Quote from: James212 on October 07, 2014, 02:05:09 pm

I hate to break it to you but the greater market does not care about centralized vs decentralized.  They will go to whomever has the best utility and user experience.

It is right that people don't care as long as it works but:
 
There are two valuable attributes of blockchain technology:

a) Holding the private keys (you can do this with USD on Ripple (or am I wrong here?)) = funds can't be seized even with a centralized issuer except if they are seized for all (lack of collateral or state intervention).

b) No (direct) counterparty risk. This can not be done with ripple or any other system where a centralized issuer is backing the value of the token. And this is where the value of BitUSD comes from. Having a counterparty risk is highly costly: Any institution that holds funds for customers has high regulatory costs. Centralized solutions are therefore not per se cheaper for the customer.

I guess that customers would either trust a relatively young and unkown company that does audits (costly) and has a 100% reserve or big known banks that offer this service. The latter case it would likely be backed by a fractional reserve which is unlikely to be sustainable either individually (for a specific bank) or systemically.

So BitUSD has unique characteristics and will be very useful besides these centralized options.

you and davepbrown have good points regarding decentralization and I agree with you.  However, my point is that to be successful BTSX needs to attract the broader market, not just elements of the crypto-market.  In the broader market people think, care, and understand less about the problems caused by centralization.  Maybe just 1% of the market cares (I'm thinking the US market. In places like Argentina maybe more)..  To them centralization is a given.  They have no idea about its drawbacks and don't care about alternatives.   They will only be educated when the looming crisis finally hits the preverbal brick will. Currently, they do not care.   Therefore my argument is that this feature can not be listed as one that will give us much a leg up on the competitors like the one mentioned above.  At least not in the current environment.    That said, I'm sure that with the current crypto crowd this feature is indispensable, but the way I see it we are seeking to expand that demographic considerably.   

Its nice to see their is a change in attitude. This is a competition and the best technology isn't necessarily going to be the winner, It could simply be the first one that gets their without a major screw
up. But lets not get lost here it's one company and they have to build from the ground up.  We have time but we should understand time is a factor in everything thats happening right now.  Once
overstock launches this exchange they have a globally recognized name and a legal team that has experience in crypto to jump through SEC hoops. If you read the article it should be noted they
aren't just going to try to launch something for Overstock but a exchange that they will try to attract any "The ultimate aim of the project is to create a stock system that operates, in large part,
outside the control of the big incumbent banks. " All they need now is a bitUSD (their is no reason they shouldn't implement market pegged assets) and wow it is starting to sound alot like bitsharesX.

 

I just have one concern regarding having the forum public to whoever wants to access.

Several groundbreaking ideas are brought up by brilliant forum members, ideas which are then at some point added to the "to do list" of the dev team. They do a terrific job, but they are humans and there's only 168 hours in one week. What I have in mind as Bitshares X (or any other DAC for that matter) being "open source" is basically developping the software, releasing it to the world and then let the others know about all the innovation contained in that release. But you still get the first mover advantage, because while the comptetition is trying to figure out the implications of what was released, the devs are already on to something else.

Having this forum open, several of the best ideas can be "copied" or modified and integrated on another platform even before the dev team is able to integrate them in the software. Then you lose your first mover advantage for that specific idea.

On the other hand though, it's all about which dev team is the most innovative and fastest to implement new ideas, and in that matter I really believe Bitshares has a solid lead over the competition.

Anyway, it wouldn't be a bad idea to consider having a "closed" section where the most innovative ideas could be discussed and debated without the competition spying on those ideas.

 

Quote from: bytemaster on October 05, 2014, 04:08:31 pm

The goal of this idea is that no dilution occurs unless a user signs up and first buys 1000 bit usd.  Then the dilution is used to purchase bit usd, not sold for real usd. 

As long as the referral program is growing there would be no sell pressure at all. 

If it works the the users who stick around will provide more than enough new inflow of capital.

