Connecting the dots

[TravelsAsia]

Atm people think "Who the hell is BitShares coming here all of a sudden trying to overcome Bitcoin", instead they need to think "Wow I can actually use BitShares smartcoins to increase my Bitcoin holdings"

Yes! Once we start providing services that make it even easier for Bitcoin holders to leverage their wealth, the better.

[Akado]

I wonder why we always get overlooked in the Bitcoin media, despite being in the top 10 and top 4 coins for the longest time. Why is that? POS or something else?

I feel like we're the red headed step child. Answer that and we might get some traction

the founders of this project called bitcoin a failing business and will eventually dead . And even some of us follow the lead and does that .
what do you expect from those bitcoin people .

Maybe now is a prime opportunity for some PR considering we've been pushing this view for quite some time. With all of the Mike Hearne drama, maybe we can get some major media outlet to show us a little love?

Or maybe it's time to make people change their idea about us and not seeing as an opponent but a complement instead.

Instead of going "Bitcoin is a long term failure, BItShares is better, use BitShares" type of arguments (that's how people see it), go "Use our smartcoins to hedge against Bitcoin volatility in order to make more profit when you go back to BTC" or something of the type. People only need to see us as a complement, hell, even a stepping stone to achieve profits, as long as they use us. That's all that matters. It's not in our best interest to pass the idea we're a competing chain which is what everyone thinks.


Maybe even getting something like that on our page would make people start to change their minds and realize we're here to help Bitcoiners, not compete with them and "steal" their profits @cass

I think a simple phrase sharing that idea would go a long way and start to change people's perception of BitShares.

Atm people think "Who the hell is BitShares coming here all of a sudden trying to overcome Bitcoin", instead they need to think "Wow I can actually use BitShares smartcoins to increase my Bitcoin holdings"

[CoinHoarder]

I wonder why we always get overlooked in the Bitcoin media, despite being in the top 10 and top 4 coins for the longest time. Why is that? POS or something else?

I feel like we're the red headed step child. Answer that and we might get some traction

the founders of this project called bitcoin a failing business and will eventually dead . And even some of us follow the lead and does that .
what do you expect from those bitcoin people .

Maybe now is a prime opportunity for some PR considering we've been pushing this view for quite some time. With all of the Mike Hearne drama, maybe we can get some major media outlet to show us a little love?

[btswildpig]

I wonder why we always get overlooked in the Bitcoin media, despite being in the top 10 and top 4 coins for the longest time. Why is that? POS or something else?

I feel like we're the red headed step child. Answer that and we might get some traction

the founders of this project called bitcoin a failing business and will eventually dead . And even some of us follow the lead and does that .
what do you expect from those bitcoin people .

[fuzzy]

our community is seen as a hostile community to outsiders.

- we think we are superior to all the other projects (at least the outside thinks this about us)

We are the least connected community if you think about how often we are mentioned and talked about us.

in converences their are no people invited to talk with other communities about the challanges crypto sees. So when should
new blood coming into bitshares?

everyone should get up and doing something!

well i keep telling everyone we can get people to try bitshares simply by making their own tokens, putting in a small buy order for bts and then let them sell them in under 3 seconds...

I am not the only one already doing it (reaching out in ways few other cryptos can)..and it gets peoples attention. 

You can only lead a horse to water (er.... www.sharebits.io) though.

[Shentist]

our community is seen as a hostile community to outsiders.

- we think we are superior to all the other projects (at least the outside thinks this about us)

We are the least connected community if you think about how often we are mentioned and talked about us.

in converences their are no people invited to talk with other communities about the challanges crypto sees. So when should
new blood coming into bitshares?

everyone should get up and doing something!

[puppies]

This pump and liquidity is a good chance for the fee pool to be used for the creation of assets. Couldn't it help tighten the peg?

The issue here is the slow moving nature of the committee account.  Even if we were able to get 51% of the committee online at the same time, there is a minimum 1 hour review period on all committee actions. 

Realistically speaking if I were to create a proposal to sell the bittassets that we have collected from the fee pool, I would need to set the expiration at at least 12 hours.  This is not exactly real time, and we would have to be careful about what the price was when the proposal expired, so we didn't accidentally end up dumping under the feed.
 
