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Topics - bytemaster

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241

General Discussion / Marketing Direction - Why not How or What...

« on: October 27, 2014, 05:38:32 am »

I would like to take a step back and help us all reflect on why we are doing what we are doing and what it is that has created this community in the first place.

I have set out on a mission in life to find free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property and BitShares is my evolving approach to this problem. Many people have joined us because of this vision and have become a fan because of what we believe more so than what we have built. In the middle of our success it is easy to lose sight of what is bringing us all together and what really matters.

Does our technology help us achieve our purpose, freedom. Who should our technology appeal to? It should appeal to those who want economic freedom in both trade and wealth.

Selling BitShares as a "company" with X, Y, Z features is approaching the space like Dell and not Apple. Lets reimagine everything, think out side the box and create a society where we can be secure and where threats of violence by the government are overwhelmed by non-violent cooperation. We all long for freedom, it is universal. We all long for security. No one likes theft and violence.

The problem we have is that most people won't choose to adopt BitUSD because of its yield or merchant adoption. They will first choose to adopt it because it resonates with something DEEP within... they do it "just because"... to make a statement to the outside world that there is a different way.

So lets not sell a product with features... lets let people know what we believe and stand for. Lets let the world know that owning BitShares or buying BitUSD is about making a statement not making an investment. Bitcoin grew because it allowed people to make a statement... but it was too volatile for more than the true believers in the vision to hold. BitUSD gives the true believers a safe place to express themselves backed by extreme believers. You don't accept BitUSD at your business just because it is better than a credit card, you accept it to make a point and that point is that you believe in freedom, transparency, and individual financial sovernty.

I don't know about you, but this vision is not based upon a share price and does not depend upon any set of features. It is something that we can build for ourselves at any scale if we can attract like minded people.

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

So... lets go change the world!

242

General Discussion / BitShares X rebrands itself as BitShares; adopts greater scope [DRAFT]

« on: October 26, 2014, 09:56:57 pm »

BitShares X rebrands itself as BitShares; adopts greater scope

In a controversial move the founders of BitShares have decided to combine features formally divided among multiple competing systems including BitShares X, VOTE, DNS, and all other future features they can conceive under a single Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) that will go by BitShares.

BitShares X which was originally designed to be a single decentralized exchange trading in collateralized derivatives of major currencies will join forces with domain name auctioning and voting applications. These currency derivatives known as BitAssets such as BitUSD and BitGLD have all of the properties of Bitcoin with the price stability of the underlying asset and are considered the killer app of the BitShares ecosystem.

Smart Contracts with turing complete scripting environment has been added to the BitShares roadmap to facilitate growth and prototyping of new features. This feature combined with BitAssets should give Ethereum some serious competition in the smart contract market.

Until recently the BitShares ecosystem was known for promoting many competing block chains (DACs) each with their own development team. Each DAC would have had its own variation on BitUSD and would have competed for the same users and market cap. This setup was designed to promote decentralization and robustness, but in reality it meant that the development team was fractured and divided against itself. Under the new arrangement the development teams behind BitShares DNS, VOTE, and X have combined forces to focus on a single unified product.

Similar to corporate mergers, the result of combining forces is the elimination of redundant marketing, development, testing, and support resources. The developers have prepared a roadmap that would gradually introduce new features to BitShares.

To align incentives and bring the communities together BTSX has decided to give a two year vesting stake to people who had a stake in BitShares PTS, DNS, and VOTE as well as recognize those who gave funds to support the BitShares ecosystem. In total BTS will “air drop” 7% PTS, 7% AGS, 3% VOTE, and 3% DNS. This air drop is not a buyout or merger but a no strings attached gift to these communities to encourage them to contribute to BTSX rather than their own competitors. This air drop will be made based upon ownership as of midnight UTC. Users should remove all PTS and DNS from exchanges prior the air drop deadline.

The leads of VOTE and DNS have already decided to join the BitShares bandwagon. PTS and AGS will continue in their role and 3rd parties such as BitShares Music, BitShares Play among a few others still intend to airdrop on these communities in recognition of their role in bootstrapping the BitShares ecosystem and the bitshares toolkit.

BitShares X owners will simply download an upgrade and the BTSX block chain will become the BitShares block chain and be known on exchanges as BTS. Owners of PTS, VOTE, and DNS will be able to import their wallets to receiving their vesting stake.

