Can an automated way to vote be created (or has it been?), where the user can select certain criteria to vote yes and no? If running version less than x, if no feed, if payrate=x, etc.

Delegates can publish slates to achieve this.
Perhaps one in particular could specialize in providing a slate that meets the criteria that you suggested.

We will be able to also enable exchange of them.. for example MINING:DOGE MINING:LTC so that someone with DOGE could pass through metaexchange and be able to buy the MINING index which in turn continues to grow and hold these coins.

By doing this we are creating a more stable asset which, since it is of it's own as an index of the coins we hold, would create a whole new trading opportunity in the DEX markets.

This means holders of MINING would have it continue to grow like outlined above with growing hash power.

Reserves we carry are going to enable us to open markets for other coins with metaexchange as well. For example. if a major holder of DOGE wants to get into BitShares, he will be able to trade his DOGE for BTS, or even other pairs like the NASDAQ. See where this is all going?

An index of lots of the top 20 coins would attract new investors who wouldn't even have to know about mining pools.
Anyone wanting quick and easy exposure to the entire crypto economy could hold your asset. I quite like the name MINING, but does such branding limit it's appeal to other investors?

+ for having a UIA for this.

10/10 would invest:)

I've started a thread to talk about getting one set up
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16727.0.html

Shareholders want whales to come into the ecosystem and get it kick started. I think there is an alternative method where the shareholders pool funds together to capitalize a Super Whale that gives the profits back to the shareholders who funded them by way of a UIA.

There are lots of arbitrage opportunities between bitAssets and bts across various exchanges and I've been thinking of a way to profit from it by capitalizing traders and sharing the profit with them.
By pooling money with other shareholders and employing traders to take advantage of these arbitrage opportunities holders can profit at the same time as contributing to a fund that aims to provide liquidity to the BitShares internal exchange and contribute to keeping the peg between bitAssets as tight as possible.

The issue comes with who manages the UIA and can be trusted to manage the fund and distribute funds amongst traders.
A quorum of delegates could issue and manage a UIA. By purchasing the UIA the user provides funds that are then pooled and distributed in small sections to several competent traders who promise to look for arbitrage opportunities and other low risk trades to grow the value of the fund. The traders are rewarded with a healthy portion of the profits to incentivize them to increase the value of the fund.
Like in micro-lending, the fund should be split up among as many traders as possible to decrease the variance in the profit earned and reduce the impact of fraud or loss.
Checking up on every individual trader will be very expensive and time consuming. Instead, each trader could only be allocated a portion of the fund that the fund could afford to lose. So long as a particular percentage of traders can be trusted to make a target profit, then other losses can be absorbed.

This means that delegates would not be needed to chase down traders and monitor their progress in any detail. The shareholders could decide on certain goals that must be met to remain a trader, and if they are not met then they are automatically frozen out and can no longer access the fund.
The only duties of the delegates involved would be to sign multi-sig transactions from the fund to approved traders and manage the UIA. The managing delegates could receive the UIA trading fees.

How should I proceed with getting this started?

I'm thinking of posting job listings for crypto-traders. Their resume would have to demonstrate that they can be trusted to trade for steady profit sufficiently to the shareholders before they could access the fund.
How can potential traders be asked to prove themselves?

I expect in the beginning this fund will be very small and may only be able to attract one or two amateur day-traders as the profit potential would not be enough to sustain any more.
However, a trustworthy reliable amateur who grows the fund every day is at least as good as I would be, trading myself. If these amateurs could grow the fund and attract new investment through demonstration of steady growth, then the fund can employ more traders to reduce the risk and streamline the process.

I want to get something like this going, where do I start?

EDIT: Perhaps individual day traders could be encouraged to issue UIA's that represent a share in the fund that they trade. More successful traders will grow the value of their UIA and attract more investment.

The shareholder hedge fund could purchase a basket of trader UIA's, after analysis of the trading success of each UIA.

New traders could be required to provide 110% collateral for the funds they are trading with, with a decreasing scale once the trader has an established track record.
I want to avoid a situation where the fund is too large for a day trader to be expected to provide 100% collateral to.
Unless the fund could employ so many traders that each trader holds a small enough amount.
But why would a trader lock up his own capital just to be able to trade with an equal amount of someone elses? 100% collateral isn't going to work long term unless there can be significant advantages to trading with the fund. Are there any incentives that can be offered? Perhaps a share of the UIA trading fees for x amount of time if they trade for the fund and provide collateral.