The same issue comes up if we need to cancel an order.  If we set a sell wall, and then the price changes, we are powerless to cancel our sell wall for at least 1 hour.

To help combat this I have created a separate account committee-trade.  This account is owned by the committee account and has active key multi-sig.  Currently it is a 2 of 4 scheme with bhuz (the only volunteer), myself,  Xeroc, and abit (since I didn't think they would mind).  If you are good with the CLI and would like to be added please let us know. 

This is not endorsed by the committee yet.  I have started this in motion in an attempt to spur something.

[Empirical1.2]

I wonder why we always get overlooked in the Bitcoin media, despite being in the top 10 and top 4 coins for the longest time. Why is that? POS or something else?

I feel like we're the red headed step child. Answer that and we might get some traction

Back in 2014 on the back of BTSX and BitAssets, BitShares was mentioned fairly frequently.

Daniel was also invited to and did speak at a couple of Bitcoin conferences I think.

BM was even given an honourable mention as essentially one of the top 15 most influential people in Bitcoin in 2014.
http://www.coindesk.com/10-influential-people-bitcoin-year/

The merger put a lot of those theories into practice which haven't produced the results they were expecting/hoping for yet but if they do, or if we can get SmartCoins tightly pegged,  I think more people will take notice again.

We could fix the spread on smart coins right now.  We lack the will, not the ability.

The question is how to fix them in a sustainable, cost effective way.

I agree.  What I propose would be a bootstrap not a long term fix.  I think we need to do something in the short term though.

I agree. A short term solution would be good.

I'm not a fan of Maker though as I think that is also a short term solution that doesn't address the underlying problem and will cost BTS lots of future trading fees. 

[puppies]

We could fix the spread on smart coins right now.  We lack the will, not the ability.

The question is how to fix them in a sustainable, cost effective way.

I agree.  What I propose would be a bootstrap not a long term fix.  I think we need to do something in the short term though.

[Akado]

This pump and liquidity is a good chance for the fee pool to be used for the creation of assets. Couldn't it help tighten the peg?

[mike623317]

I wonder why we always get overlooked in the Bitcoin media, despite being in the top 10 and top 4 coins for the longest time. Why is that? POS or something else?

I feel like we're the red headed step child. Answer that and we might get some traction

[Empirical1.2]

We could fix the spread on smart coins right now.  We lack the will, not the ability.

The question is how to fix them in a sustainable, cost effective way.

[puppies]

We could fix the spread on smart coins right now.  We lack the will, not the ability.

[Stan]

You need to  think bigger, Pinky.

The SmartCoin product works best in a system where demand is reliably growing for other reasons.  That's why we are now emphasizing the addition of those other reasons.

From Wikipedia:

A ramjet is a form of airbreathing jet engine that uses the engine's forward motion to compress incoming air without an axial compressor. Ramjets cannot produce thrust at zero airspeed; they cannot move an aircraft from a standstill. A ramjet-powered vehicle, therefore, requires an assisted take-off like a rocket assist to accelerate it to a speed where it begins to produce thrust.

[btswildpig]

The smart coin design is contingent on people speculate on the rise of BitShares ..

And BM always said : speculators are just people who want to dump their shares at higher price . They don't contribute to the system like the developers do . They contribute "nothing" compare to the developers .


Here we are . A smart coin system whose core is totally based on the theory of a speculative market , and the builder himself think speculating on the price of bitshares has no meaning . And he think as long as they can keep develop , no matter the ungreatful speculators keep leaving , users will come , the system will be good . But how on earth could we provide a product to the customers when our product relies on people positively on the short term return of BTS ?

[CoinHoarder]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Here we agree, SmartCoins is all it takes to make BM filthy rich and famous.

However we haven't monopolized the market. In fact our USD product only has 2.5% of existing crypto market share.

Uphold: $2.06 Million
Tether: $1.4 Million
Nubits: $0.74 Million
BituSD: $0.1  Million

& as Coinhoarder says competition will significantly increase through 2016 & I agree that understanding why we have a significant premium and tightening it is key. (I disagree with him though that Black Swan fear is a key factor, given the relative success of NuBits despite very little backing and a much higher risk of failure.)

