BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: cube on November 16, 2015, 04:35:51 am
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I am in support of all business strategies that can promote the growth of Bitshares and our community.
A main Bitshares product is a stable crypto-currency called bitUSD (together with bitCNY, bitEur etc). Unfortunately, it is not working now because of low liquidity. Some people have attributed the low liquidity to the lack of trading bots which could be because of the lack of API, while others said the traders are being driven away due to high trading and order fees. I believe both are contributing factors. I think lowering trading and order fees is a good start to build up liquidity. And if our traders, who are our existing customers, are suffering from the high fees, we need to work on relieving their pain area. We not only want to keep our existing customers (traders) happy but to grow the pie. Our trading and order fees have to be competitively priced against the well established centralised exchanges. And until such time that our liquidity overtakes them, we need to keep this competitive pricing.
With regards to transfer fees, it is a more complicated matter to consider. Bitshares is a late comer to the industry as compared with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a competitor of ours in term of the merchant/payment market. It is wider known and it has a large user base while Bitshares is almost 'non-existence' comparatively. However, Bitshares has a new business model which is beyond what Bitcoin can offer. It created a well-defined referrer system to attract and reward marketers and referrers. The referrer programme is our competitive advantage.
At this early stage of establishing a foothold, Bitshares needs and is building a group of marketers and referrers to reach out to the untapped markets. We have a few referrers now, with fav and jakub better known but I believe there are many others building up their referrer plans and executing them behind the scene. These referrers have already put in lots of effort and time to build up their referrer businesses. In time to come, they will bring in new users and transactions to the bts2 network. There is a potential that this strategy can bring in much more businesses than our competitors. So for now, I like to see the transfer fee stay - as a way to pay for our marketers' and referrers' time and effort, and to incentivise them to bootstrap a user-base that we need desperately.
Please share your thoughts and comments.
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Well said +5% Agreed with cube.
1. I think we should lower the "order creation fee" as low as possible. (I support 1 BTS + percentage fee)
2. I don't want to divide the community into two. It's very important to make a consensus.
3. For transfer fee, I would like to say keep the transfer fee at 40 BTS or slightly decrease it to 30 BTS and keep it. If marketers perform greatly, and as a result our market cap grows up, they can get more fees in terms of fiat. Do not increase the fee when BTS price decreases.
4. If BTS price goes up and the fee exceeds $0.2, than we can discuss about lowering transfer fee.
5. I thank to the Chinese community for supporting us. I will try my best to have reasonable level of fees. Please give trust for us.
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I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.
In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.
If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for. The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard. Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say. Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion. Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.
Just my 40 BTS on the matter. ;)
edit: +5% to both cube and clayop above
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I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.
In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.
If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for. The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard. Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say. Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion. Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.
Just my 40 bts on the matter. ;)
Not every person in this community is English speaking one. So there is a silent voice, which only represented in voting.
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I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.
In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.
If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for. The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard. Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say. Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion. Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.
Just my 40 bts on the matter. ;)
Not every person in this community is English speaking one. So there is a silent voice, which only represented in voting.
True.
A fact which is not lost on me, and it is good for everyone to be reminded of.
Also a reason why sooner or later this community needs to employ translator / communicators to facilitate a more in depth conversation across all languages, between all shareholders. We need some sort of UN like format where all speakers are translated live to the native language of all those in attendance. This is a tangent though.. We can revisit this in a new thread perhaps.
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I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.
In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.
If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event. https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for. The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard. Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say. Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion. Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.
Just my 40 BTS on the matter. ;)
edit: +5% to both cube and clayop above
agree, we need to make the committee infrastructure effective to decide change problem.
if the businesses that benefit from referral program and high fees are so important, please select a representative(maybe Ronny Boesing?) to become an active committee member, and then the topic can be discussed and finally voted under the committee infrastructure. it can be a real town hall.
surely we need committee members that represent different parties, we need the final decision made by committee make a good balance and be accepted by all.
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I support the comments from cube/clayop/bitscape/bitcrab above, but I have more familiarity with the payments side of the business so it would be great to get some input from CCEDK and other exchange businesses regarding trading fees. Keep in mind an exchange business should be able to credit/refund any of the 80% referral fees it generates as a promotion or early on to gain more liquidity. If I were to create an exchange business (and I've thought about it) that's what I would do. Refund everything early on. I was expecting to see a few more exchange businesses pop up sooner, but I suspect there will be more eventually.
