BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bytemaster on April 12, 2015, 03:36:05 am

Title: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 12, 2015, 03:36:05 am
I would like to take a moment to comment on the recent fall in the price of BTS.   In a word it all boils down to a very common problem in the world of startups, the cost of user acquisition is higher than our ability to monetize it under the current model.   To convey my point I would like to quote some from this blog:

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup-killer/

Quote
However after closely watching several hundred startups that have failed, I observed that a very large number of these had solved the product/market fit problem, but still failed because they had not found a way to acquire customers at a low enough cost.

Quote
I would like to propose that in addition to team, product, and market, there is actually a fourth, equally important, core element of startups, which is the need for a viable business model. Business model viability, in the majority of startups, will come down to balancing two variables:

Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC)
The ability to monetize those customers, or LTV (which stands for Lifetime Value of a Customer)
Successful web businesses have long understood these metrics as they have such an easy way to measure them. However there is a lot of value in looking at these same metrics for all other businesses.

To compute the cost to acquire a customer, CAC, you would take your entire cost of sales and marketing over a given period, including salaries and other headcount related expenses, and divide it by the number of customers that you acquired in that period.  (In pure web businesses where the headcount doesn’t need to grow as customer acquisition scales, it is also very useful to look customer acquisition costs without the headcount costs.)

To compute the Lifetime Value of a Customer, LTV, you would look at the Gross Margin that you would expect to make from that customer over the lifetime of your relationship. Gross Margin should take into consideration any support, installation, and servicing costs.

(http://dskok.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image_thumb2.png)

As a DAC many of us assumed that if we built it they would come.   Our product solves so many problems in the crypto-currency space and leads in many ways, but it is currently failing because the cost to gain a new user is higher than we can afford with either transaction fees or dilution.    In other words the only thing that can keep this ship moving forward is additional funding and a change to the business model of the DAC that so that it can generate more revenue per user than it costs to acquire a new user.   

(http://dskok.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image_thumb3.png)

Fortunately for us there are many viable ways to both raise money, increase revenue per user, and lower the cost of acquisition.   None of this can happen over night, but what matters it that we are AWARE of what need to be done and are actively taking steps to change the direction of this ship.   

We have a well thought out referral program that will be game changing and that cannot be gamed.  I would like to thank Max for inspiring our solution the details of which will come out as part of a new white paper.     We will be increasing transaction fees, offering bulk discounts, and overall creating a system that will highly reward businesses and merchants that bring us customers.   

The current low price is hard to look at, but unlike other crypto-projects we are actively looking at this as a startup and adapting as necessary to find the business model that takes us to the moon.    Hang tight, invest in people and you will be ok.   I am not giving up and know that we are innovative enough to eventually succeed in this space.  It has been a learning experience, but fortunately I am a fast learner. 

In our case the cost to acquire a new user is currently well over $100, we need to find a way to fund that while lowering costs.

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: btswildpig on April 12, 2015, 03:51:12 am
New users are hard to get , especially for a service with concepts like "private key" "sync" "blockchain" "console" "participation rate"  "wallet file"  "datadir backup"

These concepts scare off a lot of regular people .

I'm expecting centralized services with only the concept of "username" "password" "find my password" while using BitShares as its basic protocol be responsible for most of
the new users in the future .
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: clayop on April 12, 2015, 04:00:51 am
IMHO it's very easy to get new users. "Come on, and you can make money just by introducing this thing to other people!"

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15265.195.html
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Troglodactyl on April 12, 2015, 04:03:08 am
I think a lot of our grass roots customer acquisition will be greatly accelerated once we have solid light and mobile wallets.

I know that's what I'm waiting for before I start seriously recruiting less technical friends.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Pheonike on April 12, 2015, 04:06:53 am

Its the user experience. People can understand concept, but the execution is the issue.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 12, 2015, 04:34:40 am
Yes, you will see layers of abstraction, "skins", that hide the details from the average user.

But that is just the obvious incremental evolution path.

This year we will go further beyond today's BitShares than BitShares is beyond Bitcoin.

(It's not like we have only two years' worth of innovation in us, you know.)

We are just getting started.

(http://zonalandeducation.com/mstm/physics/mechanics/kinematics/EquationsForAcceleratedMotion/AdditionalInformation/Displacement/Image144.gif)

I can't believe how many people let themselves get trapped focusing on x0

Our core devs are v0 and our partnerships are a.
(http://www.charbase.com/images/glyph/8748)

He who can integrate, let him integrate.

 :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rgcrypto on April 12, 2015, 05:36:04 am
 +5%
That is exactly what I experienced with the tests I ran on Facebook and Twitter. The cost per conversion is too high.
We are not selling socks here. We are selling a pre version 1 software that most people don't understand why they would need that in the first place.

The affiliate system would be a great way to recruits entrepreneurs and businesses who would then go ahead and gain users.

But running ads to attract users to understand bitshares core is a losing game. (It is still valuable to create content and be involved in the media but direct marketing for bitshares core...nah)

Services like MineBitShares, Moonstone, Limewallet, etc are project that could flourish if they gained an affiliate compensation for bringing in users (may reduce the need to go all out politic and run for a delegate position too).

Curious to know how that plan would be funded.

Any thoughts?

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 12, 2015, 05:44:43 am
+5%
That is exactly what I experienced with the tests I ran on Facebook and Twitter. The cost per conversion is too high.
We are not selling socks here. We are selling a pre version 1 software that most people don't understand why they would need that in the first place.

The affiliate system would be a great way to recruits entrepreneurs and businesses who would then go ahead and gain users.

But running ads to attract users to understand bitshares core is a losing game. (It is still valuable to create content and be involved in the media but direct marketing for bitshares core...nah)

Services like MineBitShares, Moonstone, Limewallet, etc are project that could flourish if they gained an affiliate compensation for bringing in users (may reduce the need to go all out politic and run for a delegate position too).

Curious to know how that plan would be funded.

Any thoughts?

I have it all figured out and am working on documenting it so it can be reviewed.   
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: donkeypong on April 12, 2015, 05:49:21 am
What can BitShares do for me? How easy is it to jump on there and make it do what I want? The most important thing is getting the user experience right. The light wallets and on/off-ramps, etc., can make this thing easier to use. I understand the cost-per-user calculation, but what about a pain-per-gain calculation?

At the moment, the pain is the huge freaking hassle of getting started with gateways and exchanges and Bitcoin and then having to arm-wrestle this client, etc. And that's if you even understand how this thing works. To get that far, you'd need to see some value for yourself from the gain side of the equation also.

That side of the equation is simpler, though, since BitShares offers a great deal: instant transactions, nearly zero cost, market-pegged cryptocurrency, plus the upcoming possibilities with user-issued assets, and a ton more. So if people actually understand it, the gain side is monumental; this technology is earth-shattering and transformative. But the pain side still makes these benefits very hard to sell, even when one successfully manages to explain one or more of them.

I'm not only hanging on here, but I just increased my BTS holdings by 10%. I think this is going much, much higher, but it's not easy to change the world.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rgcrypto on April 12, 2015, 06:08:52 am
What can BitShares do for me? How easy is it to jump on there and make it do what I want? The most important thing is getting the user experience right. The light wallets and on/off-ramps, etc., can make this thing easier to use. I understand the cost-per-user calculation, but what about a pain-per-gain calculation?

At the moment, the pain is the huge freaking hassle of getting started with gateways and exchanges and Bitcoin and then having to arm-wrestle this client, etc. And that's if you even understand how this thing works. To get that far, you'd need to see some value for yourself from the gain side of the equation also.

That side of the equation is simpler, though, since BitShares offers a great deal: instant transactions, nearly zero cost, market-pegged cryptocurrency, plus the upcoming possibilities with user-issued assets, and a ton more. So if people actually understand it, the gain side is monumental; this technology is earth-shattering and transformative. But the pain side still makes these benefits very hard to sell, even when one successfully manages to explain one or more of them.

I'm not only hanging on here, but I just increased my BTS holdings by 10%. I think this is going much, much higher, but it's not easy to change the world.

I agree 100%. In my opinion, Bitshares core should not focus on user experience at all but on making a scalable, high quality blockchain while having entrepreneurs create application that have great user experience. (Moonstone for example) So if we can use affiliate compensation to attract more entrepreneurs, more developments, more services then we can start seeing real life problem solved by more people.

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: merivercap on April 12, 2015, 06:44:14 am
I agree with all the comments on the thread. 

Also it's hard to measure traction when the webwallet is still in beta. 

We have a well thought out referral program that will be game changing and that cannot be gamed.

