Guys, among all the bitching and moaning on this forum, I just wanted to share my Bitshares experience lately.
The Bitshares experience is so quick and easy that I find myself NOT using Bitcoin anymore. For example, I used to buy every Humble Bundle for Bitcoin and thought that it was easy and fast, but lately having to launch and sync that monstrosity (Bitcoin Core client) made me not want to do that. I don't trust any other wallets and syncing alone takes several hours.
Then suddenly I realized that I can spend BitUSD using
Shapeshift! It took like two minutes and I spent like 10.30 BitUSD for a $10 game.
Then today I wanted to buy some factoids (factom presale tokens). I registered on koinify and instead of launching and shuffling my BTC around (witch would again take half a day) I decided to try
Metaexchange. To my surprise it was even faster and easier than shapeshift! I made the transfer in the Bitshares client and BOOM the koinify page immediately says 'Congratulations, you've got yourself some factoids'.
Shuffling my assets around on the internal exchange has been a blast too. If BitBTC had any liquidity I'd happily convert most of my BTC to it.
I also just reactivated my Neteller account and the Net+ mastercard and loaded it with some BitUSD via shapeshift lens and after 7 days I will be able to take it out from any ATM for free! (not available in the US though). BitUSD really is like having an untouchable bank account in the cloud without having to worry about all the price nonsense. It's secure and accessible and you can spend it wherever Bitcoin is accepted. Pro poker players, dark market vendors, entrepreneurs in unfavorable jurisdictions, investors in unjust tax jurisdictions... Thinking how many people are DESPERATE for this product just makes my head explode.