The name BitShares makes sense and its easy and simple enough.
The issue I'm having with it is that it aligns itself closely with Bitcoin.
To someone who doesnt know what BitShares is they may think:
- A share in a piece of a bitcoin
- Shares in bitcoin related companies
- Using bitcoin to buy shares etc etc
If BitShares aligns itself too closely with Bitcoin we may see a loss of confidence/drop in price of BitShares if the price of or confidence in bitcoin declines.
Perhaps Bitcoin shall be replaced by another alt currency, we wouldnt want BitShares to suffer from this unnecessarily.
One of the biggest strengths BitShares has, is that it will be able to function in the complete absence of Bitcoin (and every other alt coin, save bitshares coin). This is also its great strength over mastercoin.
My concern is that people wont see BitShares as a separate entity to bitcoin and thus the fate of BitShares is tied to Bitcoin and other currencies simply because of the name. And with BitShares we see the great economic importance of the names (where BitUSD should track USD because of the name coupled with market forces).
Will people be able to imagine a world that has BitShares but not Bitcoin...? Such a world is very possible but awkward to imagine, exposing BitShares to unnecessary and unmanaged risk.