A percentage of all UIA trading fees for life could be the incentive. The tiny % of UIA fees for life given away to each trader in exchange of 1 day of work could be set so that the fund can employ millions of work-days before 100% of the UIA fees are allocated.

x% of fees on this fund for life could be quite a good incentive, particularly if this hedge fund is endorsed by the shareholders and is expected to grow in size.

EDIT 2: Traders could be incentivized to reinvest their share of the profits back into the fund by using them to buy a higher % of the UIA fund fees forever. There could be a free floating market between fund profits % and fund fees forever %.
Or traders could be awarded a bonus amount of UIA shares in the fund in return for reinvesting their trading profits into the fund.

If we could demonstrate a financial instrument that has steady daily growth only accessible on the BitShares exchange then we can create yet another reason to make an account and use the network.
Once we have this one hedge fund UIA up and running others will surely pop up in competition. Like MPA (market pegged assets) serve as a demonstration for privatised bitAssets; this fund can demonstrate the business case of a BitShares UIA hedge/trading funds.

    Hello, I'm contacting Vaultoro on behalf of the BitShares community about a mutually beneficial and profitable arrangement.
    How much does Vaultoro know about the decentralized exchange BitShares?
    Vaulturo could profit from integration with BitShares by collecting fees from any assets Vaultoro issue on the BTS exchange.

    Vaultoro allows trading of gold bullion stored in insured, audited Swiss vaults against bitcoin.
    They do not have any fiat banking services due to the added regulatory burden and the increased fees that would result.
    I'm sure they could attract even more customers if they integrate with BitShares and could accept decentralized tokens that track the value of real world stable currencies and commodities (known as bitAssets) such as bitUSD and bitGold. With BTS integration Vaultoro could allow a 3rd asset (bitUSD) for their customers to hedge against eachother and could accept the value of dollars without the banking costs.
    Vaultoro would be insulated from regulatory burden and could collect fees on any UIA's they issue.
    A UIA is a User Issued Asset. Vaultoro could issue a UIA that represents a share of gold in their vaults. The UIA would be backed by the promises and reputation of Vaultoro to honour their debts. This UIA could then be traded on the BitShares decentralized exchange against any number of other assets.
    Vaultoro profit from access to a new potential customer base (BitShares users) and profit from all of the trading fees of the Vaultoro UIA. Such fees can be set by the issuer (Vaultoro).

    For more information about UIA's in general, please see http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/BitShares/UserAssets

    There is currently a forum post discussing Vaultoro and BitShares integration which you may wish to visit to ask questions here: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16724.0/topicseen.html

I used their 'Send message' feature on their website, best case scenario somebody representing Vaultoro makes an intro post here

Once there is more official looking documentation I'll contact them again

http://www.vaultoro.com/
Allow trading of gold bullion stored in insured, audited Swiss vaults against bitcoin.
They do not have any fiat banking services due to the added regulatory burden and the increased fees that would result.
I'm sure they could attract even more customers they could integrate bitFiat and bitGold as they could allow a 3rd asset for their users to hedge against eachother. Vaultoro would be insulated from regulatory burden and could collect fees on any UIA's they issue.
I think BitShares should establish a relationship with them as among other things such a partnership provides bts with a physical gold:bitGold and bitFiat:Physical Gold market to tighten the peg and increases liquidity.
Yet more opportunities to tighten the peg of bitAssets.

If Valutoro accepted bitUSD for gold an average joe banking user would still have to purchase bitFIAT with a bank card, and then send the bitUSD to Vaultoro or any company wishing to avoid traditional fiat integration.
What if BTS can facilitate this transaction in just one step?

The user enters the destination account for the bitUSD and is then presented with banking account numbers etc. to make their payment. The entity providing this service is presented with the risk of a charge-back or fraud.
If this entity could profit from UIAs or referral fees such that it more than covers such risks of fraud then it may be able to provide a service that doesn't require such extensive KYC measures.
Could existing exchanges like CCDEK provide this service?
A user who visits the vaultoro (example) site and wants to buy Vaultoro gold but pay with fiat could be directed to a payment window that links to participating exchanges. Within the window the user provides relevant details in order to purchase the gold. Hopefully after not too much form filling the customer's purchase is complete.
Under the hood, the customer has just bought bitUSD from the Exchange to the value of their purchase of gold at Vaultoro, plus a small fee. The Exchange immediately make payment in the same amount to Vaultoro. Vaultoro then transfer ownership of the gold to the customer. BitUSD transfers are as good as instant, and so long as the exchange can transfer the bitUSD to Vaultoro in a timely manner then the trade will be rather seamless and the customer can use their bank card (ease of use), Vaultoro have no extra regulatory burden and profit from an increase in potential customers, the exchange makes money on the spread, and BitShares benefits from liquidity.

