Quote from: pioneer on July 03, 2015, 10:35:02 am

Encryption?

This is what I'm worried about.

Please elaborate

I was hooked after reading BM's blogs and judging his free market principles to be genuine and have since spent the majority of my free time (all day, hooray) pouring over the forums and getting public answers to as many obvious and non-obvious questions as possible.

Recently I have produced professional and top-quality MS-paint renditions of BitShares analogies.


I have previously posted examples of my work discussing where I think BitShares is headed and the market niche it fills in this thread: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,17212.0.html

Can BitShares offer Vaultoro decentralized banking services?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16724.msg214074.html

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http://www.vaultoro.com/
Allow trading of gold bullion stored in insured, audited Swiss vaults against bitcoin.
They do not have any fiat banking services due to the added regulatory burden and the increased fees that would result.
I'm sure they could attract even more customers they could integrate bitFiat and bitGold as they could allow a 3rd asset for their users to hedge against eachother. Vaultoro would be insulated from regulatory burden and could collect fees on any UIA's they issue.
I think BitShares should establish a relationship with them as among other things such a partnership provides bts with a physical gold:bitGold and bitFiat:Physical Gold market to tighten the peg and increases liquidity.
Yet more opportunities to tighten the peg of bitAssets.

Which met with positive response, @Joshua Scigala from vaultoro:

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Hi Guys,

Joshua Scigala here from Vaultoro

Thanks for reaching out. Jeff replied to the support tickets but I wanted to come here to discuss the legalities because technologically it's fine.

The advice that we have received is that tokenizing gold would throw us down a regulatory nightmare because we would then fall under regulations that cover financial instruments.

Has the bitshares community dealt with regulations around UIA's? 

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Later, after explainations in the post:
Thanks for the warm welcome guys and girls!

@xeroc Thanks for your detailed response.

I will have to run all this past our legal and regulatory specialists but it does look very cool.

@Permie Thanks for the info.

Why I think BitShares will succeed. Do competitors have all our features?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16467.0.html

TL;DR - I like BitShares because of the message of freedom, Optional regulatory compliance, Bitcoin exchanges issuing UIA to attract bts users, Development is funded by the blockchain and voted for by the shareholders, At least 101 distributed block producing witnessing nodes, Core development is funded by the blockchain and voted for by the shareholders, Workers are paid by contracts voted for by the shareholders, Delegates are elected officials that act as the human element of the DAC, Blockchain Human Resources, Marketers profit from referrals, All aspects of the DAC are subject to change by a shareholder vote. Hard forks by shareholder vote only, 1 second transaction confirmations, Fast scanning of and reconnection to the network.

This is a great post and hits on so many points.

I would say that success depends on more than just having the best technology, it depends upon having the best community and being easiest to use.

I think we are growing as a community and working on our weak spots.

Step by step BitShares Sales Pitch. (Pre 2.0)

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=17105.0

TL;DR: There is a market niche for a global unbounded organization that efficiently adapts and morphs to the needs of the market and the desires of it's members.
I believe BitShares is that organization.
The upper limit of this organization is bound only by the size of the global economy. The current main use for trading tokens of value are financial derivatives purchased by large institutions and well educated individuals who reside in geographical locations favoured by financially powerful nations who have capital to risk.
A system that can drop the barriers to entry and allow everyone in the world access to the global economy will rapidly expand the total value of the economy.
BitShares will not only rapidly grow to meet the existing market, it will rapidly grow the size of the market itself.
Currently this potential is valued at around $20M.

Effective way to delegate useful work while generating network transaction fees.

We all know that if BitShares becomes the industry standard, then Dan will ensure that these Larimers, DanCoins, or BPTS will definitely have value.  This is Dan's "Artist Coin" for Dan's fans.  This is Dan's personal sharedrop target when he is rewarded with monster crypto industry swag.

Look at Dan, he's building and monetizing his reputation using a smartchain tool.  Satoshi-math guarantees that the high market cap for BPTS means that many people trust him.  Anyone can monetize their reputation thanks to smartchain tech.

BitShares - monetizing your integrity since 2015

Will BPTS will be reimbursable for backstage VIP passes during his next Vegas keynote afterparty?  Just be the first person to send 1,000,000 BPTS to the following address, and we'll see you in the green room...

More foresight from Tuck Buck Erlich!

would vote
but i already did that weeks ago 

BTS was built on the idea that we could create a currency-like token that can make profits for owners instead of losses. As such, BTS self-identities as both a currency-like store of value and a profit-generating share. This dichotomy of purpose makes it hard for the external market to evaluate.

For a currency, constraints on supply are all-important as a store of value. For a share, all that matters is profitability and return, and the shares themselves can be far more mutable. Who is asking questions about how many shares Apple or Google will have in 10 years' time? It's only about profit and growth.

So what is BTS? I worry that trying to be both risks failure on both fronts. You limit dilution to look like a currency, and ultimately you can't compete against more agile businesses on funding and growth, and resulting profitability and dominance of the target space. You make changes to dilution, burn, and reserves to solve the business economics, and you lose any sense of a stable and secure currency.

