I strongly support limiting the number of assets in the first chain to BitUSD, BitGLD, and BitBTC. Since it's a "test" chain, and we're testing things like "does this idea even work," it makes sense to limit the things that can go wrong - and more assets should lead to a higher chance of chaotic instability.

For the SIDS attack, N=14 makes sense (the exact number probably doesn't matter), but I'm leery about a hard-coded value for D: the problem is that we don't really know how many XTS holders will be participating in the market. D needs to be high enough to prevent attacks, but if it's too high, the market will never function.

It seems like the main issue in market manipulation attacks is simply that someone can come to the market, hit it with a big hammer (i.e., by buying large volumes to incite a short squeeze), and profit from the ensuing chaos. We don't need to (and can't really) make hammers illegal; we just need to soften the hammer blow.

A simple way to implement this in the market could be to limit the total volume of orders that can execute per block by a percentage of the total market depth.

For example, if the percentage is 10%: if there are only 1,000 XTS of orders outstanding in the market, and at a given moment 200 XTS worth of orders are overlapping (I mean they could result in valid trades), only execute 100 XTS of those orders. Then next block, (assuming for simplicity that there are no new orders placed), there will be 900 XTS of orders, and 90 of the remaining 100 overlapping orders will execute, and then on the 3rd block finally they will all execute.

The effect of this is that when the market is new and shallow, it should have similar stability characteristics to a bigger and deeper market, and it will gradually and gently allow the market to grow into its full size. When the market is big (100,000 XTS of orders outstanding), normal order volumes can execute without ever hitting the limit.

My guess is that 10% is way too high; something more like 1% could work.

This signifies to me that there will be many less Bitshares available on the market than expected when first released, which may drive the prices even higher.

I also predict that after news comes out that the bitshare snapshot has been taken, that dozens of new people who kept their PTS on exchanges will flood these forums demanding to find out how to get their bitshares.

Surely there is no solid solution to this, but perhaps we could try to message/contact the main exchanges we are listed on to ask them to post a notice to PTS holders to withdraw to their computer wallets???

I agree that there should be a conversation with the exchanges, but one of the difficulties is that the exchanges stand to profit hugely (if not myopically) from keeping their mouths shut and letting Feb 28 roll past with huge amounts of PTS in exchange wallets. Then, nobody can stop the exchanges from redeeming their customers' PTS for XTS and just pocketing them.

It might be possible to convince the exchanges that it will be disastrous PR not to let people redeem their own XTS; for my part, I was disgusted with Cryptsy when they "didn't participate" in the PTS-to-MemoryCoin redemption.

One of the most important parameters for long-term stability:

How much collateral is required to enter a short position (this number is hard-coded at 2x in Bitshares XT).

This one's obviously really important; if more collateral is required, the less likely it is that the system will collapse 2008-real-estate-market-style. On the other hand, if less collateral is required, it will be possible for more BitAssets to exist and this presumably should spur greater economic activity.

Ah, of course. I was imagining that the transaction that creates a BitUSD was somehow different from an ordinary short sell order. Thanks!

Here's a question I've been wondering about:

When the Bitshares XT market first launches, there won't really be a market price for XTS since there won't have been any market transactions. So what will determine the collateral needed to short USD (and create BitUSD)? Will there be some hard-coded "starter-price" that disappears after the first XTS-BitUSD transaction?

I'd like to personally thank China for the recent PTS price spike. 

I'm curious if any of our Chinese friends on here can shed some light on what kicked off the buying frenzy?

Just wonderful.