Connecting the dots

[CoinHoarder]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Here we agree, SmartCoins is all it takes to make BM filthy rich and famous.

However we haven't monopolized the market. In fact our USD product only has 2.5% of existing crypto market share.

Uphold: $2.06 Million
Tether: $1.4 Million
Nubits: $0.74 Million
BituSD: $0.1  Million

& as Coinhoarder says competition will significantly increase through 2016 & I agree that understanding why we have a significant premium and tightening it is key. (I disagree with him though that Black Swan fear is a key factor, given the relative success of NuBits despite very little backing and a much higher risk of failure.)

I agree with this. Regarding black swans, I just rattled off some of the most common criticisms of smartcoins. The biggest issue with Bitshares is the premium that has to paid for smartcoins. We can't expect anyone to purchase smartcoins if they have to pay such a premium. Nubits, Tether, etc are killing BitUSD purely because of a tighter peg and higher liquidity.

[Empirical1.2]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Here we agree, SmartCoins is all it takes to make BM filthy rich and famous.

However we haven't monopolized the market. In fact our USD product only has 2.5% of existing crypto market share.

Uphold: $2.06 Million
Tether: $1.4 Million
Nubits: $0.74 Million
BituSD: $0.1  Million

& as Coinhoarder says competition will significantly increase through 2016 & I agree that understanding why we have a significant premium and tightening it is key. (I disagree with him though that Black Swan fear is a key factor, given the relative success of NuBits despite very little backing and a much higher risk of failure.)

[Akado]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

This is what we need... it will bring in more traders and more liquidity than almost any other proposal... throw in a lending market and were golden.

Would like to know how much it would cost for 1 to be implemented. I think I asked this 1 or 2 mumbles ago. Dan mentioned he needed to give it some thought first. Still waiting, would really like to have an idea. Did you manage to get any idea without going deep into the rabbit hole @bytemaster ?

[lil_jay890]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

This is what we need... it will bring in more traders and more liquidity than almost any other proposal... throw in a lending market and were golden.

[CoinHoarder]

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Maybe you're just playing into the idiot Erlich Bachman character (funny show), but I am not sure how you can call the DEX monopolized considering the pitiful volume and liquidity. Most people are scared of using Smartcoins because of the possibility of a black swan event, they  are not willing to pay the huge premium neccesary to purchase a Smartcoin, or they are not willing to take the risk of shorting one into existence.

The DEX is not finished. Competition is coming... instantdex, b&c exchange, elcoin, etc.

Now is not the time to become complacent or satisfied. Now is not the time to be overly worried about dilution.

What do we want? LIQUIDITY! When do we want it? NOW!

[Erlich Bachman]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Come on Eileen, Don't Fear the Reaper, just give me your Tainted Love

[gamey]

Most of the DEX's value is based on smartcoins.  When smartcoins fail, what is there?  The same product NXT/Counterparty/Omni and likely others have by now. So ask how to make smartcoins work.  The affiliate stuff is a fail.  What else is there that sets BitShares apart?  Confirmation times are great, but that is horse before buggy. Outside of smartcoins, bring back faith in the self-funding model. I don't think that can be done with Western devs unless they have more passion than sense.

[fuzzy]

From my perspective, the biggest problem with adoption is getting BTC over to bitbtc in a cost effective manner. Let's say I transfer in some openbtc. If I decide I'd like to purchase bts, the openbtc/bts market is priced unfavorably compared to bitbtc/bts. This is going to sound naive, but I feel that "like currencies" should be exchanged not on an open market but on a one-to-one basis with only a handling fee applied, say .1%. This would dramatically spur activity because people would be able to get into the core asset at an acceptable exchange rate.

As an example, I'd like to be able to exchange openbtc for bitbtc at a published flat rate or a very small percentage fee.

Nice ^

[btswildpig]

Bitcoin foundation spent 7 million USD in the past 2 years .

And that's Bitcoin , a coin with zero new functions , and doesn't even need to spend 7 million to keep it running . All the cost went to lobbying stuff or activity , etc .

So you get the idea , when people have "budget"  and "will to spend" ,  all idea to spend it will come out .

And after ran out off money , they finally cut off 95% the spending that they thought was necessary and couldn't be cut off in the first place .

That's what people do when the budget is limited and people won't contribute to it anymore without seeing actual positive result  .

Now , imaging bitcoin foundation has the power to dilute on bitcoin "on need" , what kind of proposal will they propose ? they of course will propose a lot of things that "necessary for bitcoin to survive. "

[jsidhu]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

[wmbutler]

From my perspective, the biggest problem with adoption is getting BTC over to bitbtc in a cost effective manner. Let's say I transfer in some openbtc. If I decide I'd like to purchase bts, the openbtc/bts market is priced unfavorably compared to bitbtc/bts. This is going to sound naive, but I feel that "like currencies" should be exchanged not on an open market but on a one-to-one basis with only a handling fee applied, say .1%. This would dramatically spur activity because people would be able to get into the core asset at an acceptable exchange rate.

As an example, I'd like to be able to exchange openbtc for bitbtc at a published flat rate or a very small percentage fee.

