Quote from: nightengale on January 18, 2014, 04:31:35 pm

Catching up here. Just when I thought I understood protoshares, and how they would be converted to bitshares, now angelshares are announced. For people who are intrigued by Invictus and would like to invest in AGS, can you simplify this process? Do I need an AGS wallet? If I donate to the addressed listed, how do I know how many AGS I've received in return? Where do I "store" them safely? Where can I look to see which days are slower than others? The Angelshares page of the website is down so I can't find anything there...

This all seems way more complicated than it should be and is probably turning potential investors off. I'm not trying to be negative, but man, is there a simpler way to do all of this?

AGS is not a coin, but a share. Its basically a donation, and I3 will provide you with the appropriate DACs when they are released (Bitshares, Domainshares etc).

You need to send BTC or PTS from your own wallet (so you own the private keys). All you have to do is keep hold of the wallets you donated from (or rather the private keys).

So after donating some PTS to the AGS address using my PTS wallet I should just be able to point the bitsharesBEX client (and other DAC clients) at the PTS wallet and this should import my Bitshares (or shares in other DACs).

So I wont need to worry about not being able to see any AGS in the client or anything?

Just want to make sure I understand before donating (things get a bit confusing when cash starts turning into numbers on a client, and then those numbers turn into shares on a client, and then those numbers disappear. I take a deep breath and journey further down this rabbit hole go. hahaha).

I think for now it is okay to be a bit anti-gov.
We first need to capture the early adopters market (which tend to be a bit more of a radical group of people).
Targeting mainstream comes later.

FAQ for Bitshares (BitShares BEX)

First some NB terminology

Decentralized-autonomous-corporation (DAC): a general term used to describe an unmanned company whose shares are the crypto-currency and the value of those shares are backed up by the service the company provides. Bitcoins can be said to be the shares of the company ‘Bitcoin, DAC’ where the value of a bitcoin is backed up by the value of the service Bitcoin provides (fast, cheap, global, unregulated transactions of value).
For more info http://invictus-innovations.com/i-dac/

BitShares (BTS): a general term referring to a crypto-equity based company, a DAC.

BitShares Bank and Exchange (BEX): The specific name of a DAC Invictus-Innovations plans to launch. (BitShares BEX was previously called BitShares, the renaming is part of a branding stratergy).


FAQ related to BitShares BEX are displayed below:

What is BitShares BEX?

BEX is a DAC which provides the services of storing value (like a traditional bank) and creates a speculative market (like that of forex and CFD markets).BEX creates financial instruments that represent real world representations of value such as USD, gold, oil etc. The financial instruments will exist in the form of bitUSD, bitGold, bitOil etc.

Users will be able to hold assets such as bitUSD in the BEX bank and thus use BEX as a savings vehicle, or a vehicle to ‘buy long’ on an asset (savers will earn a 5% interest on their value per year).

Users will also be able to speculate on the value of bitAssets by ‘buying long’ or ‘short selling’ the assets. Short sellers will pay a 5% fee on the amount they are shorting.


How are these bitAssets (such as bitUSD) created?

Lets say Stacy believes the value of USD is going to drop and wishes to short sell bitUSD. She will need to put down collateral in order to burrow bitUSD (which are lent into existence). BEX shares are used as collateral. Once Stacy has burrowed some bitUSD she can sell it to another user, lets say Ben.

In this way bitUSD were lent into existence by BitShares BEX using Stacy’s collateral. And Ben could now purchase bitUSD and use them to store his value, speculate on USD value, save the money for a rainy day etc.


Why would someone short bitUSD?

Sticking with the example used above:
Stacy has shorted bitUSD hoping that it will go down in value and she will be able to buy it back from Ben at a cheaper price.

If the price of USD drops, Ben may decide he no longer wants to own bitUSD and may sell it back to Stay at the lower price.

Stacy can then return the bitUSD she lent from BitShares BEX. She can return the bitUSD at a lower price than she bought it and can pocket the difference!

When Stacy returns the bitUSD to BitShares BEX the bitUSD is destroyed removing it from existence.


How will the value of bitUSD track the value of real world USD?
The price of bitUSD is pegged to the price of USD by the same principles that peg a prediction market. A number of people will take long and short positions on bitUSD until a consensus is reached and spread is reduced to around the value that the market believes bitUSD should be priced at.

It simply wouldn’t make sense to buy bitUSD for 5USD. And it wouldn’t make sense to short bitUSD at a value too low under USD. As people continue to take up positions the market will price bitUSD at a the price they believe it is worth.
Remember bitUSD pays a 5% interest (and USD does not)!


Sounds good, how do I obtain some BEX?
When BEX launches you should be able to purchase shares through crypto-currency exchanges but by then the price of a single share may be very high.

To get in on the ground level you can purchase Protoshares (PTS). PTS holders will be rewarded by Invictus-Innovations with 1 BEX share for each PTS the hold. See Protoshares FAQ above.

You can also obtain AngelShares (AGS) (where Invictus-Innovations will reward each AGS you own with 1 BEX share). See this link to learn how to obtain AGS https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1631.0


Why are we doing this/how is Bitshares BEX good for society?
It will provide an alternative banking and trading platform that is extremely cheap for users. Millions of people who could previously not afford banking services can now hold their value in stable, virtual asset classes (Bitcoin volatility makes it an unattractive store of value for more conservative users).