  +5% +5% +5% :)


Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: wuyanren on April 12, 2015, 06:49:20 am
I think developers credit overdraft too much,I feel that we should do is let restore confidence
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Overthetop on April 12, 2015, 06:58:46 am
 +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: btswildpig on April 12, 2015, 07:35:45 am
100 USD / user ?

place 5000 USD as bounty for people outside of crypto space , you may get 10000 users , that's 0.5 USD per user .

Start with grass root beauty pageant ...........   
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rb2 on April 12, 2015, 08:29:19 am
I've read multiple times that some companies are waiting for a 1.0 release to integrate bitshares. If hat's true, shouldn't the focus be on a 1.0 release?

Also, there are some initiatives that are presented as game changing, but get lost. An example: the cart integration. It has been done, but in the website I do not see references of that.

Finally, I feel like the focus is always changing. At times it's bitassets,then it's the 1.0,  now it's user acquisition while as many said, the pain to become a user is still too high...

Take this as constructive feedback, I do not pretend I would do better ;-)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 12, 2015, 08:48:12 am
Bytemaster and Stan consider this possibility,  what if there is negative advertising against Bitshares and the entire crypto-community which is outpacing the positive advertising coming from the Bitcoin community and Bitshares community?

Attention is limited and people tend to trust authority as horrible as that sounds. Bitcoin price seems to improve when governments signal that it's okay to play with cryptocurrency but when government signals that they might ban cryptocurrency the prices of all cryptocurrency goes down.

We are in a crypto recession not because of anything Bitshares did wrong but because of what governments have been doing to suppress the rate of growth of this industry. China is literally single handedly controlling the entire Bitcoin and Bitshares economy and you don't need me to tell you that. Russia is about to ban Bitcoin entirely and every cryptocurrency like it.  In fact they've gone further than that and have banned Bitcoin websites too.

My opinion and suggestion is that Bitshares take on a stealth strategy. Businesses should simply use Bitshares as the backend without talking about crypto, crypto-currency, Bitcoin, or Bitshares. Bitcoin should be removed from all future marketing of Bitshares while Bitcoin is a liability but when Bitcoin becomes an asset again then Bitcoin could be added back into the marketing materials.

The problem right now is people associate certain words with Bitcoin. The moment they see cryptocurrency they think Bitcoin, then they think Silk Road, then they think of all the radical phrases they've heard from the more enthusiastic members of our community. Bytemaster is not the face of the Bitcoin community and the Bitshares community remains in the shadow of the Bitcoin community.

My opinion is for services built up around Bitshares "just use it". You don't have to explain your technology to anyone. You don't have to put Bitcoin in any of the marketing material. You don't have to bring them to Bitshares.org. All you have to do is make sure their transactions utilize the Bitshares blockchain and it's good for Bitshares.

The other part of the strategy I suggest is to appeal to different stakeholders. It's time to appeal to regulators more because they are the only people who can give the signal to open the flood gates. It is they who can ban Bitcoin or unban it.

What is China concerned about? Is there anything Bitshares can do to give itself a better impression to users in China? In the short term I'm skeptical of the China strategy even if I think long term it might work. At this point in time if we assume China is not going to use Bitshares what is the primary demographic going to be? Who needs Bitshares and if that is Americans then Bitshares has to start doing stuff Americans want to do.

Can it support crowd funding? Can it do prediction markets yet? The utility right now isn't enough to get mass appeal when the average American user weighs the risk to reward ratio of using it. The tax situation for example makes it so it's not even possible for a lot of westerners to use Bitshares because of the difficult to calculate taxes. There needs to be ways to lower the risks for the users while increasing the potential for major reward.

Governments are increasing risks for users. Users are risk adverse and to be honest they are afraid of the government. Even Americans are afraid of the government in our "free country". So it has to be possible and easy for users to comply while also maintaining the potential for users to "win big".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/14/russia-bitcoin-website-ban/
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 12, 2015, 09:00:46 am

Its the user experience. People can understand concept, but the execution is the issue.

My own assessment of the information has led me to realize it's more than just that. It's the risk landscape.

When Bitcoin prices were rising people concluded the reward far outweighs the risk. As a result new users were throwing money at different projects fueling growth in the industry. Today after a year or more of falling prices, price manipulation, scams, bans from China, Russia, and now we have the strange April 1st executive order from Obama, there is more uncertainty, more risk, and at this point in time the atmosphere isn't what it was in 2013.

In 2013 people buying Bitcoins thought they would get rich and some did. In 2014 people thought they would miss the train if they didn't get in, and the people who missed the Bitcoin train poured their money into Bitcoin 2.0. Bitshares was part of the Bitcoin 2.0 wave.

Now we are headed into Bitcoin 3.0 and Bitcoin is cheap again. We will have to go through the same cycle which happened in 2011-2012. Sooner or later there will be the next big bubble where Bitcoin will likely reach beyond $10,000 and when that happens the money will go into Bitcoin 2.0 and Bitcoin 3.0 as Bitcoin will be perceived as "too expensive" or people will figure out it's "too late" to get in on that.

At the same time to make something easy to use you have to lower risk. No one should feel like by using Bitshares they could be risking their freedom or risk being fined. But isn't that what Russia is doing? If you use Bitcoin you could upset Russia if you're a Russian. What about China? Same difference.  What about Australia? Double, triple tax?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 12, 2015, 09:06:05 am
+5%
That is exactly what I experienced with the tests I ran on Facebook and Twitter. The cost per conversion is too high.
We are not selling socks here. We are selling a pre version 1 software that most people don't understand why they would need that in the first place.

The affiliate system would be a great way to recruits entrepreneurs and businesses who would then go ahead and gain users.

But running ads to attract users to understand bitshares core is a losing game. (It is still valuable to create content and be involved in the media but direct marketing for bitshares core...nah)

Services like MineBitShares, Moonstone, Limewallet, etc are project that could flourish if they gained an affiliate compensation for bringing in users (may reduce the need to go all out politic and run for a delegate position too).

Curious to know how that plan would be funded.

Any thoughts?

Speaking of "Limewallet" why not release a Bittorrent client which lets people pay for content with BitAssets? I think it's a natural integration and wouldn't take a long time to code. You could then use that Bittorrent client to market Bitshares to a wide demographic.

Is it possible for example to set it up so that everyone who distributes content using the Bittorrent style client can be paid for being a seeder? Just theoretical questions but that is one way to market it. Just build it into technology already being used.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bitcrab on April 12, 2015, 09:10:46 am
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bitmeat on April 12, 2015, 09:12:40 am
I would highly advice to have deterministic wallets, that don't require saved file. For some people restoring a backup is just way too stressful. In fact many thought that password was all that was needed and got burned when not also backing up the wallet file. I still think a big deterrent is the lack of good user experience. I've ran it on all 3 platforms and have various problems that I could manage as a power user, but know would scare the crap out of a newcomer. I think fixing the bugs is definitely a major step in the right direction of reducing the cost of user adoption
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Frodo on April 12, 2015, 09:20:21 am
This year we will go further beyond today's BitShares than BitShares is beyond Bitcoin.

(It's not like we have only two years' worth of innovation in us, you know.)

We are just getting started.

Haha, I love this posts. In all seriousness though, innovation was never our problem. Maybe we had a bit too much innovation to handle all at once.

Regarding the OP I'm not sure that this is the right approach. To me a referral system is the attempt to sell a barely usable product to people who will never use it. It will artificially pump the price in the short term but are we really that desperate?

To illustrate my point: Imagine a salesman showed up at your doorstep and tried to sell you a new concept car that you can't even drive yourself. Would you buy it? Would you buy stocks in the company? Or would you just wait a year until this thing goes into production?

IMO there is only one way out of this situation: deliver a usable product and user experience. It won't be an easy path to go, but it is the only sustainable solution. If we succeed to do that we can start promoting our product.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xeroc on April 12, 2015, 09:30:00 am
+5%
That is exactly what I experienced with the tests I ran on Facebook and Twitter. The cost per conversion is too high.
We are not selling socks here. We are selling a pre version 1 software that most people don't understand why they would need that in the first place.

The affiliate system would be a great way to recruits entrepreneurs and businesses who would then go ahead and gain users.

But running ads to attract users to understand bitshares core is a losing game. (It is still valuable to create content and be involved in the media but direct marketing for bitshares core...nah)

Services like MineBitShares, Moonstone, Limewallet, etc are project that could flourish if they gained an affiliate compensation for bringing in users (may reduce the need to go all out politic and run for a delegate position too).

Curious to know how that plan would be funded.

Any thoughts?

I have it all figured out and am working on documenting it so it can be reviewed.
How can I be of assistance here?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: inarizushi on April 12, 2015, 09:32:28 am
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.

