1. Stock trading is a great market to enter eventually and exchanges are extremely important for liquidity, but I think the core value proposition of bitAssets currently is its usefulness for mainstream users for payments.
bitUSD is not much more useful than paypalUSD. From the shopper's perspective, bitUSD is much slower and harder to obtain. Some merchants have a lot to gain, but these merchants are not offering big discounts for using bitUSD, so why would the customers bother obtaining bitUSD? Getting a 20% discount by using bitUSD would do a lot for adoption, but we can't force merchants to offer discounts.
The core value proposition of Bitcoin/altcoins as a payment system is to save the 3% credit card fees for merchants.
If that's the core value proposition, then it looks like we're fucked. Large companies like amazon.com have negotiated much better deals than 3%. More like 1%.
I would hope that the core value proposition for cryptoassets would be as a stores of wealth, like gold. Transactional use is only helpful for establishing a baseline value. Bitcoin's transactional use couldn't support an even 1 billion dollar market cap. The velocity of money is too high.
3. People go into crypto trading because they want to trade crypto and believe in the value proposition of Bitcoin and other altcoins. I'm sure some people get addicted to trading and would want to trade other assets, but most of the volume in crypto-exchanges/gateways is between Bitcoin & local currencies. Also bitAssets on exchanges may not be as compelling because you can already trade into local currency from Bitcoin on exchanges. The main value proposition for using the bitShares exchange vs another exchange is because it's decentralized, not because it has pegged assets.
The compelling reason to trade everything on bitshares with bitassets would be because the platform is better in every way, not just better in one way (decentralized).
4. Right now Bitcoin exchanges charge .2 - .5% per trade. (Competition will drive that lower) Regular mainstream online brokerage accounts charge .5%-1% on an average trade of $1-$2k. Settlement will be much faster using crypto. Smaller and microtrades are compelling. Not that many people worry about counterparty risk for securities. There are advantages, but how compelling is it for investors or traders to switch? The biggest downside is there won't be much liquidity compared to regular brokerage accounts.
The market size of retail online brokerage trading is maybe $10Billion/yr? (Interactive brokers & E-Trade make about $1B rev per year)
Remember, BitAssets are created using BitShares. If there are 10 billion dollars worth of bitUSD being used to trade 10 billion worth of various bitassets.There must be more than 40 billion dollars worth of BitShares in existence.
Then we start burning the fees.
BitShares can do what other platforms can't:
A big advantage is that BitShares allows you to trade anything. I'm American. If I could, I'd trade some Chinese stocks with BitShares that are not available in America. Chinese people would like to trade some American stocks that are not available in China. Those are just two examples.
BitShares will be the best way to let everyone trade everything.
Counterparty risk: It's common for brokerage accounts to be locked, disabled, or seized for some legal reason. BitShares will never lock your account.
5. We technically have a Forex exchange using bitAssets already. Is there a lot of Forex activity? I don't think there is much of any. Most people just trade between local currency and BTS. (I think there will be a lot of Forex activity eventually, but only after there is a core value proposition to use BTS for payments in various local currencies)
Currently, trading on bitshares is
not attractive because 20x-50x margin is not available. If I trade bitEUR:bitUSD, how much money can I make? Think about it.