Stan, I'll address your points inline:
Just because most people are content to trust centralized tokens now, does not mean that will continue to be true in the coming collapse. When the flight to safety starts, the value proposition of autonomously tracking the value of external assets without counterparty risk goes through the roof.
If a collapse comes, I very much doubt people will come searching for safety on the Bitshares network, with its ~$10 mil market cap, which almost nobody uses.
I even doubt people in general will go for the king of cryptos, Bitcoin.
No. They'll buy gold and silver, real estate, as they always do. I think it's very unrealistic to think that Joe Sixpack is suddenly going to think "Fake internet money" is a good idea if the world around him is collapsing.
It's a very, very tiny minority that would use things like Bitcoin as a safe haven in troubled times.
The people who would use Bitshares? We can count them on one forum.
In the meantime, the chain does need other reasons for people to use it. Lots are being discussed.
Maybe we should focus on two of the biggest features that still stand us apart from everyone else, altough that gap is rapidly closing ... ethereum is bringing decentralized exchanges online as well as we speak. And they already have far more market traction that Bitshares.
Who do you think most people (still a very tiny minority) will choose? This Ethereum thing everyone is talking about nonstop, or the unknown Bitshares?
One of my favorites is the concept of DPOS sidechains that BM has spent the past three Mumbles discussing.
Can't comment on sidechains, never really looked into it. But....
If DPOS nodes are collectively trusted enough to secure a single asset then they can hold all coins just like a single exchange does. This is the true exchange on a block chain. Right now we are using only half of the concept:
Not sure if I buy this. Just like if the ECB is trusted to issue EUR, it doesn't suddenly mean everyone else is ok with them issuing and managing the policy of every other currency. Pretty sure China wouldn't be happy with that.
Half 1: The trading engine and native tokens are secured on the chain.
Half 2: Actual BTC, DOGE, etc. are still held by centralized exchanges. Why?
The new side chain concept uses those existing witness nodes to do Half 2 as well. Why not? We trust them under DPOS consensus to secure the most important digital asset in the world, BTS. Why can't we trust them to do the centralized exchanges job of collectively holding our BTC and DOGE for us too?
*WE* trust them, because we're Bitshares fans. I don't think anyone else will.
With this approach the uber-trusted witness nodes themselves can issue light-speed "claim check" tokens for all the other real chain token they are holding in multi-sig escrow. Just like banks used to issue much more portable receipts for gold in their vaults. People quit redeeming those receipts for real metal and just kept passing them around - trusting paper because they new the could redeem them if they wanted to.
In general I don't think uber-trust is the way to go. Also, it seems there would be WAY too much incentive for witnesses to misbehave in this scenario.
DPOS lets us do this traditional bank function so much better! And we have real BTC and Doge in our witness vaults!
No comment (related to sidechains, see above)
This is the holy grail that takes BitShares to the next level. It is the killer meta-app that only BitShares is in a position to offer.
Wasn't the holy grail the dex and smartcoins? Maybe we ought to focus on one or two holy grails at a time, and get these working first.
As this catches on, BitShares witnesses will become the most trusted and therefore biggest holders of all other currencies.
If it catches on.
What? You're trusting your coins to the owner of a single exchange company with no supervision by other independent cosigners? Really?
I'm not so sure it's not better to do this rather than relying on witnesses who will suddenly have an astronomical incentive to misbehave, potentially without many consequences.