This is crucial... Losing money because of bugs is excruciating. It's sad and probably very telling how many long term believers /people that invested much time and energy have become disappointed (on the top of my head, I'm thinking of tonyk, toast, Ander... Rune and Methodx are not active anymore).
Every geek I met is excited by what bitshares can offer. But currently, if the proof of concept is here, it still doesn't deliver as promised. Get rid of the bugs, have a working market and a flawless user interface, only then people won't jump out of the ship. At the moment, acquiring new users that aren't nerdy enough to believe in the vision is useless.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 12, 2015, 09:38:40 am
make a stable client,
make the trade experience simple as it is on traditional centralized on-line exchanges (you don't need to invent the wheel again here),
don't hard fork  to much times,
get seriously the advises from members they are complaining the last months
....
...
...(to be continued)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: CalabiYau on April 12, 2015, 09:39:18 am
I would highly advice to have deterministic wallets, that don't require saved file. For some people restoring a backup is just way too stressful. In fact many thought that password was all that was needed and got burned when not also backing up the wallet file. I still think a big deterrent is the lack of good user experience. I've ran it on all 3 platforms and have various problems that I could manage as a power user, but know would scare the crap out of a newcomer. I think fixing the bugs is definitely a major step in the right direction of reducing the cost of user adoption

 +5% +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 12, 2015, 09:59:45 am
100 USD to aquire new users?

Where comes this number from?

It is clear we need a marketing solution, but consider to do it in the now possible ways. Get some delegates elected to fund it.
I am against "BIG" changes again. This will scare the last investors away. We need, that people can have faith in what we are
doing and not changes everything after weeks.

And i am for an open discussion,

 i don't like this "we are talking behind closed doors" stuff, and in the past, the decisions you did
on your own (this closed circle) were not the best choices. Ok, it is easy to say it later, but you have to take it, because not one time
where the community envolved in the process, because of "we can't say anything in public".

This is the same way, it was done in the past - we should learnt something and do it better. It feels the same, i hope it is not!
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 12, 2015, 10:00:02 am
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.

 +5%

we are selling top notch bicycles without wheels and we are wondering why we have not enough sells...

I guarantee you:
1)even if we raise the salary of our bicycle sellers (we already tried that with the merge)
2)even if we use fancy colors to attract more buyers
3)even
4)even
5)...
6)...
7)...
...
...

I bet we will not have much better results if we don't...
Install the fu#@# wheels >:(
Think simple NOT complicated

(http://stompernet.com/products/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/bicycle2.jpg)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 12, 2015, 10:02:31 am
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.

 +5%

we are selling top notch bicycles without wheels and we are wondering why we have not enough sells...

I guarantee you:
1)even if we raise the salary of our bicycle sellers (we already tried that with the merge)
2)even if we use fancy colors to attract more buyers
3)even
4)even
5)...
6)...
7)...
...
...

I bet we will not have much better results if we don't...
Install the fu#@# wheels >:(
Think simple NOT complicated

(http://stompernet.com/products/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/bicycle2.jpg)

 +5% haha, you said it better in less words then me :D
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: CLains on April 12, 2015, 11:35:25 am
Yes all the new clients, fixing of bugs, merchant adoption, etc. will bring in users and drive down cost of acquisition, but we still need an autonomous system that intrinsically pulls users into it with affiliate marketing. Aligning incentives is what we're supposed to be good at in the first place, so why not from the periphery of the DAC as well as within it ;)

Just type up that whitepaper BM and let a million brains pick it appart ASAP so we can get marketing whitepaper 2.0 out before BitShares 1.0 launches +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: vlight on April 12, 2015, 11:38:45 am
In our case the cost to acquire a new user is currently well over $100, we need to find a way to fund that while lowering costs.

Give people free 50 BitUSD just for installing the wallet and getting used to it. Profit.  ;D
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 12, 2015, 11:46:56 am
make the trade experience simple as it is on traditional centralized on-line exchanges

Exactly, thats why Im so excited about the web-based wallet. Bter/cryptsy's cost per new user is so low because they can instantly sign up, deposit and trade. Our web-based wallet is not there yet because there is no clear place to deposit, and there is no trollbox which people are used to seeing in a crypto exchange.

But with just a bit more effort it could get there. We should make it use Metaexchange's api without even having to visit their site. That would lower the cost per new user.

Thanks Bytemaster for this post!
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: sittingduck on April 12, 2015, 01:07:27 pm
I think it is assumed that bugs must be fixed. But it doesn't change the fact that PayPal and other companies with no bugs still had high user acquisition costs. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: GaltReport on April 12, 2015, 01:17:23 pm
1st= Usability and user experience
2nd=Marketing & acquiring Customers

BitShares needs well-heeled investor(s)/white knight/business CEO to push this all through.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fuzzy on April 12, 2015, 01:19:48 pm
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.

 +5%

we are selling top notch bicycles without wheels and we are wondering why we have not enough sells...

I guarantee you:
1)even if we raise the salary of our bicycle sellers (we already tried that with the merge)
2)even if we use fancy colors to attract more buyers
3)even
4)even
5)...
6)...
7)...
...
...

I bet we will not have much better results if we don't...
Install the fu#@# wheels >:(
Think simple NOT complicated

(http://stompernet.com/products/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/bicycle2.jpg)

 +5% haha, you said it better in less words then me :D

Yep.. this is pretty much as simple and poignant an explanation there is.  Really does boil down to that. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: lzr1900 on April 12, 2015, 01:50:56 pm
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.
always..
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 12, 2015, 02:10:29 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fav on April 12, 2015, 02:11:32 pm


We have a well thought out referral program that will be game changing and that cannot be gamed.  I would like to thank Max for inspiring our solution the details of which will come out as part of a new white paper.     We will be increasing transaction fees, offering bulk discounts, and overall creating a system that will highly reward businesses and merchants that bring us customers.   

 +5% +5% +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 12, 2015, 02:15:48 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Interesting ideas.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: infovortice2013 on April 12, 2015, 02:32:43 pm
Yeah, thats right the bicicle skeleton was 1 year ago,,,, now i can see supersonic concorde skeleton without motors inside the angar working in luxury interior .,.. and this concorde is capable to fly over the light or darkness. ITS AMAZING !!!

Sure we are all not coding, we arent living this in Virginia with team, all of us valid people but cant apport nothing to acelerate this work, instead we can spread the word, with passion thats good, to everybody you met or know, but great pivoting that take us at this point, maybe hurt our word value, and at same time make us be more moderated spreading it... hey its normal we are carefull until v 1.0 its done because we take damages. not just in our credibility also economic, but this economics what you hope¿? we are financiating the building one of the big proyects arround the world, its lot of greedy in crypto world here too, BTS some whales, some delegates, yeah focking trolls, i BELIVE THE FIRST PUSH UP PRICE WAS FOR MILION or MILIONS dolars euros yuans GOLD or whatever.

You whale trolls not mind to fock comunity throwing down the price to win a few thousands, and in few days you loose the train. Will be beautifull.

Some times start to think some delegates not finish his started jobs to keep taking payment..... instead they throwaway his payment because hey later we can buy more ... hope im wrong

You know how much spent Banksters in obsolete XP for his ATM net? you know how much fraud, thieves and indemnizations are over the debit cards, stealing info while buying by internet, cloning your card when pay in a shop restaurant or wherever, ect... Are you crazy enought for not see they need BitShares DAC almost for this mission, yeah maybe one DAC per Bank.

or Oil comodities market ... bilions there moved all days

reimagine everything, come here and write it !!!

In other hand actual prices can be percibed like a punishment, or you can take it like a gift or unique opportunity , personally i belive its this, im trying to sell some stuff to buy more BTS, this team have my confidence since day one. haha yeah maybe is better have thousand dolar than confidence or trust, but i put all i have and some i not have  ;D

just need to see lot of teams and whales try to copy-clone part by part our sistem ... nobody of them can copy 2 thing like us in same proyect, just part by part separate. dark with instant anonimous transactions, nubits with the peg, next for the exchange,or this nasty milionarie centralizing and privaticing bitreserve, sure i forgot more ,,, but easy you can see now THE POWER WE HAVE inside the hangar.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rb2 on April 12, 2015, 02:57:46 pm
IMO there is only one way out of this situation: deliver a usable product and user experience. It won't be an easy path to go, but it is the only sustainable solution. If we succeed to do that we can start promoting our product.

So true. Focus on a usable client is key, but even though that point has been raised for months, it doesnt seem the devs agree, as illustrated by OP.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 12, 2015, 03:48:55 pm
Interesting ideas.

Thanks. Please also consider pooling a portion of the DAC's earned transaction fees to offer bonus contracts between the DAC and the referrer.