I agree with this. Regarding black swans, I just rattled off some of the most common criticisms of smartcoins. The biggest issue with Bitshares is the premium that has to paid for smartcoins. We can't expect anyone to purchase smartcoins if they have to pay such a premium. Nubits, Tether, etc are killing BitUSD purely because of a tighter peg and higher liquidity.

[Empirical1.2]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Here we agree, SmartCoins is all it takes to make BM filthy rich and famous.

However we haven't monopolized the market. In fact our USD product only has 2.5% of existing crypto market share.

Uphold: $2.06 Million
Tether: $1.4 Million
Nubits: $0.74 Million
BituSD: $0.1  Million

& as Coinhoarder says competition will significantly increase through 2016 & I agree that understanding why we have a significant premium and tightening it is key. (I disagree with him though that Black Swan fear is a key factor, given the relative success of NuBits despite very little backing and a much higher risk of failure.)

[Akado]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

This is what we need... it will bring in more traders and more liquidity than almost any other proposal... throw in a lending market and were golden.

Would like to know how much it would cost for 1 to be implemented. I think I asked this 1 or 2 mumbles ago. Dan mentioned he needed to give it some thought first. Still waiting, would really like to have an idea. Did you manage to get any idea without going deep into the rabbit hole @bytemaster ?

[lil_jay890]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

This is what we need... it will bring in more traders and more liquidity than almost any other proposal... throw in a lending market and were golden.

[CoinHoarder]

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Maybe you're just playing into the idiot Erlich Bachman character (funny show), but I am not sure how you can call the DEX monopolized considering the pitiful volume and liquidity. Most people are scared of using Smartcoins because of the possibility of a black swan event, they  are not willing to pay the huge premium neccesary to purchase a Smartcoin, or they are not willing to take the risk of shorting one into existence.

The DEX is not finished. Competition is coming... instantdex, b&c exchange, elcoin, etc.

Now is not the time to become complacent or satisfied. Now is not the time to be overly worried about dilution.

What do we want? LIQUIDITY! When do we want it? NOW!

[Erlich Bachman]

of course, Smartcoins are the one thing that makes BitShares unique, and therefore, yes, you can logically call us a "1-hit wonder"

but our "hit" is pretty humongous considering that we have absolutely monopolized the "smart-COMEX/FOREX market"

Chaz Darwin was a 1-hit wonder too.  He never did top his "Origion of the Species" hit, but that hit was all it took to make him filthy rich and famous.

Come on Eileen, Don't Fear the Reaper, just give me your Tainted Love

[gamey]

Most of the DEX's value is based on smartcoins.  When smartcoins fail, what is there?  The same product NXT/Counterparty/Omni and likely others have by now. So ask how to make smartcoins work.  The affiliate stuff is a fail.  What else is there that sets BitShares apart?  Confirmation times are great, but that is horse before buggy. Outside of smartcoins, bring back faith in the self-funding model. I don't think that can be done with Western devs unless they have more passion than sense.

[fuzzy]

From my perspective, the biggest problem with adoption is getting BTC over to bitbtc in a cost effective manner. Let's say I transfer in some openbtc. If I decide I'd like to purchase bts, the openbtc/bts market is priced unfavorably compared to bitbtc/bts. This is going to sound naive, but I feel that "like currencies" should be exchanged not on an open market but on a one-to-one basis with only a handling fee applied, say .1%. This would dramatically spur activity because people would be able to get into the core asset at an acceptable exchange rate.

As an example, I'd like to be able to exchange openbtc for bitbtc at a published flat rate or a very small percentage fee.

Nice ^

[btswildpig]

Bitcoin foundation spent 7 million USD in the past 2 years .

And that's Bitcoin , a coin with zero new functions , and doesn't even need to spend 7 million to keep it running . All the cost went to lobbying stuff or activity , etc .

So you get the idea , when people have "budget"  and "will to spend" ,  all idea to spend it will come out .

And after ran out off money , they finally cut off 95% the spending that they thought was necessary and couldn't be cut off in the first place .