The core BitShares team behind the development of the BitShares toolkit has committed not to compete against itself, but instead to focus on making BTS the best system it can be and will have their undivided support. This marks a major turning point in the development of BitShares and is potentially a game changer in the crypto-currency market space.

FAQ:
BTSX will become BTS and will be the same blockchain, BTSX will remain liquid and trading will not be interrupted.

Exchanges are not expected to honor the November 5th snapshot because the positions will not be liquid, you should remove all DNS and PTS from exchanges prior to November 5th.

The combined client with rebranding to BTS will be released toward the end of November

PTS, AGS, VOTE and DNS stakes will vest linearly over 2 years, meaning that each day users will get to claim some of their stake.

BTSX will not have a vesting period.

BitAssets such as BitUSD / BitGLD should be unaffected

User names allocated in DNS will not be migrated to BTSX

PTS will continue to circulate and trade; however, without I3 planning any future snapshots its value will be based upon the speculative value of 3rd party DACs such as Music, Play, and others.

PTS block intervals will probably grow significantly and mining may stop all together. PTS is maintained by Testz and not I3.

A new blockchain "DevShares" will be used for testing the upgrade of BTS and future hard forks as well as experimental features and economic experiments. This blockchain will be a 40/40/20 snapshot AGS/PTS/X taken on November 5th. DevShares will not be considered a "safe store of value" but non-the-less will have value for those wishing to test their smart contracts or BTS integration on a low-value chain. Details on DevShares will be provided over the coming month.

PTS / AGS holders will effectively receive 20% stake in all PAST and FUTURE blockchain ideas built by the Invictus team through this air drop, plus a much larger cut in DevShares, Play, and Music among others.

There is too much to cover in a single press release, so I hope to have the press release focus on the high level "good" and then direct users to a wiki page with the FAQ details. Please post any unanswered questions you have here.

243

General Discussion / MOVED: Lawsky: Bitcoin Developers and Miners Exempt from BitLicense

« on: October 23, 2014, 06:39:58 pm »

This topic has been moved to General Discussion.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10052.0

244

General Discussion / Shorts are now competing on Interest... Let the fun begin!

« on: October 23, 2014, 06:31:24 pm »

The hard fork has taken effect... shorts now pay interest and BitUSD receives it.

We just need to buy up the sell wall for USD.

245

General Discussion / Fix for DNS Holders who lost money buying into DNS

« on: October 22, 2014, 06:33:35 pm »

We don't want anyone to lose out, especially those who bought into the systems like DNS after launch. Toast and I have been working on a solution that does not involve changing my proposal and upsetting the markets further.

Only ~10% of DNS has moved from the genesis block. Prior to the 50% fall DNS had a market cap of $6.5 million (according to Toast) which means the total value of all DNS purchased prior to my proposal post was about $650,000. After the post it lost 50% of its value causing some DNS fans to lose $325,000 while those that sold prior made $325,000.

We happen to own a large part of DNS through the PTS Angel address and this part that we own was in excess of 10% (haven't actually imported it yet)... we will divide this fund among DNS holders outside the genesis block based upon a snapshot just prior to my post.

This allocation should not harm any other players other than us and should make everyone who purchased DNS whole.

There is no point in moving your funds from the genesis as a result of this post.

We would like to thank everyone in the community who supports our project and to show our commitment to make sure that you all are taken care of even if it comes at our own expense.

Once again.. this is not an obligation and we may change our mind on the details of this post. I just wanted you to know the gist of what our plans are to make everyone as happy as possible.

246

General Discussion / BTS Market Cap - $63M

« on: October 22, 2014, 03:32:14 pm »

Now that an announcement has been made we can estimate BTS market cap as $51M / 0.8 = $63M once the new shares are added to the supply coin market cap uses.

247

General Discussion / Perspective is Everything

« on: October 22, 2014, 03:09:53 pm »

Perspective is everything, there is no "objective" right thing to do in this case. The stories we choose to tell ourselves affect how we feel about things.

So here is a perspective for your consideration.

