so the point is "how to make the liquidity grow?"

the answer is to attract market maker.

market maker update orders frequently, robot trading is always used. so if placing orders cannot be free, it should be low enough, if market maker always need to calculate the fees before updating orders,  they would not like to trade.

maybe there can be a "market maker" membership for high trade,  low transfer demand users, an account can pay say 1000 BTS monthly, and then enjoy the counter spamming fee for each order updating.

These are some good ideas. I agree we need market makers. We need whales. The question is how would we change the fee structure without damaging other parts of the Bitshares economic machine?

Ads are not viable until you have eyeballs. This is akin to launching a blog, getting 1000 uniques per day and thinking you can make money monetizing them. Simply not going to work until BTS exchanges are popular.

Everything started out with no eyeballs but it doesn't mean ads aren't viable. It works for coinmarketcap and many other sites in the cryptospace already.

The users of BTS who opt-in are auctioning their eyeballs for money. If you look at coinmarketcap or LTB then you'd see there are sponsors.

You're assuming the marketing will not work and no one will use BTS 2.0. You're assuming BTS 2.0 has 0 users now. How many people have downloaded BTS 2.0? Where are the use statistics?

Quote from: r0ach on October 22, 2015, 11:33:40 am

You guys cannot be serious.  This idea and the referral system are both bad ideas.  The platform isn't supposed to be profitable with 0 users, stop pretending it should be.  Just like any new business, you run in the negative until you attract lots of users, THEN you profit afterwards.

Im guessing this response has nothing to do with my recommendations.  Gamification techniques are one of the most potent ways of motivating others....

And it often doesnt even need to be something strenuous...and even if it is, you can make it something that one does rarely to unlock bonus features free of charge.  There should always be a pay option and an option to do work tonget the same bonuses.  No feature should be locked to only those who have lots of money. 

Making little tasks for people to do opens up many countries to bitshares who otherwise might not be able to afford everything.

I agree with this. We need to help people to earn access or earn money. The more opportunities to make money BTS 2.0 provides, the more people will use it.

People starting out with little money would want to grow their money, earn more money.  If i needed money for fees I wouldn't mind viewing ads, doing surveys, or other paid activities. The point is to bring as many as possible into the economy but you can't do that if you don't monetize the economy,

So people saying lower fees, but don't bring in optional ad revenue, or wait to profit later when there are millions of users, but it's not even about how many users but about how valuable the demographics are, about who those users are, and about the opportunities being offered to them in many different forms.

So a way to simplify it is everyone involved should have a chance for some win. Muse and many other projects might need to organize teams of people to market their products, so I do think that ads in the Bitshares client makes sense to advertise these opportunities to make money on a daily basis, but also opportunities to help committed community members to grow different blockchains using similar referral programs to Bitshares 2.0.

So in essence, the referrer has a job. It's a job with no boss. It's a job where the smarter and better they work the more money they can make. It's a job similar to a commissioned stock broker, which offers the opportunity to enter into a digital nomad lifestyle (a highly prized and coveted lifestyle). It's a job which is easy to market, and every new blockchain is going to need these sorts of people if we can prove the success of it on Bitshares 2.0.

So to me it's very important to support the referral program and job creation in Bitshares 2.0.

Opinions from our trader (Ander). I support him.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19394.msg248989.html#msg248989

Opinion frpm Bytemaster: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19394.msg249000.html#msg249000


By the way Max makes good sense on psychology but Bytemaster makes a strong case on resource scarcity. We have multiple constraints to consider in our design.

Max, a recent EU court ruling just said that crypto traders can trade tax free. No VAT tax. This would mean traders in the EU might be willing to pay higher fees and have the incentive to trade because it's tax free. If they can trade virtual stocks tax free that is a very strong selling point.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/115447/breaking-eu-court-rules-bitcoin-exchange-is-tax-free

TradeNet sounds better than Ubernet. I would say don't use Bitshares in the name either. Take the stealth approach and use Bitshares technology without connecting directly to Bitshares.

Quote from: clayop on October 22, 2015, 06:53:22 pm

My approach is to attract more users first with lower fee and make profit later.

Like Microsoft... they intentionally leaved their product "unprotected" from piracy, the majority of user's had windows for free... And look them now!

Maybe we should copy Microsoft and put ads into the interface. I'm all for it.

http://betanews.com/2015/10/16/advertisements-in-the-windows-10-start-menu-are-a-good-thing/

One perspective that I find missing from the fee discussion is the one that can be learned from other successful affiliate systems. The one that I'm familiar with was (years ago) POKER. It's very similar to what we are doing in that:
a) users have to pay high fees and pay often
b) users are primarily attracted by 'liquidity' (availability of other players).

So what happened in the online poker scene was that competition between poker rooms was happening not via low fees but via HIGH fees that the rooms shared with affiliates who in turn shared them with users in the form of bonuses and 'rakeback'.

So I expect all Bitshares affiliates to eventually pay users a substantial percentage of their fees back. From the users perspective he won't be paying any fees, he'll be 'getting paid' for using the BitShares network.

You may think that it's basically a wash, but a better cash flow for affiliates translates to much better exposure of the system to the outside world.

This is one solution I've been thinking about but I think it could work. Referrers could set up lotteries, and other mechanisms, to reward loyal participants.