Is this at all possible?

This is certainly an asset I would hold if it was issued as a UIA on bitshares. As the issuer will profit from the trading fees on the UIA someone will soon create the UIA if there is market demand for it.
I'm interested in an asset of this type but I don't want to secure yet another wallet (sorry nxt). Perhaps when moonstone integrates with nxt and bts I'll hold the nxt asset while a bts UIA is still yet to exist.

It would save so much time researching and holding a varied crypto portfolio.
It will be attractive to whales that are yet to be initiated into crypto. I'm quite sure that whichever crypto's "win" and get significant adoption in the long run most likely already exist in the top 20 today. Holding a single index asset that tracks these 20 coins makes a 'punt' (bet) on crypto far easier to make as it requires far less research and a one-time transaction and wallet setup.

I see holding this index asset as a bet with very high odds of winning.
The crypto-economy as a whole is still very small and worth less than $5Bn.

The current 'market cap' of all financial markets in the traditional industry is in the $100-1000's of Trillions.
Crypto, being more efficient than the current system, could one day come to replace this entire market. Growing the crypto market from $5B into $100T is a x200,000 increase.

The current financial markets are only available to ~20% of the worlds population at best due to regulatory restrictions and barriers to information and understanding. If 100% of the population had easy and intuitive access, it could be argued that the market would be x5 larger - sizing it at ~ $5,000 Trillion.

The efficiency of crypto also allows far more numerous and complex transactions to occur.
This indicates that the global economy as a whole will rapidly expand into new markets not possible before. Transactions today require trust and access to a regulated financial institution. How many more businesses and use cases for financial markets would arise without these limitations? I estimate it has to translate into an increase in the global economy of at least x100.
Compounding these 'multipliers' brings my estimation for the size of the crypto-economy (which then will be the normal economy) to $500Petadollars, or $500,000T in USD 2015 dollars.

The crypto economy (including the top 20 coins) is currently worth around $5B.
I estimate the potential market that the crypto economy will one day saturate (5-30 yrs) could be worth $500,000 Trillion. This gives a potential growth of x100Million.

If 5% of each crypto in the top 20 is held in this index then so long as at least one coin is "successful" and increases by at least 19 times in size (to make up for any losses on other coins) then the index will retain it's value.

I also predict that the future crypto-economy will have lots of competing altcoins and a 'big 4' of coins that dominate most of the market. So any number of the current top 20 could make it big, so the index has even more upside potential.

This 'bet' of buying the index wins if any one of the coins increases it's market share of the current crypto-economy (gains against bitcoin) OR if the crypto-economy as a whole expands and the coins retain their share of this expanding market (hold their value against bitcoin).

The moment an Index UIA of this kind is issued on the BitShares exchange it will have buyers.
It's also a quick and easy sell to whales to get their feet tails wet dry.
A simple method for getting started and securely storing private keys is needed though.

Click here (One button light-client cold storage set up).
Print this (multisig paper backup).
Type account name and send btc here to buy the index. (Metaexchange etc)
Done.

So I'm looking at all these intellectual battles in the forum around how bitAssets should be structured, including my own head-banging, and thinking "the modern financial industry doesn't just have one way for people to invest in an asset, but many ways, each designed to meet different needs". So why are we all arguing? Maybe we should all be working together to design everything we want, but not all in one "holy grail" bitAsset package. Maybe we just need different instruments.

Most of these different products require liquidity, correct?
If we can find a way for shareholders to pool together and provide liquidity for some low risk profit then a lot of these projects/products will get off the ground a lot faster.
There must be some way to use the UIA system to achieve this

What do you think?
I've read about CryptoHedge doing something similar for bitGold, not sure what's happening now.
A fund to trade our main products bitUSD and bitCYN against BTC/fiat in as low risk way as possible is of benefit to the entire BitShares ecosystem. Perhaps the community can find some "verified" (?) traders who are deemed trustworthy to trade for the fund and take the lion's share of the profits, distributing the rest to bitFUND asset holders.
Do we have to wait for whales or can the community crowdfund this stuff?