BTSX, VOTE, DNS, AGS, and PTS are all separate groups of people each of which wants something from *me* whether I owe them anything or not. They all want me to do, say, or build something that makes them money. Now the reality is that my goal is to build the best toolkit and keep pushing things forward on that front. People gave us money "no strings attached" to build these things. Other people took my work on the toolkit and turned it into BTSX. I gave grants to DNS & Play. Everyone else is an independent group of people speculating on an asset that they know is not a security, has no legally binding promises, and is a hope.

All of these groups represents a "team" or "tribe" that wants me to play for them and no one wants me to play "against them" in the competitive free market.

So the first team that made a bid for my attention was VOTE.... vote offered me and everyone on our team a large stake along with PTS / AGS... but offered BTSX nothing. This was a fair and legitimate way for me to go... after delivering on BTSX core features and spending funds donated prior to BTSX snapshot. But it would have made team BTSX very upset at losing their key players for long term growth even though plans were in place to allow BTSX to steal all of the work paid for by team VOTE for free.

So the next thing I did is propose a bid for my attention that would bring everyone under one roof. Who's call is it? Mine. Do I get to be arbitrary? Yes because I get to chose which project I work on. So it comes down to me negotiating with BTSX on the terms of the deal. I effectively ask BTSX to share drop on the competition as a means of motivating but not requiring them to join us.

So team BTSX got my attention and every other team got something out of the deal. DNS + VOTE could still exist and could still compete. We didn't actually *buy* their stake, we just honored it with no strings attached. Did they get a "fair price"... well, a gift is certainly fair.

Now DNS is faced with a challenge on how to develop, grow, and hire talent. They are free to form a team, hire developers, and make a go. Nothing has been taken from them except their project lead has handed it off. They are free to plunder all the work we do on BTS and thus have much cheaper development cost... so all DNS must pay for is marketing.

If DNS wants to get talent back it would likely have to dilute significantly to hire someone to take the helm.... I believe Toast is even willing to hand over 100% of the Dev fund and I will gladly give my and I3 stake in DNS to the new management.

So there you go... change the perspective and it changes the perception of "fair".

Now back to work on making BTS great.

248

General Discussion / Clarification on Vesting

« on: October 22, 2014, 02:33:07 pm »

Vesting only applies to VOTE + DNS + PTS + AGS.

There is some confusion over whether or not claiming your funds early results in losing everything else...

I think that you can claim them as they mature.... so after 1 year you are 50% liquid and 50% locked up. After 2 years everyone should be able to claim 100% of their allocation.

This is a compromise on the liquidity proposition... the other idea would have incentivized people to hold on for 2 years to avoid losing anything.

In other words... everyone will eventually get 100% of their allocation. No penalty for claiming your matured BTS.

It is linear... each block you can unlock some small amount of shares... make a transaction with the "fee/share ratio is favorable".

249

General Discussion / Proposed Allocation for Merger

« on: October 21, 2014, 04:26:43 pm »

3% VOTE
3% DNS
7% PTS
7% AGS

2 year vesting period... ie: you can withdraw early for a fraction of your cut.. if you want to sell after 6 months you get 25%... if you wait for a year you get 50%... etc.

80% BTSX

*NOTE* BTSX will remain liquid...just renamed to BTS.

Rationale:

There is no way to possibly estimate the relative value of all systems and each of us has a different estimate on the viability of each project and their respective growth curves. In light of so many variables I wanted to go with a simple solution. Market caps are not available for VOTE or AGS and BTSX/PTS price has been so volatile that the market doesn't have an honest valuation.

So I hope this proposal gets it "close enough" the advantages we get by combining out weigh any estimation errors.

What does each party get out of the deal?

PTS:
1) No more dilution for mining for an instant gain of ~20% over 2 years
2) A stake in all PAST DAC ideas as well as future... this compensates for getting 3% less than the 10% min of all DACs
3) A vastly higher chance of success for a comparatively lower percent of ownership.

AGS
1) Gradual Liquidity
2) Otherwise the same as PTS

VOTE:
1) Support of the main development team and better liquidity

DNS: network effect of more general user base brought in by VOTE

BTSX
1) No competition for BitUSD
2) Combined network effect
3) Marketing support from Adam / VOTE
4) Long term funding and support plan
5) Dilution at a slower rate than Bitcoin

This said we are working with Eddie and Cob to use BTS as the backend of their music service and I am going to recommend any future merger with them be funded via electing Eddie and Cob as delegates to buy out NOTE holders from their fund raiser over time.

