Quote from: luckybit on October 07, 2014, 02:36:12 pm

I am aware that if you interact with fiat you have to do KYC and AML. You don't have to do that for Bitshares X itself but for the on-ramps and off-ramps.

I know about the referral plan. I recommend the Bitshares team get in touch with Coinkite.

What is KYC & AML ?

Yeah, from the context of the comments I thought as much.

This is where the rubber meets the road. If you want to grow and appeal to the masses it seems you have to give up privacy. Well, that's the proposition, but do we? I certainly can see cases for a "yes" answer, but I don't like the proposition - at all.

This is a basic philosophical conundrum. It was the wedge that got us the "Patriot" Act. It may be mankind's Achilles heel.

People flock to incentives. What is an incentive for one man is not for another. Unfortunately the incentives for people who don't value privacy as much far outnumber those that do.

It's really hard to understand I3's overall principles regarding privacy if KYC & AML policies are baked into the code along with TITAN and all transactions using different encryption keys.

The only reason I could explain those two concepts being used in the same tool is that accommodating KYC & AML to appease government regulators is a different class of privacy than peer to peer privacy or privacy for non government entities.

But one defeats the purpose of the other IMO. The power to track finances is the power to control them as well. It is the disincentive government uses for undesirable transactions and the incentive for where they want your money to go (like the rigged stock market).

I can't answer the question of whether BitShares should accommodate KYC & AML. If I had to vote for delegates on that issue I would be aligned with those that don't, but I am not in a position to know if enough money will flow without that support to tank the whole bitshares experiment.

Right now there's been minimal government intervention regarding bitcoin. But now that the blockchain technology genie is out of the bag governments will be more on guard and will look down the road further to gauge the effects of crypto efforts. I just hope they're slow enough to react to allow us to gain market share momentum to stave off gov. aggression.

Quote from: Thom on October 07, 2014, 04:57:51 pm

Totally agreed. xeroc also thought similarly as I see it. No disrespect to MeTHoDx, but we MUST stick to the underlying principles and not go off half cocked chasing market share anywhere we see money or interest. So many people don't seem to get WHY crypto has value; so many are preoccupied with convenience.

None taken. I'm just saying that's probably what will happen in the short-term whether we like it or not. Bitcoins best usecases so far have been drugs and day trading. Not saying I like that, but it's the reality of the situation.

I hear you. Spoken with a truly rational tongue. MeTHoDx,  I find your posts to be excellent. I don't have many marketing skills, but I find myself agreeing with your posts 9 times out of 10.

Quote from: bluebit on October 05, 2014, 04:41:56 am

So if this year people will be able to purchase bitUSD directly, then how many transactions would it take for all the fees to start increasing the value of bitsharesX?

Do anyone how to calculate this?

It really depends on why they are buying BitUSD. If it's a means to spend it all and cash out, then the value impact is really a wash. Once BitUSD is being used for transactions, it needs to be something the recipient will hold, or change into BTSX, etc, staying in this ecosystem. One they get confident in BitUSD itself, it could become a virtual bank account, but that will take time to earn the sort of trust needed. Because once it gets converted to BTC, fiat, etc., then that added volume has not increased the value. Just look at Litecoin with all the mining and cashing out--plenty of volume, but minimal appreciation for awhile now. Regarding pre-paid debit cards, I'm not aware of the numbers on those, but I do know that $1-2 billion in gift cards go unused every year. People often tend to hold, forget, or lose pre-paid cards when small amounts are involved.

And even with normal use it's fairly rare when gift card holders spend 100% of the card's balance. Usually there at least a few cents, if not a few dollars left on the card where the balance is so small it isn't practical to use it in many cases.

Thanks to everyone that posted, most insightful.

However, I'm surprised none of your posts mentioned anything about the benefit of PTS dividends that will arise from the Music DAC (too late for DNS ). What is the difference in dividends between BTSX and PTS going forward? This is my main reason for wanting PTS, but if the general perception is BTSX will pay a similar portion of shares for future DACs the difference is the only reason for diversification. After all, they're both a member of the BitShares ecosystem, even if they are separate animals.

And since the Music DAC snapshot is going to take place in less than two hrs, I need your input quick!

Folks are getting a bit short-sighted here.

The problem with diluting is that it sets precedent.

Diluting under the wise and benign rule of BM seems like a good idea because it satisfies short-term greed with no perceived downside.

Bitshares just prints some money to boost the economy.

Sound familiar?