For example:

     1. If you earn 50,000 BTS in transaction fees for the DAC, the DAC will send you an additional 5,000 BTS

     2. If you are a top 10 referrer for the DAC, you will receive a portion of the annual "smart bonus pool".
          The 1st top referrer earns 42% of the bonus pool.  20% for 2nd, 10% for 3rd, 3% for 4th through 10th.

These would be equivalent to bonuses for salespeople at a tech startup, or growth program contracts between manufacturers and distributors.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 12, 2015, 03:50:50 pm
Interesting ideas.

Thanks. Please also consider pooling a portion of the DAC's earned transaction fees to offer bonus contracts between the DAC and the referrer.

For example:

     1. If you earn 50,000 BTS in transaction fees for the DAC, the DAC will send you an additional 5,000 BTS

     2. If you are a top 10 referrer for the DAC, you will receive a portion of the annual "smart bonus pool".
          The 1st top referrer earns 42% of the bonus pool.  20% for 2nd, 10% for 3rd, 3% for 4th through 10th.

These would be equivalent to bonuses for salespeople at a tech startup, or growth program contracts between manufacturers and distributors.

Good idea!

We could also add delegate payments to it, if we elect some and they are contributing to this.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: werneo on April 12, 2015, 04:00:00 pm
I question the premise of the OP.

BitShares cannot "take off" while bitcoin and the rest of crypto are in a bear market.

It's useful to look at the 1-day view of this chart: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd
BTS went active last summer, while BTC was in a bear phase that began in December 2013. The only reason I could buy AGS and PTS in the first place was because my BTS investment had increased by multiple times. After the BTC run up in 2013, it made perfect sense to diversify into the best crypto 2.0 projects. But Bitcoin is the Rosetta stone of this new industry. Bitshares is one floor down in a bitcoin edifice.

It doesn't make much sense to talk about a BTS "take off" while BTC is in an epic bear mode.

The fortunes of BTS is tied to the price of BTC. That is the Occam's Razor solution for why Bitshares is not "taking off" and why there is nothing you can do about it.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: sittingduck on April 12, 2015, 04:37:37 pm
Bitcoin has the same problem


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: donkeypong on April 12, 2015, 04:52:36 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Interesting ideas.

The incentive structure needs to reward people on multiple levels. There are some companies with such strong sales structures that they barely need a product. Amway and MLM marketing get a lot of flack as pyramids, but Fortune 1000 companies basically use similar sorts of design for their sales structures. Providing some (sustainable and not too greedy) form of multi-level incentives would make this absolutely rock. Considering the advantages of this product, if you design this structure well, it could help drive this thing to the moon.

BitShares would be able to leverage the hard work and ad dollars of marketing folks, who would invest these up front with the hope of later returns. And that could help provide the kick we need. Longer term, salespeople would join delegates and vendors and contractors as additional career (and part-time income) opportunities spawned by the blockchain.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bluebit on April 12, 2015, 04:56:57 pm
Focus on BitUSD and other currencies/assets. I want it to be easier to put my money in BitUSD or BitGLD and just hold. What I want is a iPhone wallet, where I can send my Bitcoins and inside of the wallet, trade my Bitcoins for BitUSD with two options, automatically with METAEXCHANGE, or with people online or nearby. That way you are creating your own on-ramps. Say I'm in USA and I need USD, I search for users nearby, then I contact one asking to trade them in BitUSD or Bitcoin or whatever asset they want. I get my USD and they get their Bitasset. IS THAT TOO HARD? All you need is to make a iPhone and Android wallet app with this capability. I've going to  +5% my own post. :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: BTSdac on April 12, 2015, 05:23:39 pm
Hi BM, Actually I am very fear that  you have new idea in this forum ,
I don`t know if you are know it.
do you think if we  should produce a best product or just do new product?. do you think the client of bts is well enough?
I don`t want to any change about bts with stake, if there have ? no one can help bts that would make everybody lost money ,include me . we also don`t know how to face that situation.
pls give up the idea ?  one user cost how much ? $100? 20$?, it  isn`t  smart idea.    bts must prove  itself useful to user. you know the key is easy to use. there is not
mobile app and easy use client ,after it is available ,you  can discuss the new idea. 
give up traditional  way to get user ,  it is cost. 
we can use our asset to get user ,  we can send some funny asset to the people who like it .
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: BTSdac on April 12, 2015, 05:38:16 pm
     $100 per user ,  :'( , it is really to cost to us now , if you get 1000 user it cost  $100K, I think if you now use $100K  buy bts ,it maybe attract more than 1000user
if you use $1M to buy bts at this price ,it can attract  10,000 user.
so give up discuss our system is profit or not , it just a system ,you can create you own asset and can transfer to anybody in the world in 10 second.   it is funny.
we have a bitusd ,it is magical, it is not only stabilize with price ,but also cannot been control by anyone.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Marky0001 on April 12, 2015, 05:39:19 pm
basically the devs are giving up?

I only try to figure out the "reason" for their posts lol
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: joereform on April 12, 2015, 05:45:09 pm
I appreciate that bytemaster is acknowledging the problem of customer attraction and trying to find a solution to it. As a true believer in BitShares and the solutions it aims to provide, I share the frustration of others who see the twofold problem: a lack of a stable client and the dearth of effective marketing.

First, the client needs to be fixed. Yes, it is a pre-1.0 product, but so is Bitcoin-Qt, and we do not hear nearly the same level of complaint regarding that product. I cannot be the only one who has frequent trouble getting a connection to the BitShares network on the GUI client even to transact business on the exchange. I am not a programmer; I would not know the first thing about how to get into the code and work out all of the bugs. I just know it needs to be done if we are going to expect people to trust the network.

Secondly, making price feed publishing a built-in aspect of the delegate client would be ideal. Yes, BTS holders can vote against those who do not publish feeds; but I will admit that, as a novice about what goes on under the hood, I have no idea even how to determine who is publishing and who isn't. How would a complete novice be able to rely on the market pegs holding on their BitAssets?

Lastly, as someone mentioned in this thread, what I see overall is a lack of promotion and a lack of focus. I read and listen to a lot of the crypto news sources out there. I cannot even remember the last time I heard something from the BitShares team that wasn't internal (e.g. the Mumble chats). Preaching to the choir isn't going to build this DAC. And, while incentivizing word-of-mouth is not a bad thing in itself, there are a host of ways to get the message of BitShares out there, not only to the current crypto community, but to the larger population on the fringes of Bitcoin, etc.

Why aren't BitUSD and BitEUR and BitCNY being promoted as stable crypto alternatives to a volatile bitcoin? Merchants who refuse to accept bitcoin because of the perceived threat of loss of value could accept fiat-pegged BitAssets without having to resort to Coinbase or Bitpay to "lock in" the value of their revenue. I have not heard a single person connected with BitShares promote BitAssets in this manner, and I am actively looking for such promotion.

Why isn't TITAN being promoted as a solution to the privacy issues connected to the Bitcoin blockchain? Not only does it assure greater anonymity of transactions, but also it completely gets rid of the need for long, arcane addresses and QR codes. This should be a slam-dunk for those new to crypto, but they are not getting the message.

Using the BitShares blockchain as a real, interest-bearing savings account is another draw for those who may have no interest in the exchange per se. With fiat gateways in place, or even through projects like Shapeshift or Moonstone, people can convert their savings into BitUSD and earn a stable rate of interest while still keeping them quite liquid.

In short, there are several use cases for those who may never be interested in purchasing a single BTS ever, and why should they? Let those of us who are interested in being market makers and shareholders in the DAC do that, and promote the DAC also to those who will drive up demand for the BitAssets but who have no interest in actively trading.

I firmly believe that the BitShares DAC is an idea with qualities far superior to many of the other projects out there, and qualities that make it easier for BitShares to gain followers who have no interest in blockchains or SHA-256 or confirmation times or QR codes. But having a superior idea without proper dissemination of it may make BitShares the Betamax of the crypto world. The value of BTS is plummeting; the available amount of BitUSD is approximately 80% of what it was just last week. We all have to think both inside and outside of the current cryptocurrency box (like Peertracks seems to be doing, to their credit) if this project is to be here for the long run.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: BTSdac on April 12, 2015, 05:45:52 pm
basically the devs are giving up?

I only try to figure out the "reason" for their posts lol
i think they are developing as usually
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: jsidhu on April 12, 2015, 06:03:16 pm
Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 12, 2015, 06:17:15 pm
"Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it."

since dogecoin has now a bigger market-cap than us, it is a perfect time to consider if we can do what
they have done with a simple bitcoin-clone & zero innovation "backing it"...

maybe it is time for a bitshares meme birth... and a big marketing push  :P 

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rgcrypto on April 12, 2015, 06:26:59 pm
Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
What if instead of going for a delegate, you had a compensation for every new user you bring in? :-)

I think that's the idea behind a referral program.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rb2 on April 12, 2015, 06:47:00 pm
Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.

