Considering where Bitcoin was when it was the same age as BitShares is now, we seem to be making pretty good progress.
Granted, Bitcoin had no competitors at that time, and the underlying technology was unfamiliar because it had been
proven to be
impossible for the preceding quarter-century, whereas the market that BitShares is wading into is dynamic and infested with piranhas, sharks, and snakes. Nonetheless, the pace is impressive, and much hinges on the next few months.
What am I excited about?
- Bitshares is so far ahead of the curve with regards to understanding the potential of and developing ducks in so many exciting areas.
- On the technical front it seems like Dan is a few moves ahead, anticipating problems other people aren't even thinking about yet and already implementing solutions to solve them.
- Bitshares X, the value proposition is just so clear vs. the existing status quo, this one DAC & its successors can completely change the face of finance. Woo hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I explain BitShares to people for the first time, they grasp BTS ME much more quickly than BTS X. However, some few have sworn mildly, when they finally got how BitAssets work.
"A BitUSD is like a Ziploc bag filled with
$1 worth of something like Bitcoin that you can spend from a wallet
in exchange for $1 worth of something else. If the value of the stuff in the Ziploc bag changes, this is a magic Ziploc bag that can add and subtract the crypto-stuff to keep the value within a narrow range." (
How this really is done is incidental.
That it can be done borders on magic.)
What am I worried about?
- Social consensus, third parties that haven't been working with Invictus honouring AGS/PTS - Personally I don't necessarily see that happening.
Social Consensus really does need to be explained over and over and over, as Stan keeps doing. Why give your 'coins' or 'shares' away to
random strangers, who might or might not even hold on to them, when you can distribute
some of them to a ready-made early-adopter market?
"B-but why should I g-give my coins away?!?"
"If they are mined, then you
are giving them away to
random strangers, who more likely than not are mine-&-dump speculators who quite possibly have no concern for your long-term success."
"Y-yeah, b-but why should I g-give my coins away?!?"
"You need someone to make a market in them. If you issue them and try to sell all of them into the market, how will market participants know what they are worth?"
"I... I don' knowww... It all sounds kind of fishy to me..."
That's about where we are now. I expect that things will be different in a few months, after some DACs have been released, and people can see how the process works.
- Dan heavy, if something happened to Dan, my investment would be worth a lot less. (But I guess that is the case with a lot of companies in the beginning.)
Having one individual serve as both Jobs and Wozniak is a concern.
On the other hand, Dan's assignment is finite. He is building a set of Legos that entrepreneurs should be able to cobble together in clever ways. There are only so many fundamental building blocks needed, before the BitShares vision can be decentralized.
We are still at the stage where Bitcoin was, before Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin alpha. If he had been hit by a train between the release of the White Paper and the release of the alpha wallet, we probably would not be having this conversation. Once it was released, Gavin and all the others were able to take over.
Bitcoin is one application. BitShares is the electron, neutron, and proton of a new industry.
If Dan can get these fundamental DACs released, the rest of us can use them to invent Financial Chemistry.
At the moment I'm seeing better and better explanations about how it works but the marketing seems to be missing the sales pitch, the part that will get new people interested and excited enough to find out more about how it works.
Until BTS ME and BTS X are released, slick videos and logos on magazine covers could serve primarily to raise expectations and frustration levels, if some of the comments on this forum are any guide.
What we really need is something that we can demo, and some very clever young men are working diligently on that.
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