the potato.
It would be extremely expensive for a private party to market the bitAsset product.
And the profits they make from the trading fees would not justify the expenses (exactly what you said before).

The only way I see this working is if an established player in the financial services space offers the bitAsset as another service and leverages their user base.

But how many large established players are leveraging crypto?

Now you are catching on... the way we bootstrap is to give established players a profit incentive to bring us customers

Bytemaster agreed with a thought process I had 

*me feeling chuffed


I still think the price feeds should be decentralized among delegates (many would offer price feeds voluntarily or for a small fee to maintain a certain level of 'our magic word').

Quote from: luckybit on April 13, 2015, 12:08:08 am

Quote from: NewMine on April 12, 2015, 11:59:53 pm

Quote from: liondani on April 12, 2015, 09:37:00 pm

Quote from: hrossik on April 12, 2015, 09:04:37 pm

I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...

Totally agree. options would be great.

 

Do we have enough liquidity to hold the pegs though?

I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program

Got my 

If we sitting on a $100 acquisition fee/user:

Social network ID verification,
Install client,
Get free 20bitUSD,
Make a transaction of over 5bitUSD --> get another 15bitUSD
Get a friend to sign up and send them 5bitUSD --->get another 15bitUSD.

Like dropbox