We should be more active with committee members and have town hall meetings with translators. I'd be happy to be a committee member to represent the payment perspective and I'm confident I can give some good input on trading parameters as well. I agree with everyone liquidity is paramount.
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I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.
I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.
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I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.
I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.
Great!
What do you think about my idea #3?
Keep trading fee 40 BTS or little decrease to 30~35 BTS, and let the fee (in terms of fiat) determined by BTS price. If marketers perform well and hence BTS price increases, they will get more referral fees in terms of fiat.
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I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.
I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.
Great!
What do you think about my idea #3?
Keep trading fee 40 BTS or little decrease to 30~35 BTS, and let the fee (in terms of fiat) determined by BTS price. If marketers perform well and hence BTS price increases, they will get more referral fees in terms of fiat.
I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.
My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.
I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.
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+5% .. I really like the healthy discussion about the fees ... It seems people now understand the difficulty ... It's multidimentional opimization :)
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I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.
My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.
I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.
Thanks for your understanding.
Since Chinese community showed a big support and eagerness for lowering transfer fee, I think we need to response to them at some degree. So I would suggest 30 BTS ($0.105) as the transfer fee.
It is very hard to say to you to give up 25% of income, because the number can be substantial for your business. But if we both give up some of our position, we can reconcile the both sides.
As a compensation, I think keep the LTM at $100 (30,000 BTS at this moment) can be one of the solution. So fix the transfer fee to 30 BTS but make LTM fee flexible to BTS price all the time.
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I'd like to keep bitUSD transfer fees the same. Can we make transfer fees for bitCNY lower and keep bitEuro and BitUSD the same? I'm sure it's hard to implement regional pricing, but doing it by currency type might be good for now.
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I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.
My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.
I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.
Thanks for your understanding.
Since Chinese community showed a big support and eagerness for lowering transfer fee, I think we need to response to them at some degree. So I would suggest 30 BTS ($0.105) as the transfer fee.
It is very hard to say to you to give up 25% of income, because the number can be substantial for your business. But if we both give up some of our position, we can reconcile the both sides.
As a compensation, I think keep the LTM at $100 (30,000 BTS at this moment) can be one of the solution. So fix the transfer fee to 30 BTS but make LTM fee flexible to BTS price all the time.
China community is in shrink, I just have a long talk with yunbi people, they told me they do not plan to pay more source in BTS, because of the high fee and the low price, and less active community.
decreasing the transfer fee from 40 BTS to 30 BTS is not a satisfactory solution, but I understand that compromise is needed now, a small step at least can let the people know their voice are not ignored. and the committee infrastructure really make sense.
but recently the price of BTS rose up a little, I don't think it's reasonable to increase the LTM fee now.
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I'd like to keep bitUSD transfer fees the same. Can we make transfer fees for bitCNY lower and keep bitEuro and BitUSD the same? I'm sure it's hard to implement regional pricing, but doing it by currency type might be good for now.
+5%
That looks like a good idea.
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To offer you a bit of the referral business perspective.
The biggest operating cost is marketing and advertising. Initially I'll have very low income from referral fees but huge expenses for marketing.
And I assume it will take several months or even a year before I have a chance to see a balance between those two cash-flows.
So businesses like mine are going to invest heavily in promoting BitShares and they cannot do it without some kind of guarantee about the stability of their business model.
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I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.
I am glad to be of help in bridging the two groups - markerters/referers and traders/trading businesses, who are both passionately supporting bitshares.
To offer you a bit of the referral business perspective.
The biggest operating cost is marketing and advertising. Initially I'll have very low income from referral fees but huge expenses for marketing.
And I assume it will take several months or even a year before I have a chance to see a balance between those two cash-flows.
So businesses like mine are going to invest heavily in promoting BitShares and they cannot do it without some kind of guarantee about the stability of their business model.
Thanks for sharing an insight into your working as a referrer. This goes a long way in helping others understand your business and the difficulties that you face.
And you are absolutely right. We need a stable good business model for which all our business partners can depend on - without which none of them can flourish.
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To offer you a bit of the referral business perspective.
