BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bytemaster on January 24, 2015, 11:38:41 pm

Title: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bytemaster on January 24, 2015, 11:38:41 pm
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/22/Use-Gold-and-Silver-with-BitShares-to-bypass-Fiat-Regulations/
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: lovejoy on January 25, 2015, 12:07:53 am
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/22/Use-Gold-and-Silver-with-BitShares-to-bypass-Fiat-Regulations/

 +∞%

I think you could hear a pin drop right now... 


This is profound...much to ponder.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: liondani on January 25, 2015, 12:23:57 am
 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: onceuponatime on January 25, 2015, 12:42:42 am
My heart sank when e-gold went out of business.

Now it rises again.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: werneo on January 25, 2015, 01:05:20 am
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: islandking on January 25, 2015, 01:06:35 am
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

The owner of egold.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: onceuponatime on January 25, 2015, 01:10:39 am
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

e-gold was founded by oncologist Douglas Jackson[5] and attorney Barry Downey in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: TurkeyLeg on January 25, 2015, 01:12:03 am
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/22/Use-Gold-and-Silver-with-BitShares-to-bypass-Fiat-Regulations/

 +5%
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: donkeypong on January 25, 2015, 01:14:44 am
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

e-gold was founded by oncologist Douglas Jackson[5] and attorney Barry Downey in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

He was a good guy. I had a little left in there and I didn't try to claim it, even though he spent years trying to track down all the holders after the Feds closed him down.

P.S. Great blog post. Lots to think about.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: werneo on January 25, 2015, 01:19:54 am
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

e-gold was founded by oncologist Douglas Jackson[5] and attorney Barry Downey in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

"He" comes out of nowhere.
The sentence should be corrected to read something like, "BitGold charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap."
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: mike623317 on January 25, 2015, 05:13:20 am

I think this is a GREAT article.
All our delegates should absolutely do this  in my opinion and then we should PROMOTE the hell out of our stance on bitGold & BitSilver.

I think BM just gave us another competitive advantage.

 +5% +5%
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: clayop on January 25, 2015, 05:29:43 am
Quote
If there existed $85 million dollars of BitGold within the BitShares ecosystem, then it would have a total collateral worth at least $255 million and would likely represent less than 10% of the BitShares supply (because not everyone would be willing to short) and because people would likely have an equal amount of value held in BitUSD, BitSilver, and BitCNY. In any event, we can conclude that if BitShares can gain the same adoption for BitGold that e-gold managed years ago then it would have a market cap of over $2.5 billion dollars and a price of $1 per BTS.

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: abit on January 25, 2015, 07:39:19 am
Good point. Which of our marketing team will do this (promotion to gold/silver business companies) ?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: matt608 on January 25, 2015, 09:50:11 am
 +5%

2 changes I would make:
1.  The main "Conclusion" paragraph is adding new points so is not a conclusion and is aimed at delegates, i.e. 'internal' communication.  I would remove it and post it in the forum, instead end with a call to action, such as "get started with bitGOLD today" linking to bitshares.org.  At the moment it throws people who were being sold on bitGOLD off the scent.

2.  First sentence in this case is an opportunity to quote your mission + strengthen personal branding, "As you know my goal is to find market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property for all."  I would start with that instead of "make government irrelevant".  That phrase "secure life liberty and property for all" is starting to become tied to you (at least in my mind), it's a good branding angle that is also very descriptive and gives a pleasant feeling of comprehension and agreement without being unnecessarily antagonistic against government.

Other than that, a valuable post!
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: graffenwalder on January 25, 2015, 10:01:21 am
Quote
BitShares delegates should heavily consider whether or not their price feeds are reflective of the true price of 1 oz of gold for immediate delivery and consider making adjustments to the spot price to account for the real world premiums that exist.

The same could be said for any other bitasset.

The thing we need now, is more traders and volume on BTS. Letting delegates run wild with what they think an asset should be worth. Should scare any trader away.

Edit: Let's say your next blogpost suggests that USD is on an artificial pump, should delegates be pricing BitUSD accordingly?