That's what people do when the budget is limited and people won't contribute to it anymore without seeing actual positive result  .

Now , imaging bitcoin foundation has the power to dilute on bitcoin "on need" , what kind of proposal will they propose ? they of course will propose a lot of things that "necessary for bitcoin to survive. "

[jsidhu]

Metatrader4 with bitshares plugin

[wmbutler]

From my perspective, the biggest problem with adoption is getting BTC over to bitbtc in a cost effective manner. Let's say I transfer in some openbtc. If I decide I'd like to purchase bts, the openbtc/bts market is priced unfavorably compared to bitbtc/bts. This is going to sound naive, but I feel that "like currencies" should be exchanged not on an open market but on a one-to-one basis with only a handling fee applied, say .1%. This would dramatically spur activity because people would be able to get into the core asset at an acceptable exchange rate.

As an example, I'd like to be able to exchange openbtc for bitbtc at a published flat rate or a very small percentage fee.

[tonyk]

well, I think you guys are overly smart, so you over complicate things.

in my stupid mind... really BTS is a charity that sponsors every BM's ideas... so it is not very 'smart' investment, so to speak.

wildpig explained it well a day or so ago... when you develop software that just needs to be developed 'more' as to just 'work'... you get Bitshares.

One can imagine something making money on its own without the need to be 'constantly improved'... but hell why do that if it cuts thier income stream?

[gamey]

I feel I could delve into a dozen issues as to why all these random coins have passed up BitShares on this weird Chinese based pump, but I will go into one.

All newly introduced gambling systems have a  period of time where the square money is bled dry.  Smartcoins are no different. You bet on one side or the other. It is a gambling system and a newly introduced one at that. This is one problem I always had with my limited understanding of the mechanics behind the Smartcoins. It seemed like at some point it would be lopsided. Eventually the suckers are bled dry and there is simply a lack of participants.  This happens in all gambling games for the most part.  Yes, you can put in pricing mechanisms  to even out the wager, but at some point they become too complicated and there are many other alternatives for people to get their gambling fix without having the equivalent of a grad degree in math. So once BitShares got past the point where the square money was bled dry, the losing participants gave up and moved on to something else. Unfortunately this is a very very hard problem to fix. You need a mixture of new money, education, and reintroduction of faith in the product.

The best bet at this point would be for bytemaster to spend time trying to get any Chinese developer up to task. I'm afraid though that once the blind transfer stuff is implement, longterm motivations will somehow be lost in the mishmash of exchanges. If you could get a Chinese team taking over BTS, things might possibly be turned around.  Otherwise you end up with MAS, and other things that fail just like the affiliate marketing.

This is no slight to the guys who released 2.0, but they obviously need to make money somewhere and people seem hesitant to pay CNX going forward.

Also - the wagering involved in Bitshares isn't exactly fair.  Sharp participants with capital seem to be able to effect the outcome to a significant degree.  This makes the sharp vs square money even more lopsided, leading to the loss of interest by the squares.

edit - Someone asked why a Chinese developer would be a good thing.  #1 They are relatively cheap.  #2 This is what BitShares has been setup to do supposedly.  Something that can fund the development of itself. #3 A lot of crypto capital comes from the Chinese side which I suspect has a larger nationalism aspect. Chinese developers would breath new life into the project and the blockchain has a decent chance of being able to pay them.

[lil_jay890]

Regarding the liquidity thing... I recall we gave bunker 4+ delegates on the promise that his bunker-mining project would bring in thousands of dollars a day in liquidity to BTS in the short term, and millions in daily liquidity over the medium term.

Haven't heard much about that project other than it's stuck in some sort of prototyping phase...

Point is, we have been trying to gain liquidity forever without much success.  We have tried lots of gimmicks.  It's tough to just put a list up of things we "should" do and expect everyone to jump on board.  We've been burned enough, and really need to see some well thought out plans with actual ROI's attached.  Otherwise it's just shooting from the hip and will most likely end up with the same failures we so consistently achieve.

