Hello!
I have a couple of general questions on PTS and Bitshares, maybe someone can help:
1. Since PTS are mined, how did the developers (i.e. Invictus) raise funds from starting PTS? By mining relatively early?
2. Its my understanding that Bitshares are mined as well. How then do PTS lead to a stake in Bitshares, given that these are mined?
3. Will there be different kinds of PTSs for given kind of DACs, and if so, will the current PTSs also also lead to ownership in new PTSs?
4. In the whitepaper I read that different BitAssets are supposed to follow the price of an underlying, e.g. gold. Its not quite clear to me what should make this happen. To me (I am a financial engineer), a BitAsset seems to resemble a financial futures (e.g. on a stock). In the financial world, the price of the future is ultimately tied to that of the underlying be a right to physical delivery that the futures holder has. This does not seem to be the case for BitAssets, so I wonder what mechanism is supposed to steer the price.
Thanks!
1. Invictus had VC funding before the project, but yes, they do own a lot of PTS too, by
a) Mining early
b) Running an early PTS mine and taking a fee
c) Buying PTS on the open market
d) Selling a founder Keyhotee ID for 10PTS per id
2. BitShares will probably be Proof of Stake. However, the answer to your question is similar to what MemoryCoin 2.0 did, although hopefully a little bit easier (i.e. direct importing of PTS wallet.dat) in that when the genesis block is mined, it will contain the distribution information based on wallet addresses. If you hold the private keys to a given wallet address, then you'll automatically have a stake in BitShares because the genesis block was mined that way.
3. There will only be one PTS but different DACs from Invictus and your PTS will give you a share in all the DACs that honor PTS.
4. BitAssets are not really like financial futures, see <shamelessPlug>http://btcgeek.com/bitshares-guide/</shamelessPlug> - I discuss a lot of frequently asked questions about Bitshares/BitAssets
Hope this helps
Having read the link you listed in 4., I must point out that this does not really make it clear how the price of the BitAsset is supposed to be tied to the underlying (in the critical part of the paper a book is referred). From what I have seen elsewhere (and I do this for a living), there always is some kind of arbitrage opportunity between a derivative and the underlying. In the case of an American option, for example, you can buy the option, exercise it and thus obtain the underlying, if said option is too cheap. In the case of a futures, its the same thing (with the difference that delivery is possible only at maturity, but thats not critical). I think what resembles BitAssets more closely is a prediction market we e.g. see in sports betting, say Betfair.com. Here, you can trade the probability of a particular event occuring, say that Manchester wins against Arsenal. If the traded probability is say too low, you buy the market at say 0.2 and then obtain 1.0 at the end of the match if Manchester really wins. Thats the arbitrage. In the case of BitShares, I do not see that. I am not 100% sure what will happen without such a mechanism, but there would surely be a big opportunity for market manipulation, e.g. driving up the price of the BitAsset to force a short squeeze, thereby inducing more buys, etc.
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