So there is an opportunity for a decentralised crypto-currency. It is a medium to long term goal & may ultimately be a great benefit to mankind if it gets it right.
For the sake of argument, let's just say you're correct and there are no good currencies available and you're able to create one and there's a market for it. What's it priced in? If BTC is required to purchase it then the currency's price movements will be vulnerable to BTC. If you're somehow able to get an on/off ramp then what's the incentive to hold or use the currency if it doesn't earn interest? Why would people want to use it? And what's to prevent the currency from being listed on the BTS market as a bitAsset and pulling the rug out from under it by actually offering interest?
- On ramps are possible for popular digital currencies to get and will perhaps become easier over time.
- There is a limit to the demand a derivative can soak up before the market views the underlying asset as undervalued, and therefore sees the derivative as a poor proxy. In commodities this gap is extremely wide as the value is hard to determine & the underlying physical is often hard to realistically trade but in a fairly frictionless digital economy the damage a BitAsset with interest can do is limited. Also as BTS rate of growth slows so too will the interest it offers.
Think of the digital currency as BitShares but with the disadvantage of being 6 months behind & having a much smaller initial market. The advantages are that it will have no/defined inflation & will only copy the best of BitShares and avoid its mistakes.
Most importantly it will limit the mistakes of human consensus.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10251.msg134519#msg134519 As an example, the current BitShares deal is a good one for shareholders but some people's short term thinking and inability to see other perspectives (like the fact that the real value is the key talent like Bytemaster, everyone who gets to be a part of that is winning.) puts massive long term rewards (less than a year away) in possible jeopardy. Which is why for all our collective wisdom, our best long term store of value & a $7 trillion + market is a lump of metal, simply because our ability to manipulate its supply & mess it up is limited. Which is why a crypto-money passing BitShares & any other contender is an inevitability. Also the long term could play out very quickly in this space.
Just my personal opinion.
Edit: I'm not for this PTS play necessarily, just going off on my own tangent here.
Also BitShares + dilution is definitely the best play. It is the pioneer and needs to be an adaptable and flexible company. It should help it gain network effect, constantly bring in the best talent and become the market leader. At some point though the rate of change and growth in this space will start to stabilise. At which point a crypto-currency which will have copied the best features will be at less of a disadvantage and may ultimately surpass its rivals for the reasons listed above.