[tonyk]

well, I think you guys are overly smart, so you over complicate things.

in my stupid mind... really BTS is a charity that sponsors every BM's ideas... so it is not very 'smart' investment, so to speak.

wildpig explained it well a day or so ago... when you develop software that just needs to be developed 'more' as to just 'work'... you get Bitshares.

One can imagine something making money on its own without the need to be 'constantly improved'... but hell why do that if it cuts thier income stream?

[gamey]

I feel I could delve into a dozen issues as to why all these random coins have passed up BitShares on this weird Chinese based pump, but I will go into one.

All newly introduced gambling systems have a  period of time where the square money is bled dry.  Smartcoins are no different. You bet on one side or the other. It is a gambling system and a newly introduced one at that. This is one problem I always had with my limited understanding of the mechanics behind the Smartcoins. It seemed like at some point it would be lopsided. Eventually the suckers are bled dry and there is simply a lack of participants.  This happens in all gambling games for the most part.  Yes, you can put in pricing mechanisms  to even out the wager, but at some point they become too complicated and there are many other alternatives for people to get their gambling fix without having the equivalent of a grad degree in math. So once BitShares got past the point where the square money was bled dry, the losing participants gave up and moved on to something else. Unfortunately this is a very very hard problem to fix. You need a mixture of new money, education, and reintroduction of faith in the product.

The best bet at this point would be for bytemaster to spend time trying to get any Chinese developer up to task. I'm afraid though that once the blind transfer stuff is implement, longterm motivations will somehow be lost in the mishmash of exchanges. If you could get a Chinese team taking over BTS, things might possibly be turned around.  Otherwise you end up with MAS, and other things that fail just like the affiliate marketing.

This is no slight to the guys who released 2.0, but they obviously need to make money somewhere and people seem hesitant to pay CNX going forward.

Also - the wagering involved in Bitshares isn't exactly fair.  Sharp participants with capital seem to be able to effect the outcome to a significant degree.  This makes the sharp vs square money even more lopsided, leading to the loss of interest by the squares.

edit - Someone asked why a Chinese developer would be a good thing.  #1 They are relatively cheap.  #2 This is what BitShares has been setup to do supposedly.  Something that can fund the development of itself. #3 A lot of crypto capital comes from the Chinese side which I suspect has a larger nationalism aspect. Chinese developers would breath new life into the project and the blockchain has a decent chance of being able to pay them.

[lil_jay890]

Regarding the liquidity thing... I recall we gave bunker 4+ delegates on the promise that his bunker-mining project would bring in thousands of dollars a day in liquidity to BTS in the short term, and millions in daily liquidity over the medium term.

Haven't heard much about that project other than it's stuck in some sort of prototyping phase...

Point is, we have been trying to gain liquidity forever without much success.  We have tried lots of gimmicks.  It's tough to just put a list up of things we "should" do and expect everyone to jump on board.  We've been burned enough, and really need to see some well thought out plans with actual ROI's attached.  Otherwise it's just shooting from the hip and will most likely end up with the same failures we so consistently achieve.

[CoinHoarder]

@ Stealth

It is being worked on

@ Liquidity

Shareholders are too cheap (or uninitiated) to fix the problem and/or disillusioned that percentage based fees and market maker bots and/or adoption will fix the problem (the same mantra that has been championed for 2 years with no results). Immediate solutions exist, but again shareholders seem too cheap or uninitiated to fix it. I am not investing another penny in this project unless some type of action is taken to provide liquidity on the Smartcoin market. The obvious solutions are obvious:

- Changing the fee structure to resemble centralized exchanges (based on a percentage of the trade, with a maximum fee)
- Lowering fees to the bare minimum for however long it takes to gain more users and liquidity
- Sell the SmartCoin fee pool (fees accumulated from each SmartCoins' transactions/trades) back into the market X% over the price feed.
- Develop market making bots that users can run or invest in through a user issued asset (a complicated endeavor)
- Make an autonomous market making bot that users can buy shares of by depositing to its bankroll
- Implement "maker/taker" fees (lowering fees for market makers)
- Dilute BTS shareholders, and short assets into existence, then have the chain autonomously sell them X% above the feed price.

@ Adoption
 
I have tried for over 2 years to get the crypto community behind Bitshares... possibly more than anyone else. I am THE biggest bitshares cheerleader on Bitcointalk, even though I am one of the smallest shareholders (pathetic on you guys). I am constantly trolled and dismissed... Bitshares has made too many wrong decisions and burned too many bridges to garner more support from the cryptocurrency community. I have pretty much given up. The adoption will need to come from elsewhere.

@ GUI

The GUI is better than 99% of cryptocurrencys' GUIs. The GUI is not the problem at all and is in fact an advantage.

@ Fees

They are too high. So what about the affiliate program... the fees, even being as high as they are (way too high), are not enough incentive for the affiliate program to work. It was a solid idea, but it will not provide proper enough incentive to really be effective unless BTS is at a much higher market cap. So, we should not make decisions based on the affiliate program since it was a failure.