[CoinHoarder]

@ Stealth

It is being worked on

@ Liquidity

Shareholders are too cheap (or uninitiated) to fix the problem and/or disillusioned that percentage based fees and market maker bots and/or adoption will fix the problem (the same mantra that has been championed for 2 years with no results). Immediate solutions exist, but again shareholders seem too cheap or uninitiated to fix it. I am not investing another penny in this project unless some type of action is taken to provide liquidity on the Smartcoin market. The obvious solutions are obvious:

- Changing the fee structure to resemble centralized exchanges (based on a percentage of the trade, with a maximum fee)
- Lowering fees to the bare minimum for however long it takes to gain more users and liquidity
- Sell the SmartCoin fee pool (fees accumulated from each SmartCoins' transactions/trades) back into the market X% over the price feed.
- Develop market making bots that users can run or invest in through a user issued asset (a complicated endeavor)
- Make an autonomous market making bot that users can buy shares of by depositing to its bankroll
- Implement "maker/taker" fees (lowering fees for market makers)
- Dilute BTS shareholders, and short assets into existence, then have the chain autonomously sell them X% above the feed price.

@ Adoption
 
I have tried for over 2 years to get the crypto community behind Bitshares... possibly more than anyone else. I am THE biggest bitshares cheerleader on Bitcointalk, even though I am one of the smallest shareholders (pathetic on you guys). I am constantly trolled and dismissed... Bitshares has made too many wrong decisions and burned too many bridges to garner more support from the cryptocurrency community. I have pretty much given up. The adoption will need to come from elsewhere.

@ GUI

The GUI is better than 99% of cryptocurrencys' GUIs. The GUI is not the problem at all and is in fact an advantage.

@ Fees

They are too high. So what about the affiliate program... the fees, even being as high as they are (way too high), are not enough incentive for the affiliate program to work. It was a solid idea, but it will not provide proper enough incentive to really be effective unless BTS is at a much higher market cap. So, we should not make decisions based on the affiliate program since it was a failure.

[BTSdac]

many thing need to change 
1.reduce the fee to 1 bts

[fuzzy]

Karnal I agree with pretty much most of what you have said. It's work work work and the only way it gets done is blood sweat and tears, utilising what we have and reach out (as fuzzy says,) inspire people to join and pour new effort or capital in for profit or the vision.

All those options are on the table and are being worked on as we speak!

on the table. 

[Ben Mason]

Karnal I agree with pretty much most of what you have said. It's work work work and the only way it gets done is blood sweat and tears, utilising what we have and reach out (as fuzzy says,) inspire people to join and pour new effort or capital in for profit or the vision.

All those options are on the table and are being worked on as we speak!

[Shentist]

Why not simply FIAT -> BIT${FIAT} and be done with it?

You mentioned the reason before - a bridge or gateway can not do it because of lack of liquidity. The point is any exchange function like this BUT in our exchange you can
change the 3rd party UIA into pegged assets. This will be the future, right now, the spreads are to high, but anyone can help with it and trade activly on BitShares. If we are not
using our own DEX who will?

[btstip]

Hey fuzzy, here are the results of your tips...

• BunkerChain Labs: has been credited 1 FISTBUMP

Curious about ShareBits? Visit us at http://sharebits.io and start tipping BTS on https://bitsharestalk.org/ today!

Source: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21159.msg274270/topicseen.html#msg274270

Created by hybridd

[fuzzy]

This is a pretty hefty wish list.

I think a lot of it boils down to our UX needing to be disassociated from the coded processes. What I mean by this is, the limitations people are feeling in the current UX is due to it mirroring the processes and architecture of the underlying protocol.

If there was a focus on how people can easily understand something and then suit the experience to match that instead of attempting to re-educate them on 'the Bitshares way', I believe we would eliminate a good 90% of our barriers to entry.

The reason I think this approach has never been taken is because it has always been assumed that someone going from the web client to the CLI or light wallet should be able to navigate them all with the same understanding.. but that is just not so. Try asking a Windows user to open their command line to type something in and look at the expression on their face that says "What is a command line?"

Anyhow.. there is some great elements you pointed out here. How much of it can be supported by a Worker right now? 

#sharebits "BunkerChain Labs" 1 FISTBUMP

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

This is a pretty hefty wish list.