You illustrate what i start to think might be a problem with bitshares: no one wants to do something for bitshares for free. BM mentioned being managed as a startup is an advantage, but it seems to have a cost. People want to develop and help bitshares, but the pre condition is to be a delegate.... it is a problem because enthousiasm, conviction and grass root movement could be the key to success for bitcoin's successor. Linux'devs didn't develop linux to get paid, but because they liked it! They didn't think about user acquisition, they just did their thing. And look what has come out of it!
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: TurkeyLeg on April 12, 2015, 07:15:58 pm
Focus on BitUSD and other currencies/assets. I want it to be easier to put my money in BitUSD or BitGLD and just hold. What I want is a iPhone wallet, where I can send my Bitcoins and inside of the wallet, trade my Bitcoins for BitUSD with two options, automatically with METAEXCHANGE, or with people online or nearby. That way you are creating your own on-ramps. Say I'm in USA and I need USD, I search for users nearby, then I contact one asking to trade them in BitUSD or Bitcoin or whatever asset they want. I get my USD and they get their Bitasset. IS THAT TOO HARD? All you need is to make a iPhone and Android wallet app with this capability. I've going to  +5% my own post. :)

 +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: jcrubino on April 12, 2015, 07:54:53 pm
I question the premise of the OP.

BitShares cannot "take off" while bitcoin and the rest of crypto are in a bear market.


But BitShares the platform can.

What the blockchain technology space needs are savers.  Every blockchain wants people to hold on to the native tokens to help appreciate the value of the token.  But users en mass want to know what the value of their stored currency will be tomorrow and even next month.  If people can not store value in the blockchain ecosystem then most will just speculate.

If moonstone puts out a wallet that allows people to:
    1. convert Bitcoin to BitUSD / BitCNY
    2. set savings goals

I think you have the basics for a killer app, add an index fund where people can put in no more than a dollar a day to buy blockchain tokens and assets weighted by marketcaps and some sanity rules and you can onboard outside the normal enthusiast circles.  Killer apps make peoples lives simpler, not more complex by having to grok all sorts of complexities that will need further calculations.


Another channel for on boarding is education:
     Create programs to teach / present blockchain technologies and finance in a DAC agnostic way.
     This works well in many industries.



Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: tsaishen on April 12, 2015, 08:16:30 pm
ByteMaster - First off, let me state unequivocally that you have my full support.  Before making the decision to go full bitshares I dug deep and read everything I could find by you, dating all the way back to original plans for protoshares.  You are highly intelligent and know how to pull things off that have never existed before.
(http://rs2img.memecdn.com/there-i-fixed-it_o_2613165.jpg)
 
As an outsider looking in though, I think BitShares has a number of problems that are keeping new users away.  I want to bring these to your attention because if they get fixed, I think user adoption would skyrocket.

There are several steps to problem solving, especially a problem of this nature...
(http://www.quickmeme.com/img/7c/7cbf672f861b7bb9d60d62f388bf69c37ee07bfbe1c4df2c500f8968ff3a2e2f.jpg)

You are taking the first step, which is identifying the problem. 
Step 2 is identifying solutions, which is also something you're asking for. 
So that's good!

You state that the problem is "Taking Off", but that's really a few different problems isn't it?
The first problem is user adoption.  "Why don't more people use bitshares?"  The other problem is "Why is the price so unstable?"
Note that I said "unstable", if the price is rising or falling dramatically and unpredictably, that is a problem.  Low prices that just stay in a narrow range are actually no problem at all.  High prices in a narrow range are also not a problem. 

Therefore the question of "Why is the price not achieving stability"
The final part of the "taking off" question is actually "what compelling reasons would a person who might need bitshares, elect to use something else?"

As an outsider looking in.  When I want to know about a new crypto or altcoin, the first thing I do is google it.
When I do a google search on bitshares, these are two of the first things that pop up...

http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/ (http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/)

http://www.coindesk.com/bitshares-decentralized-exchange-crypto-2-0/ (http://www.coindesk.com/bitshares-decentralized-exchange-crypto-2-0/)

The issue with the first URL is obvious, this guy is tearing your product apart.  I know you can look at that and say "yeah, umm it doesn't work that way anymore".  One of the reasons we selected BitShares rather than discounting it and moving to something else, is that I discovered that he has a competing crypto platform in development.  I find that sneaky and it has made me very suspicious of his motives.  I had to dig deep to find that out though.

I consider my efforts to be exceptional, meaning I highly doubt a potential user is going to dig that deep.
The fact remains, his rant is so high up on the google search rankings that in your case, it is directly costing you business.
 
The problem with the second URL is a bit more insidious.  The subtext here is that you had a damaged brand but instead of fixing something fundamental, you decided to "rebrand".  This type of thing makes a potential investor nervous and probably caused a lot of potential new users to rabbit.  Reading the article I realize what you are really doing is "brand consolidation", but the click bait headline there doesn't make it sound that way and if you're new to bitshares it just confuses the heck out of things.

Speaking as someone considering ownership for the first time.  My initial impression was, "We don't want a re-brand, we want the original thing!" 
A rebrand is confusing.  I think what happened here is that you managed to turn the BitShares brand into the "New Coke" of the crypto world. 

If you were really going to "rebrand", I think maybe you should have done a darkcoin and completely renamed the product.  Oddly enough I sold all my dark/dash as soon as my wallet changed names, I actually liked the darkcoin name, more than the product ;)
 
For the love of god, please don't change it again!  There is nothing you can do about the branding right now other than to spread the new brand as far and wide as you can.  If you choose an SEO buzzmonkey to go around and spam the planet with it, people will get sick of it really quickly though and then brand burnout will set in rather than brand burn in.

If it were my baby I would hurry up and add an affiliate system to the webwallet (would also be helpful if the official webwallet had functioning trades BTW).  Also in the webwallet advertise the forum here as the "help and resources" section.  That would add a lot of community traffic, and your existing community (possible exception of newminer) would gladly help you on board them.

I would also do what CEX.io did, create an attractive interactive banner that your community can launch.  Preferably something that ties in some stat from their own web-wallets, such as current interest rates on pegged assets.  (note I have no idea how you would actually go about pulling that off).  It would be great if you could add a sweetener to the deal such as "Get 10% bonus BTS when someone clicks your banner and opens a new account." 

Let your community do the advertising for you.  Heck if you did something innovative in this space, you would probably own the entire crypto market!   You have a fantastic product and you have a solid community now!

Your existing users are mostly die-hards who have been here since the beginning.  There are people here who have already taken $10k - $20k hits just because you have their respect.  Give these guys a proper affiliate system and you'll need to look at server upgrades within a week or two just to handle the traffic.

Furthermore, most of the resources like the wiki are out of date.  Speaking as someone who is actually trying to build something on top of your product, it is horribly off-puting when I go to read up on how things work only to see a big red "This information is out of date and no longer accurate" at the top.  Ok it's inaccurate.  Where can I go get the current scoop?  I dunno.  I ended up having to read the source code to figure things out.  Most project managers considering your platform are abandoning you at this stage.  It's something you can do, should be easy to do, please fix it right away.

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3K8p69M0uNA/UZ5ZycqMx7I/AAAAAAAADKo/uKFRxRAIJ2U/s1600/meme2.png)

You have created a "money" product, we would all appreciate it if this product worked correctly every time, little things like having to manually subtract the fee from a trade in the wallet, really detract from the usability of one click trading.  If there is a fee, just charge it.  I've put in all my money on the trade.  If there are insufficient funds to execute that trade, then just have UI calculate the max trade, because that's kind of the assumption.  Back to the order screen, if there isn't enough depth to support my order, it would be great if there were way to just buy the entire market out right there without having a huge chunk left sitting over in "unfilled" orders.

Also the tiny "confirm" button pops up under sales.  Give me a GREAT BIG DIALOG that says "Hey MORON, you are about to trade all your BTS for the price of a single grain of rice, are you sure this is a real thing you want to do?"   


Operationally there is more that can be done as well. 

Instead of focusing on marketing you are relying primarily on a subset of your user base called delegates.

These guys are supposed to be doing the marketing because it's supposedly in their best interests. 
But in reality it's not in THEIR best interests, it's in the best interests of the community at large.

The part you missed is that there is no way to tie a delegate's marketing efforts to a delegate's income.  Yet the only way to mine BTS is to become one of the "blessed".  That method is off putting to libertarian crypto-anarchists who view it as a "mini-fed", and it's unattractive to the small time miner who might otherwise like to put their efforts towards securing the network, since you need so many resources + network effects just to get into the blessed "delegate" category.  This has the effect of encouraging delegates to only do the minimum to become one, and will probably end badly.