BEX allows for the creation of virtual assets (e.g bitUSD) which can be transferred quickly, globally and cheaply (like bitcoin). bitUSD will hold a relatively stable value as its value will be pegged to USD, thus resolving issues around price volatility in the cryptocurrency space.

Holders of bitAssets receive a 5% interest on their holding (the interest comes from persons who are shorting the asset and paying fees to do so).

Many banks claim this but BEX will be the first bank that was created by the people, for the people.

Thanks for your feedback, we are implementing the changes.

Quote from: bytemaster on January 16, 2014, 11:22:57 pm

I like the Invictus innovations on the lower right, not the top left.

would you like to keep the website text in the lower right corner (and remove top left label)?
Or move top left label to lower right (and leave out the website), here we could also replace the company name with the website name?

Quote from: bytemaster on January 16, 2014, 11:22:57 pm

The phrase "catch you out" does not sound natural.....   

"You give your identity to everyone website, some of which may be counterfeit"
"Your identity is stored with every merchant where it may be stolen by identity thieves"
"Your email is the key to every web service you use, and it may be disabled by companies or governments".
"You have no way to prove who said what and when before Keyhotee"

Thanks, working on this

Quote from: bytemaster on January 16, 2014, 11:22:57 pm

Just some ideas... your graphic is currently winning this bounty in my opinion.

Thats fantastic, it would be really awesome to be able to contribute to Invictus' success at Miami all the way from Cape Town (talk about decentralization of work)!

Quote from: currencydebt on January 15, 2014, 05:49:16 pm

Quote from: bytemaster on January 14, 2014, 10:09:27 pm

Quote from: currencydebt on January 14, 2014, 09:53:30 pm

How are dividends paid?

What currency are they paid in, where do dividends go (to your wallet?) and how often are they paid out?

Every transaction destroys currency which increases your cut when displayed as a percentage of remaining BTS.

BTS are infinitely divisible and at any time the network could perform a 'stock split'

I am having trouble understanding this, so the number of BTS (4 million) actually decreases over time? until (there are no more BTS???)?

The money supply is infinitely divisible, so losing supply is not a problem.

Bitshares will have the bitcoin quality of being highly divisible.

Instead of having a complicated method of transferring dividends and taking away fees, Invictus has thought of the simple and elegant solution of simply destroying BitShares as a way of charging fees. Less Bitshares in existence means that the remaining shares become more valuable (akin to that of a listed company buying back its own shares to increase shareholder value).

For the stock splitting I'm assuming that this would mean for example: if the number of bitshares is reduced to say 2million, then a stock split could reward share holders by giving them a free bitshare for every bitshare they have. This will bring the total number of bitshares back to 4million.

I have PTS client v4.8.5 that I am trying to run on windows7.
I have tried adding every node I can find on the forum without any luck   

Any suggestions?
Thanks

Quote from: MrJeans on January 06, 2014, 11:58:14 am

Quote from: bytemaster on January 03, 2014, 08:01:21 pm

If your funds are not touched for 1 year, 5% is destroyed and the transaction is moved forward.
If the balance is less than the minimum trx fee, then 100% is destroyed

The act of destroying BTS is how dividends are paid, so dividends do not disappear into a black hole.

The money supply is infinitely divisible, so losing supply is not a problem.

I gave this some more thought and it actually makes allot of sense as a method of charging fees and paying dividends. It just takes a bit of a cognitive restart to accept/understand this alternative method.

Something else ive been wondering about.

For someone to purchase a bitAsset, someone needs to short that bitAsset.
So what if someone purchases a bitAsset and holds it. But persons holding short positions cash out their short positions. And the majority of people holding shorts cash out their positions.

What happens to the people who own the bitAssets, do their bitAssets no longer exist? because the bitAssets are no longer being lent into existence?

In this way, is their risk in holding a bitAsset over the real asset (given that BitShares never reaches a non-zero value)?

Those who hold short positions cannot 'cash out' without buying from those who hold long positions.  If the longs don't want to give up their position then the price will rise at which point in time longs may wish to sell for a profit or new shorts will enter the market at the higher prices and thus allowing the old shorts to exit and serving to keep a check on the price if it starts to deviate more than a couple of percent from the value of USD/BTS

And once again Bytemaster's elegant logic saves the day.
Thanks!

Quote from: Bitcoinfan on January 04, 2014, 06:37:22 pm

Trying to get a deeper understanding of this:

Does this mean sending 100 BITUSD to a friend or ecommerce store will be fairly cheap, because it is in a parallel blockchain?  But to sell/ buy/ short it on the Bitshares Exchange would require a higher fee-- due to a fixed space in the block chain?

BitUSD is not a separate block-chain.  But there many be multiple chains with BitUSD and buy/sell/short kind of like having multiple banks.   When fees become too high on the first chain, an alt-chain will startup to give competition.  It will have a smaller network, but lower fees. 

I do not expect fees to be very high compared to the current banking system.   Lots of opportunity for the market to adapt to bring fees down.

This is rather confusing, someone please elaborate.
So there will be multiple chains upon which people will be able to short and buy bitUSD? Can bitUSD be traded between chains? I've defiantly hit an understanding block here 
Or perhaps is there a thread or part of the bitshares white paper I can read to help