Unfortunately we're not well positioned to take advantage of it yet so it's likely we'll continue to fall in unison for the time being.

Bitcoin bounty from back in 2010, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=697.msg7370

Pullrequested with some corrections and a few cushions on the BTC vitriol. 

  This is pretty cool

It comes across as maybe too Bitcoin negative imo.

It potrays Bitcoin as a valueless and speculative social status symbol & BitShares as the bastion of the principles on which it was originally founded.

Which is too harsh on them and too generous to BitShares imo.

Bitcoin does have some value as the market leader with the most liquidity, onramps and utility & is still currently the most likely to gain widespread adoption in the event of a financial crisis.
It's also hard to say they're focused on money and greed fuelled speculation while BitShares is somehow above that.

Edit: If the goal is to focus people on the principles, I would praise Bitcoin without criticising Bitcoiners too much but rather the technology & I wouldn't focus on it's value. I would say something more like the original ideals & pronciples of Bitcoin were fantastic but in practice as the first iteration of a new technology it has not been able to live up to some of them in that there is a lot of centralization, waste and an inability to adapt. BitShares attempts to carry that torch and further those original ideals by...

Most of that makes sense except

> I suggest the reason is volatility.

The reason is not volatility, it's more simply that holding Bitcoin is less useful to them. In time, if their suppliers are accepting Bitcoin, then businesses would see more utility in holding and using it themselves.

I don't think so. If you run a retail business you have a long list of expenses - labour, rent, utilities, suppliers. All of these are priced in local currency and sometimes USD or other if you do business internationally. Most retail businesses work on very tight margins, a few %. It's much easier for most businesses to convert to fiat to have any chance of realistically managing their expenses on a tight budget.

For some businesses like I3, they could keep some in Bitcoin & the volatility would just effect what they had to work with. Not so for retail.

If your next 3 months of expenses - staff, rent, utility and average supplies totals $45 000 and you make $50 000 worth of Bitcoin. How much of it can you keep in Bitcoin and pay your expenses as they're due, knowing that you'll be able to meet them? I think the answer is nearly none. If you earn 50 000 BitUSD, how much can you keep in BitUSD? I think a lot of it.

There's very little priced in Bitcoin that I can think of where you'd be better staying in Bitcoin to be able to meet those expenses than fiat. I think.

So imo, definitely for retailers who work on tight margins and need to keep prices competitive and for the majority of other businesses, BitCurrencies are huge and a bigger and bigger crypto-economy can start to be built around them. (Very big for business when you consider the yield & privacy aspect too...)

Maybe there's some crypto-specific businesses that can interact in Bitcoin but I think unstable Crypto-currencies  may be in trouble imo short term (<5 years) but BitCurrencies largely solve the problem and can be useful almost immediately and hence hopefully gain rapid adoption.


(I was a bit confused but I think this is true too - Even if your supplier accepts Bitcoin the price they charge in Bitcoin for the forseeable future fluctuates with the exchange rate. So you can't set aside 500 BTC for a supplier that charges 1 BTC a widget because if Bitcoin halves in value, he'll charge 2BTC a widget and your budget will be messed up. There may be some obvious examples where this isn't true but I can't think of any off the top of my head.)

Hi all delegates,

Nevertheless I am so bullish about BTS, I have decided to convert all my delegate payment to bitUSD every Saturday.
BitAssets such as bitUSD is our most important product. As employees of BitShares company, we should promote our product, if we are confident with this. Now about 80,000 BTS are created every day. If all delegates participate in this campaign, we can increase approximately $1,000 daily volume or $30,000 monthly volume at least. Buying bitUSD also helps market pegging system by providing more buying power.

In addition, if we delegates keep bitUSD in our pocket and then the market cap of bitUSD increases as a result, bitUSD will jump up in CMC rank and people will be more interested in bitUSD.

Any thoughts?

Yes this is great.

There's not a lot of support for my other idea. But I even want a few delegates to start coming on line that start building up some BitAssets that we can use as bonuses/incentives for gateways while building up the BitAsset CAP & turnover in the meantime.

For example it would be great if a precious metal dealer accepted BitGold. If we had a pool of funds we could give them an advance so they're not taking a risk and also subsidise an opening promotion like buy your gold from Amagi with BitGold and get 2% off your purchase (up to $1300.)
Even now just 1 delegate could subsidize discounts up to a $100 000 turnover.
 

  I will vote for you

Personally I've speculated that businesses being unable to hold Bitcoin is a primary factor in Bitcoin's decline as it potentially means the more utility Bitcoin gains the worse it does, obviously inflation & speculation plays a role and other external factors/events. Just thought I'd post to see what people's thoughts are on the subject & whether we should communicate this angle more.

---

Bitcoin was more well known in 2014 than ever before with more VC investment than ever before and is now accepted by tens of thousands of businesses worldwide, yet the price generally, clearly trended down the whole year. Why?

I suggest the reason is volatility.

The majority of businesses immediately sell their Bitcoin for fiat.

"Mr. White says that Coinbase’s list of merchants is continuing to grow at a rate of 10% each month despite bitcoin’s recent price drop. The “vast majority” of them convert their bitcoin into dollars, he says." http://www.wsj.com/articles/even-bitcoins-fans-prefer-to-keep-cash-1419539916

The problem for the price of Bitcoin is that a sale IN Bitcoin equals a sale OF Bitcoin. Imagine if every time you paid in Dollars at a shop, the shop didn't keep the Dollars and had to immediately sell the Dollars for Euro. I imagine the Dollar would rapidly devalue. Unfortunately the more people shop with Bitcoin the more selling pressure there is.

When few people accepted Bitcoin the price could rise, because we were all hoarding it. New demand had to chase newly mined coins. Now new demand has to soak up high inflation and all the Bitcoin we spend that businesses are selling for fiat as soon as they get it.

Except for inflation, a Bitcoin Dam was in place but now the Bitcoin leaks out via businesses.
If the businesses held & re-circulated more crypto, it would make a lake that got bigger and bigger with new demand & whenever people replenished. But Bitcoin leaks out because businesses don't hold it. Currently we're just refilling a leaking dam, which wouldn't leak nearly as much with a stable crypto-currency option for businesses. Though Bitcoin's short term value is speculative, I think the 2014 trend shows Bitcoin is losing a lot despite greater investment, development, exposure and utility.

It's likely that once options like BitUSD gain traction which offer stability, interest and all the advantages of decentralization that this situation will reverse & crypto will rise especially as an average of $3 worth of BitShares backs each BitUSD, so a little demand could go a long way.

---

If that is a primary factor. I think we should communicate that more as the mindset now is that 'crypto is doomed/declining or not taking off' - if we can communicate that crypto is doing better than ever before but businesses not using stable BitCurrency options yet is a big factor in the downturn and once they do use BitCurrencies more the trend could rapidly reverse, that could be beneficial.