At the same time people could get paid to view ads, which is ultimately another way of getting paid to play. If people can get paid in enough ways by enough creative mechanisms then the fees wont matter.

1. Trading fees should be as high as blocking spamming

2. Trading fees should be as low as attracting market maker bots

3. Trading fees should be as high as producing enough profit

4. Trading fees should be as low as attracting users

We should find an optimal point that meets four criteria above. But I think current fee is quite high. Xeroc's suggestion (6 month low fee) can be great. And when BTS price goes up, we can increase fee by 'not' reducing its amount (e.g. still 1 BTS when BTS is $0.01)

Why would you increase fees instead of lower them? I'm confused by this. If the marketing plan is effective, if you lower the fees for a greater amount of people you might get the same revenue.

Here is an idea. Why not track the amount of revenue being generated per day by the fees and have the fees be somewhat dynamic based on the profitability and revenue of the DAC?

Bytemaster alluded to this, and I think maybe that is an option. When revenue meets some minimum threshold then it meets a certain criteria and it becomes optional to lower fees. If it doesn't then fees can't be lowered.

Think of it like eating. Bitshares has to eat one way or another to live. Either it can eat the fees or it can hibernate through burning. Burning might work somewhat but you cannot burn enough to raise the BTS price enough to make a big difference like the fees do.

I think the data apparently shows that the 49 exchanges ahead of us don't charge for non filled orders apparently?

Apple launched an iPhone during a time when no one wanted a smart phone. Their phone was more expensive than other phones. Why did people buy their phone?

Their hardware was more expensive than other hardware yet cheaper to make. Why do people buy Macs?

What matters is not what others are doing, but what you can do. Sometimes you can do things others can't because you're doing it different or because you're not those others.

The data we need is data which tracks metrics. A/B testing can reveal a lot. For example if you offer optional ads as the alternative to high fees and most people choose the ads, and or the marketing is not effective, then I would agree. At the moment we have no data because marketing has not even started yet people want to defund it. Shouldn't you first let it run for a few months before determining something needs to be changed?

People are complaining about fees the same month Bitshares 2.0 launched, before the referral program is set up, before marketing has become active. Let it become active and then complain otherwise it looks like a political complaint. If you launch and we find that marketing isn't working very well, or isn't effective, then we would know maybe the cost isn't worth it but what if marketing is very successful and the cost is worth it?

With no metrics to show anything you have a campaign which isn't data driven. So what is driving the desire for lower fees?

Presumably there's a reason they all the follow the same formula & also charge a percentage for trades that are matched. (Which I know is complicated for BTS to do short term)

There is no reason. People who want to trade will trade on any exchange which lets them trade. As long as the fees are reasonable for the demographic and not higher than the highest exchange out there which can compete to do the same thing.

Unlike an ordinary crpyto-exchange, Bitshares does things no other exchange can do. Fees in my opinion should start out high and be slowly reduced over time if referral marketing shows it is not effective but if you don't even have a chance to try it out then you're asking for a reduction in marketing prior to launch which could diminish the chances of success of Bitshares for no gain.

I don't see it as a loss if Bitshare starts out marketed to people who can afford the fees. It works for Apple. Many people in China cannot afford the iPhone 6 even though they make it.

& the feedback has been coming from active traders who are also shareholders in BTS and want to see it succeed. So I don't class that as  propaganda/politics.

Their opinions matter, but their opinions aren't based on any evidence, statistics, or data. It's not a data driven opinion. We all have opinions but if we don't test referral marketing how do we know the fees are too high?

Also if you lower the fees in one place you have to raise them in another, yet I see people saying we should make Bitshares 2.0 completely free or to compete on fees. I'd like micropayments too, I'd like developing countries to use the currency features too, but I recognize you need liquidity or none of that will work.

The way to get liquidity is to have marketing appeal to people who can afford to pay the fee. If you can't afford 20 cents per trade then honestly Bitshares isn't going to have what you're looking for. If you want to trade with no fees you can go use Robin Hood and trade real stocks. If you are a high net worth or sophisticated investor I highly doubt you care about 20 cents. If you're going to trade a significant amount of money, as in thousands of dollars, I doubt you care about 20 cents.

Bots care about this but if you look at Chinese exchanges, with lots of bots trading, then maybe you have an explanation for why the fees are seen as too high? But if you use bot appropriately you should be able to hold the peg or make money in Bitshares with the high fees.

So why not just keep the fees high? I don't see what demographic is going to care about the difference between 0.05 and 0.2 usd when trading $50,000 worth of assets a day.

Either way it's a challenging task, charging enough somewhere to make the referral programme lucrative which I believe is needed & making fees competitive with centralised exchanges which I believe are presently our competition. (Though I know you don't think they are. Which is fine, we agree to disagree.)

I don't think Bitshares 2.0 should compete on fees with centralized exchanges. Let them have the cheaper fees and let people make a risk assessment on whether the risk of getting hacked is worth it. After all, they can just trade on centralized exchanges even if Bitshares somehow had zero fees, and there is no evidence that traders choose an exchange based on the fees and not based on security.

I've never once chosen an exchange based on the fees. I care more about the security. After security I care about what assets are on the exchange. After that then I care about fees.

Bitshares can have the sort of exotic assets where it wont even matter to people what the fees are. In fact it might even be a good idea to hide the fees so its not in their face as too high, and just charge for it in the background.