aboutBTS -- updates about BitShares #2I modified the format, placed links in the references section in the end to improve readability.
#8 Step by step forum updates happening bitsapphire announced he is going to gradually update forum without interference of usage patterns of anyone.
#9 The Benefits of a Contract Free Societybytemaster said in his opinion ' contracts as we know them are the Achilles heal of attempts to form a libertarian society', and he listed several reasons:
- As contracts requires 'lawful object or purpose', you can not make a contract that is about anything that against the law.
- Also contracts are dependent on enforcement, and a contract without enforcement is 'nothing more than documentation of an agreement among honorable men'.
- On the other hand, 'There are many laws on the book governing contracts and what kind of contracts you may or may not enter into. You cannot sell debt or stock to the public because those contracts are regulated contracts and require SEC approval'.
And he proposed 'blockchain technology' as a better alternative:
- A distributed ledger is designed to track property rights in clear unambiguous terms. Rothbard’s definition of a contract could be entirely encoded into a block chain because “all legitimate contracts implies theft of property”. It is fairly easy to ascertain whether or not property has been transferred and who owes what when you have a public ledger.
- With smart contracts it is also fairly easy to automate the change of ownership in such a way that no one can “enforce” a contract and no one can “fail to enforce” the contract.
- BitShares is the foundation of a non-violent consensus on property rights that replaces the use of force to physically reallocate property.
Finally, in a contract-free society, 'no one is compelled to act. There is no need to force anyone into court. There is no need for government'.
#10 Stop the Crowd Sales! Long live Crowd Funding!bytemaster used BitShares, which 'had one of the largest crowd funding campaigns and has had an opportunity to learn a lot from it', as an example to explain why he doesn't recommend doing it. It is because 'when a project attempts to raise money from the public through a straight sale of tokens it invites all kinds of regulatory uncertainty that is difficult to measure':
- Tax issue: 'The primary issue with crowd sales is whether or not you create a security and how should the money received be taxed. Almost the only way to accept funds without owing taxes on them is if you are claiming to sell equity in a startup and treat the funds as a capital infusion.'...' If you sell your tokens as digital property then chances are you owe income tax and/or sales tax. To avoid the income tax you need to make sure your expenses occur in the same tax-year as your crowd sale.'...'you have to sell your BTC immediately upon receipt of your crowd sale so that you can make sure you have enough money to pay taxes.'
- Security issuance issues: 'If you don’t sell your tokens as digital property but as shares in your business then you could potentially fall under SEC guidelines. '...'Even if you attempt to sell your tokens as a pre-sale, a pre-sale becomes a liability and a debt.'...'You will only create a demand for transparency and a tendency toward public criticism of how you use the funds.'
- truse issues: 'A crowd sale, especially a large one, places a lot of trust on those that receive the funds. This is a massive target for government confiscation and or theft.'
-public perception issues: 'There have been hundreds of crowd sales and the default perception is that they are scams until proven otherwise.'...'In some cases the PR issues can be enough to kill a project or at least outweigh the value of the funds received. Nxt suffered from this issue to some extent.'
- liquidity issues: 'People that participate in crowd sales have learned the hard way that their “investment” is not liquid'...'This lack of liquidity hinders your ability to raise funds and creates unnecessary stress if your project is delayed.'
Finally he proposed how BitShares currently works as a beter alternative:
- 'Launch a proto-chain based on BitShares. Every BitShares network is self funding through 101 delegate positions that receive income just like Bitcoin miners. This income can be scaled as a percentage of the total issuance depending upon the project and allow an arbitrary amount of incentives to fund development.'
- 'Stop the crowd sales, pre-sales, IPOs, ICOs, and instead launch a product directly and fund upgrades to the product through the delegate pay.'
#11 follow up of #2RenaudGagne asked that whether he could 'approach
https://btcjam.com and others like that with BITUSD? ' As he mentioned in the end, 'btcjam and the like are probably hurting from bitcoin price volatility. BITUSD could solve their problem and benefit BitShares by growing the market cap.'
Mysto said that he is curious about how btcjam ' are able to issue loans everywhere like that (legally)'
#12 Clarification on terms: "official", "unofficial", and "3rd party"alphabar said because of the merger/dissolution, the meaning of 'official/unofficial', and '3rd party' should be clarified. He proposed that 'official' is about 'anything supported by a shareholder consensus of BTS', anything other than BTS should be tagged as "3rd party" (PTS, Sparkle, Music, etc.) and anything BTS-related that has not gained consensus is "unofficial".'
#13 the countdown for Crackix.com is over: #14 Follow up of #5charleshokinson said he is 'creating some bitshares content for my udemy course update'.
bitmarket said his book 'BitShares 101' suffices this purpose and he could convert it into video easily.
#15 We've had a USD onramp this whole time.toast said there is already USD on ramp at the CCEDK exchange, just that it only has tiny BTS trading volume:
However, they did change btsx to bts while being told by
Gentso1. Furthermore, they had plan to support BitUSD:
#16 How to lure top devs into being hired by BitSharesfluxer555 asked how can we attract top developers to work with BitShares.
gamey said the average pay of developers in US is '95k which is around 8k a month. AVERAGE.'
luckybit mentioned that 'Chinese people put most of the money into Bitshares and once their marketing side figures out how the delegate system works there are plenty of C++ programmers in China willing to work for that pay. Honestly one of the good things about working for a blockchain is that you can move around and your job follows you.' He also said that 'The pay of developers or of any employee of a startup is supposed to be tied to the success or failure of the business. It's supposed to be a risk working for a startup vs working for an established company but also a chance to get rich.'...' These developers are rewarded when the share price rises and they become rich because the success of the business is what makes them rich.'...'If you pay developers 10k a month they will have no incentive to care about the business and you'll have developers who might not care as much about the vision as they care about making a quick buck.'
In addition,
toast said 'there's not a chance in hell we will have scripting before ethereum is launched and popular among devs with a good toolset. We need infrastructure devs more than blockchain devs. The make-or-break app (bitassets) is already done.'
#17 Mobile Wallet - Testers neededElMato said 'in the beta version you will be able to register your name '. Also, there is testing wallet for iOS available. ' If you want to help us test PM you device UUID or go to
https://github.com/latincoin-com/bitwallet/tree/dargon-dev-iosand build it yourself!'
#18 Monero CryptoNote Ring Signatures vs TITANislandkin asked if anyone could compare monero cryptonote ring signatures and TITAN.
toast answered that 'CN provide an additional layer of anonymity. TITAN is just stealth addresses. Neither are "truly anonymous" and network analysis is still a huge problem for both.'
References#8
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12648#9
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12696.0#10
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2014/12/26/Stop-the-Crowd-Sales-Long-Live-Crowd-Funding/#11
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12603.0;all#12
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12689.0#13
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12555.0;all#14
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12523.0#15
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12677.0#16
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12645.0;all#17
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11902.105#18
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12675.0