My opinion is that the current delegate functions should be broken up into several separate functions that can all be sub-delegated, then compensated for independently.  Also again, income should be tied to the users they bring in, not the number of blocks that they sign, if they are also going to be tasked with bringing in new users.

I've looked at the code though and it would probably be a huge effort to retool just to break delegates into categories like that.

So if you're going to have delegates doing everything they currently do, then doing everything should be enforced at the software level, not through user voting. 

"Oh so you're a delegate who isn't publishing a price feed?"
(http://makeameme.org/media/created/no-soup-for-ud3zqt.jpg)

Sure let users vote them in, but when they start to suck, the network itself should give them the boot.

The place where all of this is falling down is the delegate process itself.
Once a delegate is in place, they have no further incentive to continue to advertise outside the community itself.  No company wants to step into anything and advertise "for the good of everyone".  Especially when they can be voted out at a moment's notice and thus loose all future income. 

Your final problem is that the price of BTS has been on a downward trajectory since inception. 

The price is falling because you are printing WAY too much money for the market to absorb right now. 
This new money is effectively devaluing the BTS of every person or company that takes a chance and decides to hold any.

You need to find a way to slow production right now, and mop it up so that the price ceases to fall, or even your diehards are going to walk away to something else.  People don't want to buy an asset in continual decline.  I personally hold some 50,000 BTS, but I hold it exclusively in bitUSD right now.  If the price continues to decline, I'm going to end up with a whole lot more BTS, which is a great thing for my business from a liquid assets standpoint, since we are selling BTS to our customers at a fixed price, but makes it a real hard sell to convince my customers to buy a bunch.

Stop printing so much money, cut the block rewards to next to nothing.

It will force out delegates that are doing this out of direct self interest.
It will attract those willing to do it as a community effort and also those for whom running a delegate is a loss leader. 

For instance, our business plan requires us to run at least one delegate node anyways, and I can envision half a dozen other commercial interests that would run one as a loss leader as well.

Even without it being a loss leader. delegates can make money a lot of ways including trading fees and UIA creation fees.

I assert that terminating the block reward so new money is not printed every few seconds, would cause the value of existing currency to rebound and stabilize.

Finally, you need to work to mop up all the current excess. 
You need this...
(http://static.abcteach.com/content_preview/b/basic_mop_bw_p.png)

We are building one of these...
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/dd/2c/99/dd2c9938cc9ea3a0fd734fc0a3ec7160.jpg)

We hope it will help, and we're pretty confident that it will.  However we don't expect to be the only players in this space. 


In summation...

If you want BTS to take off you need to make it attractive and easy to use. 

Pricing and community are huge components of that attractiveness. 
Liquidity is a direct component of pricing.
Get more gateways and other commercial interests on board and dump the delegates not actually contributing.

Finally, ease of use and exposure are key to community building. 

Fix those and your problems are gone.

Just my 2 BTS.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 12, 2015, 08:40:40 pm
^ worth to consider @bytemaster
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: davidpbrown on April 12, 2015, 08:50:43 pm
In other words the only thing that can keep this ship moving forward is additional funding and a change to the business model of the DAC that so that it can generate more revenue per user than it costs to acquire a new user.
...
In our case the cost to acquire a new user is currently well over $100, we need to find a way to fund that while lowering costs.

Surely this is wrong!? Are those really the only options?

Surely there is an option to consider more carefully how you are selling what you have? You don't necessarily need additional funding or to make a change to the business model.

In the CryptoStocks thread I challenged that the wiki is not looking as good as it might need to. See: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15596.msg200581.html#msg200581


Imagine you knew nothing of BitShares and look at what there is with a fresh pair of eyes. Does it communicate to a new user why they want to jump at the opportunity in front of them?

If you can get new funding, that's great but communication matters too. Make the description of BitShares plain English.

Watch the Jon Oliver & Edward Snowden interview (https://t.co/vu1mwODJJX) again. Sell the idea in terms that people will relate to - what's wrong with what they have and how is BitShares the answer? The marketing of BitShares is in places a turnoff, it needs to grab at people whereever they encounter it.. it's not appealing to ordinary investors level of understanding.. and in places it's not ambitious enough about the prospects of real financial investment companies making BitShares their principal platform. The narrative atm is good in places but talking more at the level of cryptocurrency nerds and those with enough vision to see the potential for themselves.


One approach to consider might be to resolve who are the potential investors and users of BitShares and think as they do. Appeal to each individual group of those users. Write directly for them and have the website filter those..

- Are you new to crypto currency?
- Are you a Government researcher?
- Are you a developer?
- Are you an entrepreneur looking for the next big thing?
- Are you a broker with a $hit tonne of money to invest and a button to push?
- etc etc
Here's what BitShares is and what it will mean.. to you. Reasons to invest ABC. and in that emphasis the strengths of the idea; the dev team; the community; the associated DAC projects; etc.


Perpetually changing the business model is not good and acquiring a new user should not cost $100 when new users are moving into crypto space. I've suggested before, perhaps pitch at MSM and get volume.. go on the Keiser Report etc and don't pull punches when articulating the vision of everything BitShares could achieve.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: jsidhu on April 12, 2015, 08:59:03 pm
Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.

You illustrate what i start to think might be a problem with bitshares: no one wants to do something for bitshares for free. BM mentioned being managed as a startup is an advantage, but it seems to have a cost. People want to develop and help bitshares, but the pre condition is to be a delegate.... it is a problem because enthousiasm, conviction and grass root movement could be the key to success for bitcoin's successor. Linux'devs didn't develop linux to get paid, but because they liked it! They didn't think about user acquisition, they just did their thing. And look what has come out of it!
I did add bitshares gateway for free and will Accept it and rebrand the business for free.. the delegate is used for inventory not to pay myself.. its essentially a marketing delegate because people will want to join to have a chance to win things for a fraction of retail cost.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: jsidhu on April 12, 2015, 09:01:06 pm
Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
What if instead of going for a delegate, you had a compensation for every new user you bring in? :-)

I think that's the idea behind a referral program.

I dont have a problem with that but its essentially same thing since delegate cam be voted out if its not bringing people in.. plus i need to purchase inventory to sell it so its not the same as a referral program
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: davidpbrown on April 12, 2015, 09:01:48 pm
Just to note the big idea that I see in BitShares is having digital tokens that are pegged to fiat. I think we all get that but forget how powerful that idea is.

In my reply to the UK.gov's call for information I teased them with this:
Quote
Class 3 above is especially interesting, as it suggests a stable market for bitUSD and others like bitGBP might arise, and yet still not require Government intervention. Those tokens would be pegged by consensus to the USD and GBP; Governments would continue to define the value of those fiat currencies and their digital equivalents would follow. What is interesting then is the potential for those tokens not just to be bought; sold; and shorted, as they are now, but later that they could become useful as currency - that is as communication of value. That suggests potential in Class 3 to prove more useful than Bitcoin even, because of that value relating directly to those real world currencies. That such digital token equivalents exist, would not necessarily affect their real counterpart in a bad way. Indeed having bitGBP, would enhance the status of the GBP directly. There is then opportunity here for the UK.gov to enable bitGBP to become de facto digital currency.

We perhaps need to understand where we are at.. we're a long way before mainstream where a bitGBP is seen as equivalent to GBP but that could move really quick. Right now we have those assets available. In the event the UK.gov does what I expect and then some enterprise offers the chance to use a debit card for a digital currency, then BitShares is well placed to allow a digital token that people understand the value of.. that's a HUGE advantage.. if we can make the process of creating GBP simple enough to understand for those who might.

Bare in mind that the majority of those with money, are unlikely to also be those who understand BitShares or any of blockchain technology.. we need to put in the effort to bridge that gap.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: hrossik on April 12, 2015, 09:04:37 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 12, 2015, 09:37:00 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: tsaishen on April 12, 2015, 09:43:58 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

Yeah something like is actually incoming.  Need to wait a few days to announce on it though.  Indexing to NASDAQ or DJIA would likely violate securities laws BTW.  However there are other things that wouldn't.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 12, 2015, 09:58:19 pm
basically the devs are giving up?

I only try to figure out the "reason" for their posts lol

How can we tell when a volcano will erupt?

Most volcanoes provide various types of warnings before eruptions begin. Although an explosive eruption could occur without warning, some premonitory events more likely will precede the next eruption. Steam-blast eruptions could occur with little or no warning as superheated water flashes to steam; magmatic eruptions, however, involve rise of magma toward the surface. Such an upward movement of magma normally will generate detectable earthquakes, may deform the ground surface, and may cause anomalous heat flow or changes in the temperature and chemistry of the groundwater and spring waters.

