It's been a while since I checked in on Bitshares and it's great to see so much progress. I see a few compromises have been made on the initial idea of Bitshares X (now called Bitshares, kudos for simplifying the mess of projects).
It's unfortunate that asset value tracking without an oracle was not feasible and a shame that data feeds seem to be a permanent fixture within the system. I'm left with doubts in terms of the reliability of a system that relies on <100 feeds from individuals. I can't imagine a billion bitUSD floating around tethered to a few feeds all averaging the same basket of bts exchange rates from a small number of crypto exchanges. It just doesn't seem reliable enough to scale.
I love the progress that has been made on the market rules within Bitshares. I don't see a 'black swan event' as likely, there is enough collateral sitting on the sidelines, the engine is responsive enough (and there is sufficient liquidity??).
Not being able to sell below the median price feed seems logical.
It's great to see shorts ranked by interest. Very clever. I'm not 100% sure how the whole interest thing works exactly. Interest is paid by the person shorting bitusd into a pool managed by the software. Is the interest paid in bitusd or bts? Surely bts? How is the interest pool then distributed to holders of bitusd? How does a holder of bitusd claim their interest?
Liquidity. I can certainly see a strong case for buy bitusd volume, no issues there. I struggle to see where sustained sell bitusd volume will come from. Shorting bitusd only makes sense given the assumption that bts will appreciate relative to bitusd, what happens when less people are making that assumption? How can we be sure that there will always be a liquid sell/short bitusd wall sitting there?
What's the deal with the 1 month term for shorts? Why such a high turnover? Does this just serve to discourage shorting? Surely you don't want this?
Sorry about being so critical, I'd just like to clear up some misunderstanding I may have about the tech. I'm considering putting my hot wallet spending bitcoin into bitusd, it will be great to have the stability (and interest) of bitusd between bitcoin purchases online. Shapeshift.io will make this really easy.