We are going to lower asset creation fees for user issued assets.
BTSX will be renamed to BTS
Snapshot for PTS / AGS will be Nov 5th...

Merger to be complete by end of November.

We seem to have over 83% support from forum members with 130 votes cast and huge support from the marketing team, the development team, and just about everyone.

We will be creating a DevShares chain that will have all experimental updates and have regular release schedules with new "hard fork" features once every 3 months and eventually every 6 months. Details on the DevShares are still unclear. DevShares will hard fork frequently and not be suitable for accumulation of capital.. it may have down time, be hacked, etc... but we will maintain it as a testing ground for all features and for 3rd party developers. Unlike Bitcoin Testnet, DevShares are designed to have economic value of their own and the chain will not "reset ownership". It will therefore also support BitUSD.. but far less liquid.

Future dilution will have a hard coded limit of 10% per year and will be allocated to delegates that campaign and get approval for their pay. This 10% limit may be raised via a hard fork with shareholder approval. Our new "social consensus" will be that "majority shareholders rule" and everything else is subject to change.

Nothing is perfect, I am sure we will lose some people as a result of this change. But my goal is that we can have the funding and flexibility to take on the mainstream with our product offerings of BitUSD / etc.

This is a semi-final proposal that will be adopted and implemented unless someone has a VERY compelling argument. The market needs certainty and I hope to get it settled ASAP.

250

General Discussion / Voting on Hard Forks

« on: October 19, 2014, 04:36:41 am »

Hard Forks are perhaps one of the most difficult decisions a DAC must make for anything other than a bug fix. The code represents the "constitution" and generally speaking a hard fork should require more than 51% of shareholder approval. Unfortunately it is very hard to get that kind of consensus.

Discussions on the voting thread have shown some advanced market-based approaches to voting that could help the community come to a more "fair" hard for decision with greater than 75% approval by creating a market for votes on particular hard forks.

1) Every shareholder gets a vote and can be in one of 3 states: Yes, No, or "Accept Majority".
2) Every shareholder may sell their right to vote on a particular issue without selling their underlying BTS.
3) Once you get 51% turnout and 75% consensus a hard fork is activated... (it must already be implemented prior to the vote, just contingent on the vote for enabling it).

What this means: those who might be negatively impacted by a hard fork and thus vote "NO" can get compensated by those who would be positively impacted by the hard fork by selling their No vote to them for more BTS. It also means that those who might not "care" will sell their vote to the highest bidder.

So the process for implementing a non-bug-fix hard fork would be:
1) Discuss on forums and get general consensus that it is a good idea
2) Have developers implement it
3) Have delegates upgrade to nodes that support it
4) Have shareholders vote to enable it

As long as this process is in place then the DAC can remain flexible while having "hard coded" limits on dilution that can be changed without violating the consensus with super majority vote.

251

General Discussion / Proposal to Resolve a Million Issues at Once

« on: October 19, 2014, 03:03:59 am »

There are many problems we need to resolve as a community:

1) We don't want to compete with ourselves and divide our network effect.
2) We don't want to confuse users with a million brands.
3) We want to have 1 BitUSD for everything rather than many different BitUSDs
4) We need to recognize those who have helped fund development after Feb 28th so they don't compete with us.
5) I don't want to have divided loyalties... I cannot serve two masters.
6) We need to provide for long term funding and growth.
7) We need to resolve the consensus problem once and for all.

As a community effort we are stronger if we can agree on changes using proof of stake and we should agree once and for all that the majority will rule here. Those that want a stable money will use BitGold or BitSilver because those are not subject to change, only supply and demand. If you cannot trust the community of stakeholders to act wisely then create a rigid system with no rule changes and attempt to compete.

My Proposal:

1) Drop all other BitShares brands.... rename BitShares X to just BitShares
2) End PTS... BitShares will evolve to incorporate every possible feature that stakeholders vote on.
3) If there is a clone then it should start out with stakeholders it thinks are best... because BitShares holders are uniting.
4) Add stake holder approved dilution without limit to BitShares X.
5) Bring in all AGS holders and given them a stake in BitShares X that cannot be moved for 6 months... the ratio that this stake should be given should be equal to PTS market cap... so $5 million or 10% dilution of BTSX allocated to these individuals. This is effectively BTSX buying out our competition.
6) Bring in one last PTS snapshot also valued at $5 million for another 10% dilution of BTSX... 6 months until funds could be spent... buy out this competition and end PTS.
7) Our team will focus on no other DACs other than BitShares in general and work to make it the most robust and *FLEXIBLE* DAC out there.