(http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/03/31/cantu_volcano.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 12, 2015, 10:00:58 pm
Thanks everybody for making this a very constructive thread.
You might be amazed how many of your suggestions are "conceivable".

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: suwoder on April 12, 2015, 10:12:41 pm
basically the devs are giving up?

I only try to figure out the "reason" for their posts lol

How can we tell when a volcano will erupt?

Most volcanoes provide various types of warnings before eruptions begin. Although an explosive eruption could occur without warning, some premonitory events more likely will precede the next eruption. Steam-blast eruptions could occur with little or no warning as superheated water flashes to steam; magmatic eruptions, however, involve rise of magma toward the surface. Such an upward movement of magma normally will generate detectable earthquakes, may deform the ground surface, and may cause anomalous heat flow or changes in the temperature and chemistry of the groundwater and spring waters.

(http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/03/31/cantu_volcano.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg)
metaphor again  :P :P :P
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: merivercap on April 12, 2015, 10:13:13 pm
1) "A referral program alone won’t get users to share your product. Your product has to solve a painful problem that the customer would naturally want to talk about even without the incentive." 

Problem: Bitcoin volatility and confirmation times for mass merchant/user adoption for payments
Solution: bitUSD (save 3% on credit card transaction fees just like Bitcoin without volatility or slow confirmation times.  Note: credit cards account for well over $3 Trillion out of $8.5 Trillion total payment processing volume.)  Focus everybody.  We need focus.

2) "Once you have a great product, make referrals as natural and effortless as possible."

From: The 2 Things You Need to Make Your Referral Program a Hit
https://blog.rjmetrics.com/2015/01/27/the-2-things-you-need-to-make-your-referral-program-a-hit/

Dropbox Example -

How Referrals Built The $10 Billion Dropbox Empire
http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/referrals-built-dropbox-empire/

3) Their product cost:  $99.   Cost of Acquisition: $238-388

4) 2-sided referral program - Both referral and referred got extra space.  Why not do the same with BTS?

5) Great Dropbox product + great referral = 100k to 4 million users in 15 months. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: rgcrypto on April 12, 2015, 10:14:15 pm
Thanks everybody for making this a very constructive thread.
You might be amazed how many of your suggestions are "conceivable".

You need to think BIGGER, Pinky...  ;)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: starspirit on April 12, 2015, 10:17:37 pm
(i) Product usability (ii) Business model (iii) Marketing.

 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 12, 2015, 10:18:31 pm
In other words the only thing that can keep this ship moving forward is additional funding and a change to the business model of the DAC that so that it can generate more revenue per user than it costs to acquire a new user.
...
In our case the cost to acquire a new user is currently well over $100, we need to find a way to fund that while lowering costs.

Surely this is wrong!? Are those really the only options?

Surely there is an option to consider more carefully how you are selling what you have? You don't necessarily need additional funding or to make a change to the business model.
...


"Dağ sana gelmezse, sen dağa gideceksin…"
("If the mountain won't come to you, you must go to the mountain.")

We have always said that the goal of a DAC is to be profitable
and as a business it should be constantly in persuit of that goal.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 12, 2015, 10:24:34 pm
Thanks everybody for making this a very constructive thread.
You might be amazed how many of your suggestions are "conceivable".

You need to think BIGGER, Pinky...  ;)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire.svg/440px-Pacific_Ring_of_Fire.svg.png)

The Ring of Fire is an area where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements. It has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.[1] It is sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 12, 2015, 10:26:44 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Interesting ideas.

Promotions are also huge for getting consumers to take the leap. If we were to consider adding promotional incentives, then the contracts between referrer and referee should be allowed to be set to a "limited time offer".

For example:

 "Sign up with my link within the next ten minutes and get %10 off transaction fees for the next two months"
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 12, 2015, 10:36:59 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Interesting ideas.

Promotions are also huge for getting consumers to take the leap. If we were to consider adding promotional incentives, then the contracts between referrer and referee should be allowed to be set to a "limited time offer".

For example:

 "Sign up with my link within the next ten minutes and get %10 off transaction fees for the next two months"

Further - there could be promotional offers in USD and GOLD. 

"Sign up within the next ten minutes and get a free $5 worth of gold"   ($5 worth of bGOLD could be escrowed and then released to referee upon sign up)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: MrJeans on April 12, 2015, 10:42:08 pm
If we sitting on a $100 acquisition fee/user:

Social network ID verification,
Install client,
Get free 20bitUSD,
Make a transaction of over 5bitUSD --> get another 15bitUSD
Get a friend to sign up and send them 5bitUSD --->get another 15bitUSD.

Like dropbox  ;D
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 12, 2015, 10:55:50 pm
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Interesting ideas.

Promotions are also huge for getting consumers to take the leap. If we were to consider adding promotional incentives, then the contracts between referrer and referee should be allowed to be set to a "limited time offer".

For example:

 "Sign up with my link within the next ten minutes and get %10 off transaction fees for the next two months"

Further - there could be promotional offers in USD and GOLD. 

"Sign up within the next ten minutes and get a free $5 worth of gold"   ($5 worth of bGOLD could be escrowed and then released to referee upon sign up)

One additional note on this promotional scenario.  The contract would be even better for the DAC and parties involved if the referree has to buy some amount of bit assets prior to earning the escrowed amount.   To accomplish this, the b/ch would read the contract, scans the referees account, and if the amount is in the account, the escrowed amount is sent from the referrer's escrow account to the referee's account.

"Buy 20oz of bGOLD, type in this promotion code and get 5oz bGOLD for free"
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Akado on April 12, 2015, 11:19:31 pm
If we sitting on a $100 acquisition fee/user:

Social network ID verification,
Install client,
Get free 20bitUSD,
Make a transaction of over 5bitUSD --> get another 15bitUSD
Get a friend to sign up and send them 5bitUSD --->get another 15bitUSD.

Like dropbox  ;D

This
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 12, 2015, 11:39:04 pm
If we sitting on a $100 acquisition fee/user:

Social network ID verification,
Install client,
Get free 20bitUSD,
Make a transaction of over 5bitUSD --> get another 15bitUSD
Get a friend to sign up and send them 5bitUSD --->get another 15bitUSD.

Like dropbox  ;D

In my opinion there should be a way to track and prove that the user did every step in a process. A sort of process chain where hashes or zero knowledge proofs are used. You need a sort of proof of process.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: NewMine on April 12, 2015, 11:59:53 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Totally agree. options would be great.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 13, 2015, 12:08:08 am
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Totally agree. options would be great.

 +5% +5% +5% +5%

Do we have enough liquidity to hold the pegs though?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: yellowecho on April 13, 2015, 02:08:34 am
You need this...
(http://static.abcteach.com/content_preview/b/basic_mop_bw_p.png)

In summation...

If you want BTS to take off you need to make it attractive and easy to use. 

Pricing and community are huge components of that attractiveness. 
Liquidity is a direct component of pricing.
Get more gateways and other commercial interests on board and dump the delegates not actually contributing.

Finally, ease of use and exposure are key to community building. 

Fix those and your problems are gone.

Just my 2 BTS.

Your analysis is spot on!

BitStocks and indexes, a stable client, and a mop please. :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Globally Distributed on April 13, 2015, 02:31:49 am
Please consider adding the ability for the referrer to give a portion of his transaction earnings to his referees. Add this because it allows referrers to incentivize potential users to sign up with the referrer's code/link.

"Sign up with my link and get 2% off transaction fees for life". 

This is like the "trade spend" concept we see in CPG businesses.

Just to expand a bit - I'd like to suggest that it may be preferable to use " transactional rebates" rather than "off-invoice discounts". 

For example:

     "Transaction occurs, user is charged 10bts.  User then receives 1 bts rebate." 

     may be more effective than

     "Transaction occurs, user is charged 9 bts"

...This may be splitting hairs, but in such a marginal business I'd like to be able to experiment with the options to optimize the effect on future transactions.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Volker on April 13, 2015, 04:43:09 am
BitShares cannot "take off" while bitcoin and the rest of crypto are in a bear market.

Yes, because that is number 4 on Stanimov's 7 deadly crypto natural laws:

"#4. only DarkDashTITANCOPYCoin can grow its market cap duting a bitcoin bear market."

DASH/DRK was the only coin on the list that figured out the whole supply vs. demand thing. If you want to create a DASH masternode (which receives new DASH in exchange for the masternode's mixing services), then you need to lock up 1000 DRK. Sort of like staking in Peercoin. You can't touch those 1000 DASH and you receive more DASH out of the block reward.

There are thousands of DASH masternodes now and they are each locking up $3000+ USD worth of DASH, taking it out of the supply. The people who run these masternodes then save up another 1000, and then "stake them" in order to get even more DASH.