I keep thinking that bitShares will ultimately need to offer multiple tokens built specifically to achieve different ends, even if we keep BTS as is.

This is my view too

If BitShares was trying to be a currency then I would be a bitcoin Maximalist.
Network effect, Gresham law and all those "bigger and older = better" economics laws are all relevant to currencies and I think would push BitShares out of the market if that was where it was trying to compete.

I believe the perfect currency and the perfect business platform cannot exist on the same chain.
Currency wants trustlessness and security, whilst business wants agility and contractual agreements.

You can't write a contract on gold (sound money), and you shouldn't store all your money in stocks (which are reliant on trust and contractual agreements between several parties.)
I'm not sure if this is a sound analogy - it's hard to find physical comparisons to blockchains.

BitLicense, obviously.

Quote from: DataSecurityNode on June 28, 2015, 07:25:01 pm

Chemical, biological, nuclear.. natural disasters.. I got it covered.

Now, if you just had regulatory disasters covered... 

I think the 2 main reasons many will argue for the existence of the state (non-anarchy) are the problems of property rights and auditing/information finding.
Crime investigations need evidence, property rights need proof of ownership and the public need access to information to make an informed value judgement.

Blockchains can provide proof of ownership for property rights, proof of existence for evidence and public access to information with free market and non-aggressive solutions.

Proof of ownership - Without the aid of a state by way of prediction markets and third party auditors, or by more traditional means with land registries moved to blockchains, as in Honduras. http://www.coindesk.com/factom-land-registry-deal-honduran-government/

Proof of existence - photographs of crime scenes, recorded and verified witness-statements and other verifiable information can be collected by competing third parties and hashed into a blockchain. Identity verification will also be useful and can be provided.

Access to information - via crowdfunding journalists and predication-market assets representing assets and liabilities held by free-market businesses.
In order for the public to decide whether or not they want to reward or punish (buy or not-buy) a particular product/business they need to have a fully formed picture of who/what it is they are funding.
Digital assets representing the pollution, water usage and other noteworthy but non-money assets can present this information to the public. With a blockchain, a government or cost-sink entity is not needed to provide this information as bts facilitates trade between competing free-market entities.
Prediction markets provide information whilst at the same time provide a profit opportunity to those most-useful to society. Those who provide the most accurate information in this case, but in a more general sense those who fulfill the needs of the market best. In a free-market, the highest profit potential exists with the needs most-desired by the market (the public).

Rothbard interprets the physical extent to which a homesteading act establishes ownership in terms of the relevant "technological unit", which is the minimal amount necessary for the practical use of the resource. He writes:

If A uses a certain amount of a resource, how much of that resource is to accrue to his ownership? Our answer is that he owns the technological unit of the resource. The size of that unit depends on the type of good or resource in question, and must be determined by judges, juries, or arbitrators who are expert in the particular resource or industry in question

BitShares can facilitate the production and transfer of these "technological units" across the internet without counterparty risk.

In much the same way as prediction markets, a blockchain crowd-sources many functions of a government so that problems can be solved by competing entities without the need for a fallible third-party.

This is what it means for BitShares to have the potential to facilitate a truly free market.
Bitcoin is a free market currency, and BitShares is a platform for free trade.

I really liked your article!
It's a good overview of a complex topic and will be useful to send to others for a quick understanding

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I hope it is purely considered positively, as I basically do this because I care, not because I feel I have to

Your involvement here is extremely appreciated!

I received my nanocard the other day and I can't wait to activate it once possible via your exchange and definitely use it once it implements bitassets..

I didn't mean to discourage posting! I was only asking as a matter of protocol

I am concerned with what appears to be a discussion descending into a strawman discussion with real world understand vs. General ideas of how distribution or decentralized can or should operate... I agree  that diversity is good and thus why I have planned for it.. but the paranoid undertones to where this is going is entering tinfoil hat space and to some looking on make it appear as though we are fighting an active threat of shutdown when real it is a strawman.

I don't know.. but how many bitcoin nodes were taken down by governments corporations or the illuminati?

It may very well be zero.

Governments are not the only entity with reason to decipher supposedly private transactions.
BitShares is designed for businesses, how many potential-businesses will be put off by the potential of corporate espionage?

I'm not sure if this is a strawman - I don't think such a threat was claimed to exist right now.
The success of bts depends on the decisions made now and in the future.
I don't think discussing the present and future security/privacy of Witnesses' and users of bts is unwarranted.
The fact is that we don't know what threats bitshares will face, if any.
Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.

I understand your aversion to descending into tinfoil hattery but I don't think anything has been said here that cannot be backed by evidence of some kind.
Almost everyone will object to being told that they are under control, but if you can't leave the country without a passport or start a business without permission then that is exactly what is happening.
Some will say such control is necessary, but that does not make it any less controlling.

Evidence of NSA spying just adds to that

What we have today is the physical (did you mean online?) equivalent of having a cop following you all the time, recording where you are, what you say, what you read, what you think, who do you talk to, how often you do, and about what.

Sounds scary. Because it is.
Doesn't make it untrue or over-the-top to say so