What happened to keeping it simple? I know this slogan was decades ago....
Really can't we just focus on getting more people on BTS and letting them trade?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bitmeat on January 25, 2015, 10:06:58 am
So now instead of USD -> BTC -> ALT, you suggest people do USD -> GOLD -> BTC -> ALT.

I don't see it happening for the average Joe. Perhaps for those who already own plenty of physical gold, it might work.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: triox on January 25, 2015, 10:38:47 am
My immediate takeaway from the article: buy BitGOLD now, make easy  +5% when delegates switch their feeds to physical delivery gold  8)
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: liondani on January 25, 2015, 01:06:02 pm
Quote
He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

e-gold was founded by oncologist Douglas Jackson[5] and attorney Barry Downey in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

He was a good guy. I had a little left in there and I didn't try to claim it, even though he spent years trying to track down all the holders after the Feds closed him down.

P.S. Great blog post. Lots to think about.

would it be a good idea to invite him to take a honorable delegate place?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Stan on January 25, 2015, 01:27:32 pm
So, as a simple place to start, a company could start out dealing only in 20 piece rolls of Silver Eagles priced precisely at 1:1 with BitSilver.

(http://www.hand-tools.com/images/brands/misc/2013-American-Silver-Eagle-1-oz-Coin-20-Pack.jpg)

I suppose the initial spread, including shipping and insurance, would have to start out a bit large but even  +5% seems like it would be competitive with wire transfers and two-step exchange fees.

So I'm thinking a simple 1:1 +1 strategy might be easy to market if the math adds up.

In other words, a fixed fee of one BitSilver and only deal in packs of 20.

Do you think that would be attractive considering the alternative on/off ramps?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Empirical1.1 on January 25, 2015, 01:32:13 pm
 +5% +5% Great blog.

I'm not sure of the merits of pricing in 1oz coins.

People expect to pay a premium the smaller the size of physical you want. So I would stick to the global market price per ounce & just charge a % on that.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange has a high delivery rate & go as low as 1kg bars I think.
Exchanges like them will take over the pricing mechanism in the event Comex and others default.

(Edit: Just saw above, yeah 1:1 +5% would be good, if it was possible, but whatever it is, is probably fine. I think people are more comfortable with the widely quoted price of silver per ounce. A new system with a new price system would be a hard sell I think.)
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Stan on January 25, 2015, 01:47:17 pm
+5% +5% Great blog.

I'm not sure of the merits of pricing in 1oz coins.

People expect to pay a premium the smaller the size of physical you want. So I would stick to the global market price per ounce & just charge a % on that.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange has a high delivery rate & go as low as 1kg bars I think.
Exchanges like them will take over the pricing mechanism in the event Comex and others default.

(Edit: Just saw above, yeah 1:1 +5% would be good, if it was possible, but whatever it is, is probably fine. I think people are more comfortable with the widely quoted price of silver per ounce. A new system with a new price system would be a hard sell I think.)

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: graffenwalder on January 25, 2015, 02:40:37 pm
It's a nice idea, but I think it makes more problems than it solves.
How are we supposed to get a reliable feed.
Shop a charges a fee of 10 usd
Shop b charges 30 usd.
Take the average?

And with that said, if I wanted to get a 100 USD bill here in Europe. I have to pay a fee too.
Should those be calculated in BitUSD?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: deprdoo on January 25, 2015, 03:01:11 pm
Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: fluxer555 on January 25, 2015, 03:15:29 pm
Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: sumantso on January 25, 2015, 03:15:53 pm
It's a nice idea, but I think it makes more problems than it solves.
How are we supposed to get a reliable feed.
Shop a charges a fee of 10 usd
Shop b charges 30 usd.
Take the average?

And with that said, if I wanted to get a 100 USD bill here in Europe. I have to pay a fee too.
Should those be calculated in BitUSD?

Yep, this is confusing. Let it be as it is.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Empirical1.1 on January 25, 2015, 03:20:46 pm
+5% +5% Great blog.

I'm not sure of the merits of pricing in 1oz coins.