While I'm not necessarily against issuing more shares to fund marketing (share metaphor vs. coin), I'm against this $100 bonus. It's a complete waste of money and will not lead to the kind of adoption you think it will.

Let's use PayPal's early marketing strategy as a case study.

a) They focused on one marketplace (eBay) to build a real user base.
b) They used bots to simulate demand on eBay.

Here's a summary (source):

Quote

For a period of time, Paypal effectively gained a following by offering new users a $10 credit for registering and another $10 for referrals. However, this strategy also burned through its cash reserves pretty quickly. To separate itself from the competition, Paypal had to build and control a proprietary distribution channel that their competitors could not easily detect, much less duplicate.

When Paypal figured that eBay was their key distribution platform, their marketing team came up with a creative marketing campaign to simulate demand. They created a robot – a script that could spider eBay’s site looking for certain types of auctions – that bid on items and then, insisted on paying for the auction using Paypal.

Here's a quote from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal:

Quote from: Peter Thiel

“Poor distribution, not product, is the number one cause of failure. If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished… People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself. This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to others, or both. “

If I were in charge of marketing strategy at BitShares, I'd focus on a strategic partnership with OpenBazaar. The only users willing to put up with Bitcoins volatility will be drug related users (because they have no other choice); for OpenBazaar to attract "legitimate" users they need a stable crypto for their merchants and users to transact in. They need BitUSD (or NuBits) just as much as BitShares needs ONE solid distribution channel as a catalyst for organic adoption.

a) Focus on making BitUSD easy for merchants to integrate into pre-existing online marketplaces that currently need the product (i.e. OpenBazaar).

b) Seed the marketplace with BitUSD to kickstart the BitUSD economy.

Whichever stable crypto taps into a popular online marketplace first will gain network effect and spread organically from that point on. This is called a "viral insertion point" and is absolutely critical.

Focusing on attracting a "mainstream" audience (that doesn't even need/care about crypto to begin with) as opposed to already existing marketplaces that legitimately need our product will be a fatal error.

   Made some good points!  Maybe we should also approach BitPay (or GoCoin).  I'm sure bitUSD could help them to expand their offerings to merchants. 

I don't like this focus on marketing. It makes it seem like the BTSX team is desperate for money.

We should be focused entirely on making the system as robust and bug-free as possible. If the pegged assets system works as intended, then the market will speak for itself and users will come on of their own accord.. Trying to draw in new users with big promises should not be a priority, and it makes this whole thing look scammy...

IMHO, we do not have the option not to market as we need speed to win the race of network effect.  We are no longer in the days of early-bitcoin when know one knew of the technology.  The competitors are coming out of the wood work.  Also, remember this is open source.  It can be forked by anyone at any moment.  The technology does not provide a barrier to entry.  The network effect will. 

Quote from: 38PTSWarrior on October 05, 2014, 11:11:14 am

Let bytemaster decide what is the best solution. If you start a voting, half of the people will have no clue what they are doing. I only trust bytemaster. He brought us here and is the captain.
 

I completely agree with this.  But do you understand that this proves DPOS is not viable as a self-sufficient system for intelligent consensus?

I don't think it means that at all.  I think it mean that some people are more equipped to make business decisions than others.  Though we each have our talents, sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen. 

I agree that the naming convention is very unfortunate.  We stepped right in of the same labeling morris that bitcoin did with its Bitcoin network and bitcoin currency.  This is very unclear for mass communication.  Every bit helps when we expect a tough competition and a tough fight for survival.  The names/lables of our companies and products need to be very clear in the publics head within minutes of hearing it.  The DAC/Bitshares concept is complicated enough without our choice of labels making it even more confusing to the general public. 

IMHO we should have

Parent company (DAC)      Bitshares  - change to -  (XXX)=totally different name not using the word bitshares
Bitshares Exchange           BTSX      - no change-
Bitshares Value Unit          BTSX           - change to -   Bitshare / BTS  ............(this should be on coinmktcap)
Other family of DACS        Remove Bitshare from their name and add the new name of the parent company.  <---- especially if they don't use the BTS value unit.