I think a lot of it boils down to our UX needing to be disassociated from the coded processes. What I mean by this is, the limitations people are feeling in the current UX is due to it mirroring the processes and architecture of the underlying protocol.

If there was a focus on how people can easily understand something and then suit the experience to match that instead of attempting to re-educate them on 'the Bitshares way', I believe we would eliminate a good 90% of our barriers to entry.

The reason I think this approach has never been taken is because it has always been assumed that someone going from the web client to the CLI or light wallet should be able to navigate them all with the same understanding.. but that is just not so. Try asking a Windows user to open their command line to type something in and look at the expression on their face that says "What is a command line?"

Anyhow.. there is some great elements you pointed out here. How much of it can be supported by a Worker right now? 

[fuzzy]

Outreach outreach outreach.  That is really what most this boils down to imho. 
We don't have all these features because we are ashamed of showing off what we do have to people who have the eyes to see it AND also recognize the weak spots where they might find and exploit the profit potential of building better solutions than those that exist.  We spend way too much time on this forum asking why and not nearly enough time simply acting to bring more eyes to what we HAVE accomplished (which if people knew about it...many would love!). 

I do agree with you on the privacy and other things, but the fact of the matter is that without a bunch of developers and entrepreneurs who know we exist (isn't that the first step???) we are going to be waiting waiting waiting to make sure all this gets built...if it is built at all. 

And before people start saying "we don't have a product that is ready"....remember Ethereum sold themselves to Developers worldwide by OUTREACH. And a YellowPaper...which is much less than we currently have. 

[karnal]

Here we are, early 2016.

Our marketcap has fallen behind Stellar, Factom, and MaidSafe. To say nothing of DOGE (love the doge, but it's obscene that it has >x2 our market cap).


What has gone wrong?

Even though, personally, I don't find the UI to be the prettiest thing around, it mostly works, and it's being actively developed.
Plus, bitcoin core wasn't that pretty back in the day either.

The total and complete lack of privacy, as I've stated several times, seems to me as one major obstacle right now, and it was an oversight that it wasn't addressed any earlier. Essentially everyone whom I've introduced to bitshares refuse to use the system, even create new accounts, because it will all be linked (either that, or several 1-wallet accounts..) -- to say nothing of sending large sums and exposing who your business contacts are and how much every minute transaction is worth for the whole world to see.

I'm sure a minority will be turned off by the utter lack of proxy support in the ui (correct me if I'm wrong - I just transparent-proxy the whole thing through tor, just had a quick look and couldn't find any proxy settings). Crypto-people are usually at least vaguely concerned with privacy, and it would be trivial for the openledger server to identify which accounts/balances are being queried and which IP they belong to.

The above I had to state, but don't find to be particularly relevant, really.

What else? We have a decentralized exchange, which to the best of my knowledge is still a unique feature, and a pretty cool one at that. To be able to trade without having to trust in a 3rd party, that's some serious value right there.

Unfortunately, with the ever-growing list of UIAs that attempt to fulfill the roles of the several smartcoins, for the average user the DEX is reduced to essentially nothing. Does it matter if you're trading on cryptsy or the dex if all the value from your tokens is controlled by a 3rd party?

How is that any better than using cryptsy directly?

It's like a centralized decentralized exchange. I think it loses its appeal that way.


Which leads me into the next point, the much discussed smartcoin peg, which simply isn't working right now.

I can't tell you how many times over the last months I bought some crypto, not to speculate, but to store value, and how much more sense it would make to keep these as a stable smartcoin, rather than bitcoin or doge, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

Unfortunately, with the exception of CNY:BTS, the markets are essentially illiquid and the prices asked, absurd.
As you will probably know, investing/storing wealth in CNY is a dubious proposition right now due to factors external to BitShares, and given the above statement, I was left with no choice but not injecting money into the ecosystem.

I wonder how many hundreds of people thought the same.

How turning off it must be for new users, that they download the software, have a cursory glance at the market, and find .. nothing.
I don't propose to know the solution to this, but I can tell you: it is essential that liquidity be bootstrapped somehow. Maybe that morpheus guy is on to something when he wrote the incentives are not aligned right with the current set of rules.