People expect to pay a premium the smaller the size of physical you want. So I would stick to the global market price per ounce & just charge a % on that.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange has a high delivery rate & go as low as 1kg bars I think.
Exchanges like them will take over the pricing mechanism in the event Comex and others default.

(Edit: Just saw above, yeah 1:1 +5% would be good, if it was possible, but whatever it is, is probably fine. I think people are more comfortable with the widely quoted price of silver per ounce. A new system with a new price system would be a hard sell I think.)

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

I'm aware how manipulated the price is, I expect the paper price to ultimately decouple and our delegates will have to be on top of that transition, which will probably just involve switching price feeds to Asia and places like the SGE I mentioned.

Tracking the global average price of a 1oz physical coin independently is tough. The reason I'm interested though is that there's a great marketing angle here, I'm not sure anyone else does this. I'm pretty sure we'd have to have two markets though. BitSilver & BitSilverPhyzz1oz.

Also even if the price wasn't manipulated there's stil just a natural huge deviation between the price of silver and the price of a small 1oz coin.

Purchasing a 5kg Bar of silver would work out at about $20 per ounce but buying a solitary silver eagle might cost $25 an ounce. (So trying to price in 1oz is very deceptive and is more production cost related & would result in the overpricing of gold & silver.)

Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.

Yeah, maybe 1 sub-asset market that tried to maintain a generic BitGold & Silver 1oz phyzz price would be interesting.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Gentso1 on January 25, 2015, 04:36:15 pm
+5% +5% Great blog.

I'm not sure of the merits of pricing in 1oz coins.

People expect to pay a premium the smaller the size of physical you want. So I would stick to the global market price per ounce & just charge a % on that.

The Shanghai Gold Exchange has a high delivery rate & go as low as 1kg bars I think.
Exchanges like them will take over the pricing mechanism in the event Comex and others default.

(Edit: Just saw above, yeah 1:1 +5% would be good, if it was possible, but whatever it is, is probably fine. I think people are more comfortable with the widely quoted price of silver per ounce. A new system with a new price system would be a hard sell I think.)

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

The heart of the issue is a gateway. Fiat,gold, silver you could make a case for any gateway but we need one.

I like using e-gold as a example so how did they get started? Well simple really they used their own funds to purchase a large amount of gold(it doesn't say how much) and held that as a reserve. From their you had a physical gold storage to back your e-gold which could be redeemed at any time. Even with this in place it took them 2 years to gain exponential growth.

The other interesting thing they did was when you used the spend feature of egold. This spend function meant instead of shoppers seeing AUG 1gram for a product they would instead see the current USD amount. The receiver would of course still receive egold but from a shopping experience the buyer and seller could use terms they were all ready familiar with and know they were getting that dollar amount.

With the above in mind what would stop someone from buying 50-100k worth of a 1-10 gram bars and exchanging them directly for  bitGLD for a spread? If its such a good idea why don't a few stake holders throw their bts in the mix to the tune or 50K with the knowledge that it will make the rest of their shares more valuable. Amagi metals would be the place of choice. So you just convert bts to btc to gld and now you have your reserve. Pay a operator, storage cost and a third party to audit and its gateway made.

Something tells me I am missing something or it isn't quite this simple and their must be a reason no one will bite on this.

 

Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Stan on January 25, 2015, 06:51:33 pm

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

I'm aware how manipulated the price is, I expect the paper price to ultimately decouple and our delegates will have to be on top of that transition, which will probably just involve switching price feeds to Asia and places like the SGE I mentioned.

Tracking the global average price of a 1oz physical coin independently is tough. The reason I'm interested though is that there's a great marketing angle here, I'm not sure anyone else does this. I'm pretty sure we'd have to have two markets though. BitSilver & BitSilverPhyzz1oz.

Also even if the price wasn't manipulated there's stil just a natural huge deviation between the price of silver and the price of a small 1oz coin.

Purchasing a 5kg Bar of silver would work out at about $20 per ounce but buying a solitary silver eagle might cost $25 an ounce. (So trying to price in 1oz is very deceptive and is more production cost related & would result in the overpricing of gold & silver.)

Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.

