Quote from: arhag on October 19, 2014, 08:05:38 pm

Quote from: luckybit on October 19, 2014, 07:40:59 pm

Honestly I would rather there be competition than to have one central DAC where all risk is centralized there. I just don't understand why these ideas are any good.

If you want to compete you and anybody else are absolutely free to fork the BitShares toolkit and do anything. But don't expect Dan and I3 to divert resources supporting the competition.

The point of this proposal is to allow the team to focus their attention on one DAC during this early growth stage and take advantage of Metcalfe's law.

Why not hire more developers as was planned but wasn't followed through with? I would stay away from any dilution as it is a sensitive topic and threshold for which investors in this space watch like a hawk.. that is why the Chinese dumped at the mere proposal of it... so the only other option is to merge without dilution, which may be too deflationary (or not?)... but if you keep things separate.. and have problems down the road with one of them its isolated... and another thing is to hire more devs to concentrate on the individual chains and have BM oversee them all... this way we can have reports of each project and decide which one to concentrate on if any, or work on new r&d to develop further, and the rest of the devs become sustaining engineers fixing bugs or applying concepts already specced out.

My understanding its that BTSX does not have the financing to do it right (execute the full plan) without a capital infusion.  Of course all capital infusions should more than pay for themselves so the funding must be discussed and put to a vote.

There is something wrong with that link from my end..

It is an .OGG file.  You may need to download it.  I know the VCL player will play it. 

I attended the session. bytemaster clarified all of the concerns that we all had.  there were 23 of us on the call.  After the session every one of us felt positive about the BMs proposal.   My focus was on PTS, and BTSX'. 

Basically, the move will get rid of all the complexity the only causes confusion and marketing challenges (this is a very good thing!).  PTS and AGS will be folded into BTS (AGS and PTS will receive shares in BTS) and DACs will be all "divisions" BTS.  I think of it as BTS being like a parent company.  Additionally the capital infusion will allow the Bitshares ecosystem to far far more efficiently......This is a race to network effect and it is critical we move fast!

The plan is solid. I'm currently a buyer :-)

Everyone should check out the audio session which will be posted here shortly. 

Perhaps we should have a hangout---maybe tomorrow---for shareholders to speak with Dan and the team about this.

Seems there is a great deal of need for more efficient forms of communication on this topic than forums can easily digest...

 

Quote from: Stan on October 19, 2014, 07:05:21 pm

Get big, then divide. 
Don't divide, then try to get big.

Wise words... .

I love today. Mass buying opportunities + great news for the future -- what a combination.

 

Quote from: Rune on October 19, 2014, 11:35:47 am

Quote from: joele on October 19, 2014, 11:28:37 am

1. Dilution 
an investor's nightmare

Want me to make a list of stocks that have ever issued new shares? You'll probably reconsider this blanket statement when you realize that basically every successful company that has ever existed has issue new shares in situations where shareholders and management has deemed it profitable.

Of course others become profitable also others failed, I'm talking about if there is a news about share dilution investors know that the value of their shares may take a cut.

Most companies in high growth industries (specially startups) fund their operation through share issuance (dilution).  Dilution is a means of investing in the companies growth.  As long as the market believes in the growth plan (management), the indicators from the long-term/med-term investors should be positive.  Of course in the very short term, the market hates uncertainty, so that is the reaction you are seeing now.  All things being equal, and if managements plan is tight (I think it is) we should see a share price drop followed in time by a rebound to higher highs. 

I really like the idea of a snapshotable token (PTS) that allows any third party developer to create a DAC and leverage the BitShares community. That idea is solid and doesn't need to be done away with. It only needs to be simplified: either combine AGS/PTS into one liquid asset on the BitShares exchange or use BTSX (BTS?) as the snapshotable token itself. Want to use the BitShares toolkit and get gain the support and network effect the entire community offers? Snapshot BTS.

[/b]


  . Agreed.  Third party developers should Snapshot BTS (using a lower percentage rate of course)

   

If the BTSX market cap evaporated now, the VOTE DAC and the rest of the bitshares ecosystem would be hurt immensely.

That doesn't mean the VOTE DAC will not cannibalize and destroy BTSX once it is released.

Let's consider the facts:

The vote DAC will be built on the bitshares toolkit, and have all the features of BTSX, including a separate bitUSD. In the long run it will be irrational of VOTE delegates not to expand this to include all other bitassets, and I assume user issued assets will be included by default since they are in the toolkit, and there is no reason not to.

