The BTS price is hemorrhaging through lack of application use-cases and it's threatening even the ability of the blockchain to pay our core developers.
There is a lot of talk about global remittance, dark markets, gambling etc as opportunities for BitShares - however to date, none have taken hold in a way that can meaningfully support the price.
Bitshares is pitched as a 'decentralized-exchange' - so lets start listing real equity and debt instruments using the market pegging mechanism!
The traditional objection made against this proposal, are the various securities laws.
However Bitshares and it's delegates do not in fact issue securities, they merely publicize price feeds - not too different from a traditional media-source. Delegates also perform a message transmission function that is analogous to a teleco carrier transmitting data packets.
Technological defenses like TOR, the set of standby delegates, and the ability to position delegate hardware within multiple service-provider jurisdictions also exist.
Perhaps Bitshares could be the first blockchain to fund a legal-defence for itself - it it came to that. Consider it a test of the power of decentralization.
Frankly, if we were to attract the attention of securities regulators, it would be an enormous win from a marketing perspective. We would finally become a focal point of interest for taking a stand against the entrenched interests of a finance system that is mired by regulatory capture. This moral high-ground is currently held by Bitcoin and it profits enormously from the media exposure generated.
Compare that to our awful predicament today where we are cloaked in invisibility on technological and bitcoin forums.
My 2 BTS.