Yeah, maybe 1 sub-asset market that tried to maintain a generic BitGold & Silver 1oz phyzz price would be interesting.

If I were going to try it (and I just might) I would want to pick the most commonly traded and most recognizable form of silver I could find.  There are about a half dozen good candidates, but to me the US Silver Eagle is as good as any.

So I like the idea of a sub-asset called BitSilverEagle.

It should be easy enough to establish the peg based on any five of the top ten dealers - selected because they have the same way of handling shipping and fees perhaps.

I would simply define the peg to be the average of a basket of coins from these dealers. This would be easy for delegates to compute and easy to audit by everyone.  No need to argue about what the other dealers are doing, the Big Five are already dynamically adjusting their prices to be competitive in the global market.

Then any dealer would simply shop around to get a better price than the average of the Big Five and let that be part of the dealer's added value profit.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Empirical1.1 on January 25, 2015, 08:28:31 pm

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

I'm aware how manipulated the price is, I expect the paper price to ultimately decouple and our delegates will have to be on top of that transition, which will probably just involve switching price feeds to Asia and places like the SGE I mentioned.

Tracking the global average price of a 1oz physical coin independently is tough. The reason I'm interested though is that there's a great marketing angle here, I'm not sure anyone else does this. I'm pretty sure we'd have to have two markets though. BitSilver & BitSilverPhyzz1oz.

Also even if the price wasn't manipulated there's stil just a natural huge deviation between the price of silver and the price of a small 1oz coin.

Purchasing a 5kg Bar of silver would work out at about $20 per ounce but buying a solitary silver eagle might cost $25 an ounce. (So trying to price in 1oz is very deceptive and is more production cost related & would result in the overpricing of gold & silver.)

Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.

Yeah, maybe 1 sub-asset market that tried to maintain a generic BitGold & Silver 1oz phyzz price would be interesting.

If I were going to try it (and I just might) I would want to pick the most commonly traded and most recognizable form of silver I could find.  There are about a half dozen good candidates, but to me the US Silver Eagle is as good as any.

So I like the idea of a sub-asset called BitSilverEagle.

It should be easy enough to establish the peg based on any five of the top ten dealers - selected because they have the same way of handling shipping and fees perhaps.

I would simply define the peg to be the average of a basket of coins from these dealers. This would be easy for delegates to compute and easy to audit by everyone.  No need to argue about what the other dealers are doing, the Big Five are already dynamically adjusting their prices to be competitive in the global market.

Then any dealer would simply shop around to get a better price than the average of the Big Five and let that be part of the dealer's added value profit.

Sounds good.

Would you use the price they charge for a single oz or the price they charge when you buy 20+?

The only other thing that comes to mind, which is probably a non issue but the US mint occasionally runs out of silver. So BitSilverEagle might be more affected by the US mint than a generic 1oz silver BitAsset.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: deprdoo on January 25, 2015, 08:37:01 pm

Sounds good.

Would you use the price they charge for a single oz or the price they charge when you buy 20+?

The only other thing that comes to mind, which is probably a non issue but the US mint occasionally runs out of silver. So BitSilverEagle might be more affected by the US mint than a generic 1oz silver BitAsset.

My limited experience with buying silver maples which can also be in short supply has been that shipping was delayed, but price not affected.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Thom on January 25, 2015, 11:24:07 pm

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

I'm aware how manipulated the price is, I expect the paper price to ultimately decouple and our delegates will have to be on top of that transition, which will probably just involve switching price feeds to Asia and places like the SGE I mentioned.

Tracking the global average price of a 1oz physical coin independently is tough. The reason I'm interested though is that there's a great marketing angle here, I'm not sure anyone else does this. I'm pretty sure we'd have to have two markets though. BitSilver & BitSilverPhyzz1oz.

Also even if the price wasn't manipulated there's stil just a natural huge deviation between the price of silver and the price of a small 1oz coin.

Purchasing a 5kg Bar of silver would work out at about $20 per ounce but buying a solitary silver eagle might cost $25 an ounce. (So trying to price in 1oz is very deceptive and is more production cost related & would result in the overpricing of gold & silver.)

Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.

Yeah, maybe 1 sub-asset market that tried to maintain a generic BitGold & Silver 1oz phyzz price would be interesting.

If I were going to try it (and I just might) I would want to pick the most commonly traded and most recognizable form of silver I could find.  There are about a half dozen good candidates, but to me the US Silver Eagle is as good as any.

So I like the idea of a sub-asset called BitSilverEagle.

It should be easy enough to establish the peg based on any five of the top ten dealers - selected because they have the same way of handling shipping and fees perhaps.

I would simply define the peg to be the average of a basket of coins from these dealers. This would be easy for delegates to compute and easy to audit by everyone.  No need to argue about what the other dealers are doing, the Big Five are already dynamically adjusting their prices to be competitive in the global market.

Then any dealer would simply shop around to get a better price than the average of the Big Five and let that be part of the dealer's added value profit.

One thing you don't seem to be taking into account here Stan is that dealers in the existing market base their prices on the manipulated spot price. Until an alternative to that exists you could just as easily base feeds on the spot and take the dealer variable commission out of the equation.

Once trade volume in the BitSilver / BitGold  gets high enough let the blockchain define the average price. It's hard to determine the real "free market"  price with all the influences / manipulations going on. It may not be possible to determine the real market price for some time, but the closest we could come is observing trades on the blockchain. Maybe some sort of rolling averages.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: Empirical1.1 on January 25, 2015, 11:31:57 pm

Unfortunately that widely quoted price is highly manipulated.  For every ounce of silver there are nearly 100 ounces of paper silver driving the supply/demand equilibrium way down.  We need to decouple from that in order to be of any interest to silver bugs.

I'm aware how manipulated the price is, I expect the paper price to ultimately decouple and our delegates will have to be on top of that transition, which will probably just involve switching price feeds to Asia and places like the SGE I mentioned.

Tracking the global average price of a 1oz physical coin independently is tough. The reason I'm interested though is that there's a great marketing angle here, I'm not sure anyone else does this. I'm pretty sure we'd have to have two markets though. BitSilver & BitSilverPhyzz1oz.

Also even if the price wasn't manipulated there's stil just a natural huge deviation between the price of silver and the price of a small 1oz coin.

Purchasing a 5kg Bar of silver would work out at about $20 per ounce but buying a solitary silver eagle might cost $25 an ounce. (So trying to price in 1oz is very deceptive and is more production cost related & would result in the overpricing of gold & silver.)

Why not bitGold at spot, and then have other assets like bitGoldMaple and bitGoldKruger, etc? They all have different values. It costs a lot more to mint 10 1 ounce mapleleafs than it costs to make a generic 10 oz bar.

I think this is a great idea. They could be 'SubAssets' which are based on the price feed, but trade at a percentage offset. The offset would need to be set by Delegates in order for this to work correctly.

Delegates could cooperate and include SubAssets in their price feeds, and as long as 51 delegates have SubAssets of the same name, they qualify to be included in the marketplace.

This could account for the different mints, but also may be a path to decoupling paper/physical while still serving both markets.

Yeah, maybe 1 sub-asset market that tried to maintain a generic BitGold & Silver 1oz phyzz price would be interesting.

If I were going to try it (and I just might) I would want to pick the most commonly traded and most recognizable form of silver I could find.  There are about a half dozen good candidates, but to me the US Silver Eagle is as good as any.

So I like the idea of a sub-asset called BitSilverEagle.

It should be easy enough to establish the peg based on any five of the top ten dealers - selected because they have the same way of handling shipping and fees perhaps.

I would simply define the peg to be the average of a basket of coins from these dealers. This would be easy for delegates to compute and easy to audit by everyone.  No need to argue about what the other dealers are doing, the Big Five are already dynamically adjusting their prices to be competitive in the global market.

Then any dealer would simply shop around to get a better price than the average of the Big Five and let that be part of the dealer's added value profit.

One thing you don't seem to be taking into account here Stan is that dealers in the existing market base their prices on the manipulated spot price. Until an alternative to that exists you could just as easily base feeds on the spot and take the dealer variable commission out of the equation.

