https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7.0

I am a bit sceptical about BitCryptos (BitBTC, BitLTC etc.) catching on.

What is the incentive of being long in such an asset? It is already virtual with all associated benefits (speedy transfer, pseudonymity, easy storage, ...). It is not like with BitUSD or BitGold that you have any advantages over the original.

This is why I suggest more fiat. At least CNY and EUR.

Quote from: delulo on February 23, 2014, 09:24:49 pm

Quote from: bytemaster on February 23, 2014, 08:49:40 pm

Quote from: delulo on February 23, 2014, 08:39:27 pm

so that means it would be possible to hold pts on bter/btc38 on snap shot date?
How would that provide options for speculators? By trading BterBTS against BTS?

By allowing people to buy and sell their BTS positions into/out of Bitcoin.

Sorry for not getting it. Isnt this what an exchange is supposed to do? Or will that be possible before the 28th?

You have an account on an exchange with X PTS in it on Feb 28 (morning). On Feb 29, you should still have X PTS in your account if you didn't buy/sell. The question was, what happens to the BTS that were generated corresponding to your PTS account? The exchanges now say that they will honor your BTS, so you will now have BTS on their exchange in addition to PTS, but they won't let you withdraw BTS (but you can trade for other currencies).

This gives options to speculators because previously it was thought people would have to withdraw all their PTS to their private wallets before Feb 28 to get BTS, then transfer their BTS to an exchange after Feb 28. Now you can, possibly, leave your PTS at the exchange and trade BTS when they show up (even sell them all for BTC and withdraw your BTC).

Don't confuse people with a Feb 29.
Where bter and btc38 are located the snapshot is actually taken on 1st March, just after sunrise.

Zeus, do I understand that correctly: Once your position at LCH runs out of margin, you have time until the next morning to fill up the margin and only if you don't by then, your position is liquidated?
This would be similar to the time lag I was lobbying for further up in this thread.

What about this:

Currently, when a position gets called, the entire amount of BitAssets short is bought back via an immediate market order.
We can tinker with both these words to prevent short squeezes. Some suggestions below.

Immediate:

• Don't create the buy order instantly, but only after a certain amount of blocks time lag. People will know it is coming and can catch it.
• Spread the amount over several blocks. For example create buy orders for 1% of the amount for the next 100 blocks.

Market:

• Create a limit order instead of a market order (has been suggested before)
• Increase this limit from block to block in a predefined way until it is totally cleared.
  
• First create a limit order, then turn it into a market order if it doesn't go through after a certain time.

… or any combination of above.

I agree with the others that BitUSD is an extremely important BitAsset to have in the first chain. Bitcoins major snag is its volatility and this is BitShare X's killer application. USD definitely has a much lower volatility than Gold.

50 % of all BTSX will be given to all PTS holders. This is within the first promise of at least 10 %.
The other 50 % of all BTSX will be give to all AGS holders.

AGS is not a blockchain nor is it tradeable.
You can gain AGS by donating to the Angel addresses.
You can donate using either PTS or BTC.
The donations of one calendar day (GMT) compete for 10000 AGS.
The amount of AGS you receive will be (5000 * your BTC donation / total daily BTC donations) + (5000 * your PTS donation / total daily PTS donations)

1 AGS will give you 3.333333… BTSX.
1 PTS will give you roughly 1.3 BTSX.

Currently the way to get most BTSX per dollar is through AGS.

I think I like the idea of keeping the margin requirement at the highest price in the past hour as a solid way of keeping a lid on this kind of manipulation.  Something else to consider with respect to BitUSD and market depth is that there is no reason why people could keep open bids on the blockchain far outside the trading range to profit from any rapid manipulations.   

Another limiting factor on this kind of attack is that anyone who attempts to 'walk the book' would have to pay the highest price for all shares and a HUGE fee because the way the market matching algorithm works they wouldn't get to take advantage of the asks that are lower than their bid. 

So I suspect that the initial bid/ask spread will be very wide and a substantial market depth will be achieved before anyone would be willing to trade.  This combined with the relatively high initial value of the system (estimate 60 million) and the cost of attacking this would be very high.  Especially since only those invested in its success will initially own it.    Also unlike most traditional exchanges where people have long delays getting money into or out of the exchange, in this case the money is already there!

If I had to be the cost of such an attack would be greater than the cost of a 51% attack on bitcoin when it had a similar market cap.

For a big mature market this kind of attack is unlikely to succeed. A safety net is needed for the very beginning of the main chain but more so for the bunch of cloned chains (for other assets) that will spring up soon. These might have very thin markets for quite a while. Are we gonna bother about these here or shall their developers fix this task?

What has been discussed in this thread and the previous one are really two different scenarios.
A) One margin call triggers the next in a chain reaction (unintentionally)
B) One where the price is manipulated down to an extremely low level to then exploit the rebound.

Keeping the margin requirement at the highest price of the past hour helps against B).

What about A)?
Shall we always trust that the order book will fill up quickly enough to prevent large sudden swings from happening?
How many people are kicking themselves for not having had a buy order in at BTCe at 103 $ a bitcoin two weeks ago?
If there are several 10 million BitUSD outstanding, how many sell-orders do you think will be online? Enough? BitUSD holders do not have an incentive to post sell orders when they are not watching the market. They do not hold any volatility risk, so why should they. The few traders watching a starting short squeeze might sit back a while before daring to catch the falling knife - and in the end they might not have enough purchasing power to stop the avalanche …

The other solution is equivalent to that if the collateral is not enough, some BitUSD will be created directly to make a total cover. There's no more market transactions to do such a cover. That will lead to a less influence on the market.

That won't work. If the collateral is not enough there will be a surplus of BitUSD that has to be removed - not additional BitUSD to be created.