There will still be other DACs based upon our toolkit (Music, Gaming, DNS, etc) but those clones will not be dividing my loyalty because they have their own teams and are already known and operating independently of us. Those who have joined those DACs can attempt to grow them how they see fit and BitShares will be competing with them where we can.

Our goal will be to scale BitShares to handle the transaction volume and users... to solve the scaling problem while still remaining decentralized and allowing 0 barriers to entry for competition except our network effect.

At the risk of calling BitShares one DAC to rule them all... I think we can worry about that after we have achieved critical mass, until then someone else may come along and build one DAC to rule them all and we don't want them to get there if we can get there first.

Once again... just proposals... everything will be thought out and community input is valued.

252

General Discussion / VOTE DAC Just Got More Interesting 2.0

« on: October 17, 2014, 09:33:53 pm »

On todays mumble I revealed some more details:

1) VOTING itself is not profitable for a DAC so VOTING cannot be where it gets its value.... *(or can it

)
2) It will have BitUSD (but no other BitAssets)
3) It will have an improved and more generalized Key Graph than .P2P/KeyID
4) It will have a turing complete scripting environment

There are other to be announced details... but that is what came out today.

253

General Discussion / Research Help...

« on: October 17, 2014, 03:29:29 pm »

What are the legal restrictions on a Credit Union buying and holding a digital asset such as BTC or BTSX?

How much would it cost to buy a Credit Union that is already up and running? Examples of recently sold Credit Unions or ones on the market today?

Is it simply a matter of becoming the largest depositor in a particular Credit Union as they are in theory owned by their members?

254

General Discussion / Should we continue to funding mining of PTS?

« on: October 17, 2014, 02:16:25 pm »

Future DACs should honor PTS for helping bootstrap this community and fund development of the toolkit... but should we continue to dilute PTS holders just to fund mining?

Based upon designs for future DACs that we have, there is no need to have PTS be liquid.

What if we simply shut down PTS after one last snapshot for all eternity for any and all future DACs after which it becomes an empty token with the value of all the other alt coins?

I think it would be much cleaner to simply end PTS... have DACS launch their own proto-dac like Toast did or even BTSX did.

Why do this? It simplifies our marketing message... no need to advertize/support PTS after the last snapshot.

Those who want liquidity could sell prior to the last snapshot and buy into individual proto-dacs when the time comes.

This will also create one genesis block initial balance template for all DACs and remove the need to support the genesis block generators for arbitrary dates.

We are coming up on November 5th, 1 year from the launch of PTS so I would like to propose that November 5th be the last snap shot day for all time after which we would dump all of our PTS on the market to who ever wants to speculate. I suspect that the price fall on PTS after this date would stop mining in its tracks anyway..

Mining is costing our community over $5000 per day right now and over $1 million over the next year.... assuming block times will "average" 5 minutes. We should certainly end mining prior to the next difficulty adjustment... because with what we are paying for mining on PTS we could hire many developers.

Just a proposal...

255

General Discussion / Accounting Research Help

« on: October 17, 2014, 01:45:01 pm »

I have a general question and am looking for an online source that describes the regulations around using an alternative (not USD) unit of account for calculating your gains or losses for tax purposes.

A company that receives income in EUROS and pays expenses in EUROS would probably want to use EUROS as the unit of account rather than USD even if they are incorporated in the US.

So can a company use BTC as a unit of account for the purposes of calculating profit / loss?
What kind of restrictions are there on which unit of account can be used?
At the end of the year assume there is 100 BTC profit and a tax rate of 30% and BTC is worth $400 do you sell 30 BTC for $1200 and send that to the IRS?

Assume that rather than BTC you wished to use gold, silver, euros, or some other currency as a US company?

Looking for examples on where this is the case.

Thanks for help doing research.

I am asking because I am attempting to figure out what features would be useful in a wallet that automated some of these calculations and to support businesses wishing to break out of the USD paradigmn.