Once trade volume in the BitSilver / BitGold  gets high enough let the blockchain define the average price. It's hard to determine the real "free market"  price with all the influences / manipulations going on. It may not be possible to determine the real market price for some time, but the closest we could come is observing trades on the blockchain. Maybe some sort of rolling averages.

No, I see there is some value in having a BitSilverEagle, even though dealers base their price off the manipulated silver price, in times of crisis you see a big divergence, a higher premium over spot for physical, so many people may well rather have a BitAsset that tracks dealer prices.

(http://b-i.forbesimg.com/greatspeculations/files/2013/05/DR_Pricey_0524133.png)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/05/28/somebody-is-messing-with-the-gold-market/
Title: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: xiahui135 on January 26, 2015, 05:39:36 am
I don't think average people need to bypass fiat. They need fiat.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bytemaster on January 26, 2015, 09:39:19 pm
I don't think average people need to bypass fiat. They need fiat.

It is easy enough to convert from gold to fiat or fiat to gold for cash at a local coin dealer.   It is hard to find exchanges for crypto.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: liondani on January 26, 2015, 10:44:27 pm
I don't think average people need to bypass fiat. They need fiat.

It is easy enough to convert from gold to fiat or fiat to gold for cash at a local coin dealer.  It is hard to find exchanges for crypto.

and it can get harder in the blink of an eye...
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: donkeypong on January 27, 2015, 07:01:50 am
It's all about building confidence in the crypto and that means having plenty of on/off-ramps and gateways. Essentially, this is a precious metals gateway. It would really only make money on volume when the delivery/warehousing/insurance, etc. on the physical orders is spread out. Margins would be thin as anything, so maybe start a non-profit corporation with a mission to educate people about money and finance?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: LRENZ on January 27, 2015, 11:01:09 pm
I love this idea, go talk to Amagi Metals they might just be up for this!
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: nz on January 28, 2015, 12:05:19 am
I love this idea, go talk to Amagi Metals they might just be up for this!

good idea  +5%
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bitmarley on January 29, 2015, 12:29:16 pm
My bitshares client is showing close to zero supply atm for bitgold and bitsilver.
Is this an error or is there actually no supply atm!?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: graffenwalder on January 29, 2015, 12:50:15 pm
My bitshares client is showing close to zero supply atm for bitgold and bitsilver.
Is this an error or is there actually no supply atm!?
7.42 gold
133.51 silver
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bitmarley on January 29, 2015, 11:39:41 pm
Exactly this is so tiny! Is this a matter of patience for bitshares to grow? But there are a lot of bidders and almost no shorters. Will putting bids in above the price feed incentive shorters enough? This is happening with bitSILVER but is it working? Historical daily volumes are fairly small. 

Is there a problem here?  Do we need some other mechanisms to incentive the market?
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bytemaster on January 29, 2015, 11:43:38 pm
Exactly this is so tiny! Is this a matter of patience for bitshares to grow? But there are a lot of bidders and almost no shorters. Will putting bids in above the price feed incentive shorters enough? This is happening with bitSILVER but is it working? Historical daily volumes are fairly small. 

Is there a problem here?  Do we need some other mechanisms to incentive the market?

I think we need someone willing to "make the market" here to boot strap it.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: bitmarley on January 30, 2015, 12:55:32 am
I think we need someone willing to "make the market" here to boot strap it.

Ok so the answer is patience. Perhaps the early adopters of bitshares have similar economic outlooks and so atm most like me want to go long gold and silver.


Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: graffenwalder on January 30, 2015, 11:36:53 am
I think we need someone willing to "make the market" here to boot strap it.

Ok so the answer is patience. Perhaps the early adopters of bitshares have similar economic outlooks and so atm most like me want to go long gold and silver.
Bitsilver supply just went up a bit, from 133.51 yesterday to 221.48 today.
Title: Re: Use Gold and Silver with BitShares to bypass Fiat Regulations [BLOGPOST]
Post by: randy-waterhouse on January 31, 2015, 06:53:40 am
Seems possible.