The biggest operating cost is marketing and advertising. Initially I'll have very low income from referral fees but huge expenses for marketing.
And I assume it will take several months or even a year before I have a chance to see a balance between those two cash-flows.
So businesses like mine are going to invest heavily in promoting BitShares and they cannot do it without some kind of guarantee about the stability of their business model.
Thanks for sharing your opinion and plan.
BitShares always have been increasing fees for now. From 0.5 BTS to 20 BTS, to 40 BTS. And now we need to increase the fee to 60 BTS again. IMHO, we need to show to market that we can go to another direction. Also, Chinese members really want to their voice to be heard.
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Regarding transfer fee...
Some think that the fee should be high enough to sustain referral system.
Some other think that the current fee is too high so we need to decrease the fee.
Can we make an agreement in between? I suggested 30 BTS because it decrease the fee somewhat significantly and is still high.
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Regarding transfer fee...
Some think that the fee should be high enough to sustain referral system.
Some other think that the current fee is too high so we need to decrease the fee.
Can we make an agreement in between? I suggested 30 BTS because it decrease the fee somewhat significantly and is still high.
I believe our problem stems from the idea that fees are considered in USD and BTS. In BTS terms 60 is high for anyone bullish on the token. In USD terms it's really godamn cheap. I'm okay with a compromise but would prefer to always try to price the fee in USD. That's what SmartCoins are all about after all.
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honestly i dont do alot of trading on the bts platform, mostly just transfering (and api calls there in)
i think the most important fees are to reduce lifetime account costs, and reduce the fee for free accounts to encourage development on the platform
it would be awesome to see a 5-10 bts fee for transfers
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[...] and reduce the fee for free accounts to encourage development on the platform
For this purpose we should have the demo/test network where users and developers can try whatever they want for free. It would propably lower the pressure to lower the fees so I'd put it in high priority.
Does anybody know when it will be up and running?
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Let's imagine Mr. X is thinking to create a BitShares project and his future incomes will be coming from the referral fees.
He think about it, plan everything and when he is finally ready to start ... he sees that (after only one month) the fees are decreased by 25% ...
What do you think Mr. X will do ? Keep going on with his project ? NO ! That's too risky ! Maybe fees will decrease again and again and when he would have his project running, he would win anything. That's too much of a risk, why would he take it ?
Lower from 40 to 30 bts changes nothing for the perception of the fee price. On the other hand, it would have a disastrous effect on the incentive to build projects on BitShares.
One person who decide to wait or abandon his project is a lot of new potentials users lost !
I know with my team (BitShares French ConneXion) we are waiting to see what is going to happen before to start reaching people.
Let's think about it. If we had started with 50 bts / Tx we would be having these conversations about lowering it to 40. If we had starred with 30 bts / Tx we would be having these conversations about lowering it to 20. This is not a problem until we can prove its actually one.
If BTS would be valued at 2$ each, would a transaction fee of 0.045 bts be really different of a 0.06 one ???
The effect on changing it, IMHO, is 5% happy people and 95% bad stuff for BitShares future. Not because of the sum of bts paid for a Tx but because of the perception of BitShares as an unstable ground to build on.
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And those who want lowering transfer fees - how many times has this happened to you:
You present the BitShares GUI to someone new (who has never heard of BitShares before).
Under your supervision this person creates a new account and you send her/him some BTS/USD/CNY to start with.
First you show them how quickly and easy it is to send payments back and forth. And how easy it is to find somebody else's account and add it to the dashboard.
Then you show them the explorer page, the witnesses, briefly explain the voting concept, and can even show them the trading page.
Finally, if there is enough interest, you show them how to "create" new USD or CNY out of their BTS.
And at the end of the demo, this person says: "It's pretty cool and quite amazing. But you know what? The transfer fees are way too expensive to me. So it's cool but sorry, I can't afford it."
Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it?
I've presented our GUI to several people and it generallay comes down to these two cases:
- they're not interested because it's a concept that is too strange for them ("Why would I need this?")
- they are very impressed and raise a lot of issues (e.g. "How come everybody see my account?") but they never complain about the fees (and I guess it's because they see value in the product).
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And those who want lowering transfer fees - how many times has this happened to you:
You present the BitShares GUI to someone new (who has never heard of BitShares before).