The vote DAC will share marketing funnels and budget with BTSX, and will share the on ramp and possibly the off ramp of BTSX.

The VOTE DAC has some unique system that will allow it provide value beyond the asset exchange and the inherent value of a DPOS powered crypto currency. This will supposedly allow the DAC to gain network effect very fast.

The DAC will have inflation as a system of long term funding. BM has repeatedly stated that the lack of inflation is the biggest drawback of btsx.

In short, the VOTE DAC is basically a btsx clone with a unique system to gain network effect, and with inflation to fund development and marketing.

Unless BTSX has somehow managed to bootstrap a massive network, it will be dead once VOTE is released because the network-effect-secret will allow VOTE to grow and promote itself while BTSX cannot, while simultaneously also possessing all the selling points that BTSX has. The only advantages BTSX could be thought to have are no inflation (which BM has repeatedly said is a great weakness) and the bootstrapped network (currently non-existent; there are only investors/speculators)

Now many people will chime in saying that the VOTE DAC will not be offering bitassets like BTSX does, and will not focus on the same users, or try to make money in the same markets. What you are describing is economic irrationality. The purpose of a DAC is to maximize shareholders worth, and the majority of the voting stakeholders in the vote DAC would have to be altruistic if BTSX were to be untouched.

The economic reality is that a DAC will do whatever it can to provide as much value as possible, no matter its initial design. Stakeholders will always vote to increase the value of their shares - it doesn't matter how you try to rationalize it, this is an irrefutable fact. VOTE stakeholders will vote to cannibalize BTSX if it is profitable for them. The only way to prevent aggressive expansion, and the inevitable cannibalization of BTSX , would be to centralize the VOTE DAC in some way (this would have the side effect of ensuring that the DAC would be dead on arrival, and will thus be unlikely to happen).

The truth is that no matter how a DPOS DAC starts out, if it gains a significant network effect then the main value proposition of it will eventually be means of payment and store of wealth. The trifecta of DPOS, Titan and market pegged assets makes a fully networked DPOS blockchain so insanely powerful as a crypto currency, with a level of security, speed and decentralization the world has never seen.

Alright, so my point is that unless the unique network effect secret of VOTE turns out to be so bad that it cannot beat the tiny momentum BTSX currently has, then BTSX is as good as dead...

Or, this whole thing could be done a different way.

Since VOTE will basically be BTSX + secret + inflation, there is nothing preventing BTSX from simply upgrading itself with VOTE's capabilities. Due to the nature of DPOS, it will be incredibly easy to gauge the stakeholders and see whether they support implementing VOTE functionality or not. If the majority does not want inflation, then they will simply vote out any delegate that supports it, and if they support implementing VOTE and inflation, they will vote out any opposing delegates. There would be nothing immoral about letting stakeholders decide the fate of the DAC that they own, especially not when it is now clear that this question is a matter of survival or being cannibalized.

Once inflation was implemented into BTSX, PTS and AGS holders could simply be rewarded with a smaller amount of newly created stake in BTSX, to compensate them for the lack of an independent vote DAC.

This merge would have some additional fortunate consequences, such as removing the need for I3 to spend money on marketing two DACS that are ultimately competing. Marketing two separate, competing bitUSD would be especially awkward.

The VOTE functionality would also get the massive boost of starting out with the extremely active markets and high volume that BTSX has.

Obviously the implementation of VOTE into BTSX shouldn't happen for a long time. What's important is that it is communicated to investors now that if they vote to allow it, then VOTE will rolled into BTSX once it is ready. That would massively boost investor confidence, and general trust and confidence in I3, both in the short term and long term.

To reflect that BTSX with added VOTE functionality would now be more than just an exchange, the name of this new "superDAC" could simply be: BitShares - BTS. This would also be a huge boost for the marketing to the altcoin community of both the BTSX and VOTE functionality, as the no. 4 spot on coinmarketcap would now have a really great name instead of the very confusing BitSharesX.

To anyone who will attack this proposal with the naive idea that competing blockchains can work together or provide value to each other: please think deeply about, and then explain to me in clear economic terms, why shareholders of separate blockchains that operate on the same toolkit with the same features, not will be incentivized to vote for the cannibalization of each other's markets if this is profitable(excluding altruism).

Also think about metcalfes law, and why one network with 2N nodes is much more valuable than 2 networks with N nodes.