It is not my goal to sound overly negative. I still believe strongly in this project and it's not just because I have some skin in the game. I can imagine how a world with a functioning BitShares system could work, and it's a great vision. It can really push things to the next level, when compared to bitcoin-like solutions.



So here are some (not-so-)scattered ideas which I believe would help:

First off, STEALTH has to be in working order, with total transparency people won't use the system. This point is being addressed and I look forward to finally registering some accounts I've been putting off to register and start loading them with smartcoins (assuming the liquidity thing is sorted by then :]) - and tell my customers to do the same.

Next, the smartcoin liquidity needs to be sorted. I'm sorry I can't offer much more in this department, don't know how to achieve that, just that it must be achieved. But that's old news, right?

Related to the smartcoins, I do believe we should attempt to "liquify" the SGD, CHF, GOLD and SILVER markets. Perhaps CAN, GBP and AUD as well.
We're a MUCH better system than traditional brokers, who charge absurd fees. Combine being able to buy stocks in {SGD,CHF,GBP,...} and/or indexes (SP500, NASDAQ, etc) with a liquid system, and I believe with some serious grassroots marketing, we can get people to start investing using the bitshares blockchain.

I, for one (with stealth in place), would be more than happy to pave the way. This year I'd open a brokerage account in SGD, but if it can be done with bitshares, I'm willing to put my money where my beliefs are.

Stocks/indexes are one possibility. Another is FOREX. And we already have everything we need (BitEUR:BitUSD already exists). Except liquidity.


Do you see it? Instead of more crypto inbreeding, bring traders from outside the ecosystem. Give them value. Costs 20 CHF at the swiss broker to place an order, costs 10 cents (or whatever it is these days) with bitshares to do the same.

And they don't even need to know it's running on top of bitshares.

p.s: for average users, unlocking the wallet using T/TOP would be a very nice addition. Allow for saving the recovery codes a la github as well.

Which brings me to the next point...

Working gateways. And I don't mean the kind that offer UIAs in return. Why yet another layer? FIAT --> GATEWAY.FIAT --> BIT${FIAT}.

Why not simply FIAT -> BIT${FIAT} and be done with it?

Look. We get people to deposit $FIAT and as soon as the transfer (or credit card purchase, or whatever) clears be credited with Bit${FIAT}, and this thing goes to the moon.

We need the infographics guys/girls to make it easy for average joe to understand the process as well.

It is even useful for all other crypto users. Need to buy some bitcoin? Well no problem, use our fiat gateway, get bitFiat, and help yourself to some BitBTC with that. With the possibility to withdraw "real" bitcoin already a reality.


We are very close to make BitShares heaven for savers, investors, and speculators. I think we need, in no particular order:
  - To fix some small, some not so small issues, such as: finishing stealth, having liquidity
  - Build some services on top of the blockchain, such as: virtual credit cards (bitshares is a much better match for this than bitcoin), (bit)forex brokers,
    crypto-brokerage websites, p2p lending (see for instance www.btcjam.com, again, bitshares with smartcoins is a much better system to run this)
  - Have working gateways that exchange fiat to bit${fiat}, not some centralized UIA that may or may not be around tomorrow.
  - Fund the Munich group and have the PoS system working. Then spread it like wildfire.
  - Bootstrap liquidity in USD, EUR, CHF, GBP, SGD, GOLD, SILVER (CNY already works), with the caveat that it's possible that spreading ourselves too thin with so many of them might be deterimental. In that case, personally I'd go with GOLD, CHF, SGD, USD.
  - Review the infographic strategy, and perhaps create infographics targeting specific users, such as:
       - FOREX traders
       - Brokerage users
       - Savers
       - Investors
       - Speculators
  - More social media presence (totally not my thing, so shooting from the hip..), like a more active subreddit and twitter feed.


On the ground, we need the PoS system to spread, we need marketing and advertising, and we need to have an easy, intuitive simple product that average people who see the advertising can consume. Online we need an easy way for merchants to accept payments (ken/chris & their crew are doing something in that arena as well, but I think it's odoo-specific).. perhaps a bitpay.com for bitshares, say.

Discuss.