Under your supervision this person creates a new account and you send her/him some BTS/USD/CNY to start with.
First you show them how quickly and easy it is to send payments back and forth. And how easy it is to find somebody else's account and add it to the dashboard.
Then you show them the explorer page, the witnesses, briefly explain the voting concept, and can even show them the trading page.
Finally, if there is enough interest, you show them how to "create" new USD or CNY out of their BTS.
And at the end of the demo, this person says: "It's pretty cool and quite amazing. But you know what? The transfer fees are way too expensive to me. So it's cool but sorry, I can't afford it."
Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it?
I've presented our GUI to several people and it generallay comes down to these two cases:
- they're not interested because it's a concept that is too strange for them ("Why would I need this?")
- they are very impressed and raise a lot of issues (e.g. "How come everybody see my account?") but never ever complain about the fees (and I guess it's because they see value in the product).
I would think it depends on who you are talking to. If you are talking to an average joe who doesn't really have any need for BitShares (at this point) vs talking to a crypto/trader person. The latter may be interested in the fees. First few times you transfer funds to another account, you will think about it...not to mention trading fees.
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And those who want lowering transfer fees - how many times has this happened to you:
You present the BitShares GUI to someone new (who has never heard of BitShares before).
Under your supervision this person creates a new account and you send her/him some BTS/USD/CNY to start with.
First you show them how quickly and easy it is to send payments back and forth. And how easy it is to find somebody else's account and add it to the dashboard.
Then you show them the explorer page, the witnesses, briefly explain the voting concept, and can even show them the trading page.
Finally, if there is enough interest, you show them how to "create" new USD or CNY out of their BTS.
And at the end of the demo, this person says: "It's pretty cool and quite amazing. But you know what? The transfer fees are way too expensive to me. So it's cool but sorry, I can't afford it."
Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it?
I've presented our GUI to several people and it generallay comes down to these two cases:
- they're not interested because it's a concept that is too strange for them ("Why would I need this?")
- they are very impressed and raise a lot of issues (e.g. "How come everybody see my account?") but they never complain about the fees (and I guess it's because they see value in the product).
I made this very same introduction of the wallet to a friend but unfortunately he won't use it.
He thinks that's an amazing piece of technology but the fees are to high, if only it was 0.09€ instead of 0.12 ...
Lol :P :P :P
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My 2 BTS.
I sincerely believe that our main target market and where we can make great stride is in the exchange businesses.
I do not have enough knowledge in that kind of business to know what is the correct fee structure.
If ccedk or other exchanges came forward and told us how they would set the fees in their "ideal world", it could give us insights on this debate. I will support any fee structure that is maximized to attract exchanges.
Exchanges know better what traders want.
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If you are talking to an average joe who doesn't really have any need for BitShares (at this point) vs talking to a crypto/trader person.
That's why we need targeting. I don't want to waste my time on average joe.
The thing is, BitShares is not for "average joe". Get used to it. It will be massive but it does not mean "everybody" using it.
If we manage to acquire just 3% of the global population is will be a massive success and we'll all be rich. Even 1% will be spectacular.
EDIT: This above selective targeting is needed at this initial stage.
Once everything works smoothly we will be able to loosen up this targeting and eventually reach to average joe.
But let us not start with "average joe". Let us start with "smart joe".
First few times you transfer funds to another account, you will think about it...not to mention trading fees.
Yes, I will think about it but by comparing the cost of the fees with the usefulness of the product.
If I don't find it useful enough I won't use it. And in most cases not because of the fees but because I don't find it useful in the first place.
The actual indication that our transfer fees are too high will be this: people creating new accounts, starting some initial activity and then giving up. And this syndrome would have to be happening once SmartCoins are fully liquid - so there is no other excuse for the user to give up on us.
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Can we setup profiles. The user chooses the type of account they want to be and the fees a then set to match that kind of account. The user pays a fee to switch account profile but can only switch once every two weeks or month. A user could have a dedicated trading account or a dedicated basic account. Also make the fee for transferring between account types high so users won't try to bypass fees by constantly going between types.
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Akado's post about the target market being the best exchange possible makes sense to me.
"BitShares is about that exchange that will shake the NASDAQ to the core. Then, around BitShares, business will sprout, adapt and grow. Those same businesses will be into the payment services stuff and will adapt."