It also has to do with the near impossibility of creating new bitUSD or acquiring it.
Metaexchange can't trade BTS to/from bitUSD right now with the webwallet because the webwallet doesn't support memos correctly, so sending BTS to them to buy some bitUSD and thus arbing the spread down is neigh on impossible.
I asked Metaexchange directly about shrinking the memo size to fit, and they said it would take a major recode on their end and the bug that was opened with the webwallet github was closed as "won't fix cuz 2.0 iz comin!"
You can't mint bitUSD and the web wallet evidently doesn't support shorting it into existence.
The "play at home" version of the application is one of the worst resource hogs I've ever run.
I physically can't move the mouse on my laptop after launching it and" top" shows it pegging the CPU plus chewing up 125% of RAM.
This is most recent Ubuntu on a laptop with LXDE desktop (couldn't even get it to launch under Unity or KDE).
2GB of RAM and dual core 2GHZ processor. Should be enough, but isn't.
What this means is that people WANT bitUSD but can't get it because someone decided for whatever reason to limit the memo field in the webwallet while at the same time disabling shorts.
I would gladly hold 90% of my net wealth in bitAssets and I know a lot of others who feel the same way.
But you can't get into a position for a fair price and I'm not upgrading my computer just to run a wallet that by all means should be just a few MB (SPV would be so lovely to have).
Limewallet is looking promising, but I didn't see the ability to short on it either.