Dilution, inflation, debasement... whatever you want to call it, the end result is always the same.

I state categorically that I3 and the Bitshares community have a moral imperative not to inflate/dilute/debase the share supply.

Doing so is akin to voting to be infected by a disease that will slowly kill BTSX.

A few will get wealthy in the short term, the masses will suffer in the long term.

We do not want to become the US Gov.

I3 has ample development funds that if spent wisely will get Bitshares to critical mass.

They need to get the client/trading platform sorted, phone apps pushed out, fiat gateways in place.

Then do a simple marketing campaign to the crypto crowd and perhaps a non-crypto-but-tech-savvy demographic (ie. Gen X/Y).

This should cause the market cap to increase substantially.

At that point, once the 'hey look at us' marketing is exhausted, they could consider using a referral system or other shenanigans to engage other demographics.

Low hanging fruit first.

I'm no financial genius, but I've been around long enough to see nothing good come from manipulating the money supply (or share supply) as oldman points out here. I think we have enough examples of inflation being a bad thing, not as sure about shares of stock in companies.

The difficult part of knowing how much money to print is having a good understanding of the volume of goods & services traded with that money. That's a bit of a catch 22, b/c that "model"  doesn't accommodate new wealth created which necessitates expanding the money supply to prevent deflation. That's where the difficult effort is, anticipating future growth or contraction.

Quote from: Thom on October 01, 2014, 10:31:49 pm

I know Derrick implemented a firefox plugin to surf .bit domains registered thru the namecoin blockchain, but I don't think that's very convenient to most users either.

Interesting. Is there somewhere I could find out more about this? Does it modify the behavior of SSL certificate verification?

Google .bit namecoin meowbit

Quote

1) As a shareholder of BTSX, can I trade BTSX shares for PTS shares?
2) Can this be accomplished through the BTSX or PTS wallets, neither of them or both of them?
3) Can PTS shares be held in a wallet like Electrum?
4) I could liquidate BTSX into BTC, then buy PTS with BTC. That doesn't sound very wise, or is it?

a:If you want PTS and you only have BTSX that is the way to do it

I don't know what you mean. Are you answering #4 saying that's the right way or the only way to do it, and direct trade isn't possible?

I thought BitsharesX also had exchange features built in, so why would I need to involve bter.com or BTC to obtain PTS?

Also, I do not understand what PTS "coins" or shares in PTS have to do with DACs, unless it's just baked into the code of the DACs to allocate some portion of the DAC shares to owners of PTS when the DAC goes public. Is that it? If so I guess the existing DACs would then need to be forked to pay the dividends to the new PTS-DAC when it is created after this year?

As much as I've read and studied there seem to be some fundamentals of the I³ ecosystem I don't quite grasp, like the current and planned relationships between DACs, PTS & BTSX.

What I'm thinking is PTS/Protoshares was the initial PoW "coin" setup to fund and experiment with PoS & DACs.

Also, since the DNS DAC is already snapshoted, why isn't there more activity here on the forum related to the DNS DAC?

I never said fixed cost. It's the same auction model as all of the test networks we've done.

My apologies. A one time up front charge? For what? Perhaps a more detailed explanation is in order. I thought that meant a single fee, presumably the same for all buyers. You may not have said it was variable based on the class of name (popularity or some other criteria), but for a specific name the cost isn't variable is it?

Lets go back to my post.

Is this the place the DNS DAC is discussed; i.e. if I monitor this thread is this where I'll be best informed of everything concerning a "blockchain DNS"?

I've noticed some effort here for DNS work on a blockchain, but it appears to be a PoW style blockchain, presume this is the test networks discussed here is that right?

When will it become a PoS DAC and why the PTS snapshot at this stage of the DNS DAC development? What is the purpose of these "test networks", is it to flush out the code for a wallet / GUI or browser plugin code, or code to be inserted into or replacement for the name resolution layers of a network protocol stack?

I am still confused about this tho I've tried to find out as much as I can. Just doesn't appear to have the same strength of effort as BitShares, and nowhere near the volume of discussion about it.

Is Derrick still one of the developers involved?

And since I seem to be a fountain of questions here's another: Is the approach you've taken for the development of this DNS DAC typical of how future DACs are created? What I mean is starting with a PoW blockchain implementation and ending with a PoS DAC under the BitShares umbrella?

Sorry for the flurry of questions but unlike bitshares this DNS DAC is harder to get current info for. If anyone has info to answer these questions or other links to help me understand this better please let me know so I don't have to post dumb questions.