BitShares could employ a similar strategy for delegates. Instead of having a registration bond that's destroyed, (which only motivates scam delegates to pretend to do work for a few weeks), we could instead have a large registration fee that's not destroyed, but is rather returned to the delegate after "canceling" delegate registration. Perhaps 1 million BTS. (If DASH can have $3000-required masternodes, we can have $4500-required delegates) So everyone who is a delegate or running as a delegate must have 1 million BTS locked up in the system. What would be the result?

1) All delegates are heavily invested in BTS compared to the pay they receive. Unless they truly believe that they will serve as beneficial delegates for a long time and that BTS will be worth more in the long-term, then becoming a 100% delegate will be too risky for them.  If they're willing to lock up 1 million BTS and risk getting fired in a few weeks for inaction or incompetency after BTS drops 30% against the USD, they'll lose money measured in USD.

2) 101 * 1 million = 101 million BTS taken out of supply by delegates alone and probably more because delegates need to lock up 1 million BTS on the blockchain to be eligible for votes.

Wow, your trolling of DASH just made me think of this on the spot. This is a damn good idea and solves delegate accountability and incentive issues  without having to micromanage them.

I'm sure some people will complain that it's elitist though.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 13, 2015, 05:14:18 am
for a referral program the payment has to be come from someone

we shouldn't increase transaction fees and just look into existing possibilities

- create a pool who will distributed and everyone can donate to him and we can elect delegates to fill this pool up

to be consider

every transaction i do on the exchange i have to pay, so if i want to trade in the future i will have the need to change my orders
constantly, on a normal exchange this transaction is total free, but we have to charge, so the costs should as low as possible.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fav on April 13, 2015, 05:19:53 am
for a referral program the payment has to be come from someone

we shouldn't increase transaction fees and just look into existing possibilities

- create a pool who will distributed and everyone can donate to him and we can elect delegates to fill this pool up

to be consider

every transaction i do on the exchange i have to pay, so if i want to trade in the future i will have the need to change my orders
constantly, on a normal exchange this transaction is total free, but we have to charge, so the costs should as low as possible.

employed by blockchain doesn't mean being depended on donations/external sources. I don't think an affiliate program can work this way.

It's true that you don't pay for order changes in an exchange, but you pay fees. it's not free
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: donkeypong on April 13, 2015, 06:56:44 am
for a referral program the payment has to be come from someone

we shouldn't increase transaction fees and just look into existing possibilities

- create a pool who will distributed and everyone can donate to him and we can elect delegates to fill this pool up

to be consider

every transaction i do on the exchange i have to pay, so if i want to trade in the future i will have the need to change my orders
constantly, on a normal exchange this transaction is total free, but we have to charge, so the costs should as low as possible.

Ah, but a good referral program can generate value. Marketeers will be spending their own money on ads and rounding up everyone they know. So any investment in creating this program really comes back in spades. This is more of an observation than advice, but if I were a wealthy investor I'd strongly consider going long on BTS, agreeing to underwrite this referral program, and then laughing all the way to the bank with the kind of profit that is hard to generate in today's financial markets. For a big fish, the amount needed to move this thing higher would be absolutely trivial, given the strong possibility of a very significant return. Know big fishies, people?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: hrossik on April 13, 2015, 10:48:02 am
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Totally agree. options would be great.

 +5% +5% +5% +5%

Do we have enough liquidity to hold the pegs though?

I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: svk on April 13, 2015, 11:57:14 am
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

In my opinion the 500k fee for short-name assets should only apply to user assets, creating a market asset should be a lot cheaper, more like 10k BTS. That way we could introduce interesting stocks with short ticker names and start trading them, with shorting and collateral backing. That would make the DEX a hell of a lot more interesting, and be something you could actually sell to your friends!
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Volker on April 13, 2015, 12:03:52 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

In my opinion the 500k fee for short-name assets should only apply to user assets, creating a market asset should be a lot cheaper, more like 10k BTS. That way we could introduce interesting stocks with short ticker names and start trading them, with shorting and collateral backing. That would make the DEX a hell of a lot more interesting, and be something you could actually sell to your friends!

Yeah, that would be great. But if users add thousands of MPAs to one big list for a 10k fee, it will look sloppy and unusable. It needs to be neat. Maybe the NASDAQ can have its own searchable tab full of NASDAQ stocks.  ETFs like Vanguard can have their own tab. The devs would have to work with us on this.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: svk on April 13, 2015, 12:08:42 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

In my opinion the 500k fee for short-name assets should only apply to user assets, creating a market asset should be a lot cheaper, more like 10k BTS. That way we could introduce interesting stocks with short ticker names and start trading them, with shorting and collateral backing. That would make the DEX a hell of a lot more interesting, and be something you could actually sell to your friends!

If users add them for a 10k fee, it might look sloppy. It needs to be neat and organized. Maybe the NASDAQ can have its own tab. ETFs can have its own tab. Separate categories of market pegged assets.

Yea the 10k might need to be higher to prevent spamming, but you can already add useless market assets with long names for 500 BTS, we have several of them already: CROWDFUN, DRAGON, TESTME, etc...

While I agree having separate categories would be ideal, it would take some testing and development to implement. Lowering the price for market assets is a very simple change that could be implemented immediately with huge benefits, imo.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: monsterer on April 13, 2015, 12:18:34 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

Google discontinued their API a while ago - the only way now is to scrape it, which is against TOS :(
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: svk on April 13, 2015, 12:22:26 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

Google discontinued their API a while ago - the only way now is to scrape it, which is against TOS :(

Yea I just realized that too, I found the disclaimer page first saying they provided realtime prices, then dug further only to see it was discontinued long ago :(
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: infovortice2013 on April 13, 2015, 12:44:18 pm
BitShares cannot "take off" while bitcoin and the rest of crypto are in a bear market.

Yes, because that is number 4 on Stanimov's 7 deadly crypto natural laws:

"#4. only DarkDashTITANCOPYCoin can grow its market cap duting a bitcoin bear market."

DASH/DRK was the only coin on the list that figured out the whole supply vs. demand thing. If you want to create a DASH masternode (which receives new DASH in exchange for the masternode's mixing services), then you need to lock up 1000 DRK. Sort of like staking in Peercoin. You can't touch those 1000 DASH and you receive more DASH out of the block reward.

There are thousands of DASH masternodes now and they are each locking up $3000+ USD worth of DASH, taking it out of the supply. The people who run these masternodes then save up another 1000, and then "stake them" in order to get even more DASH.

BitShares could employ a similar strategy for delegates. Instead of having a registration bond that's destroyed, (which only motivates scam delegates to pretend to do work for a few weeks), we could instead have a large registration fee that's not destroyed, but is rather returned to the delegate after "canceling" delegate registration. Perhaps 1 million BTS. (If DASH can have $3000-required masternodes, we can have $4500-required delegates) So everyone who is a delegate or running as a delegate must have 1 million BTS locked up in the system. What would be the result?

1) All delegates are heavily invested in BTS compared to the pay they receive. Unless they truly believe that they will serve as beneficial delegates for a long time and that BTS will be worth more in the long-term, then becoming a 100% delegate will be too risky for them.  If they're willing to lock up 1 million BTS and risk getting fired in a few weeks for inaction or incompetency after BTS drops 30% against the USD, they'll lose money measured in USD.

2) 101 * 1 million = 101 million BTS taken out of supply by delegates alone and probably more because delegates need to lock up 1 million BTS on the blockchain to be eligible for votes.

Wow, your trolling of DASH just made me think of this on the spot. This is a damn good idea and solves delegate accountability and incentive issues  without having to micromanage them.

I'm sure some people will complain that it's elitist though.


mmm i think dark make a great marketing campgain, the holders win insterest with masternodes, traders win so easy for a whale pumping his price, users talking hey this is the new bitcoin cose his stake is multiplying value!! from my point of view they colected lot of holders that now are trapped, if you make a masternode at 0.02 - 20 btc to win 3 or 4 darks per month .... if you wanna sell it now at 0.013 you take 13 btc LOL they have alot of forced holders-master nodes, and the whale make his profit.. good profit ... and this is the model.
Sure cant compare with BitShares DPOS delegates model.... no way, here the value to be delegate is what you can give,offer,make for grow BitShares, here ask for your talent or your business, whatever productive, not for your money like dark.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 13, 2015, 01:18:29 pm
From what you all tell me of Dark, it looks like they are supporting their price NuBits style, offering interest to encourage holding.  As long as the interest rate is above the long-term price decline everyone holding is breaking even.

I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

In effect YIELD == DRK model.  Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 13, 2015, 01:42:44 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

Stock splits are holding us back too. Delegates would have to provide a feed that says when a stock is split, otherwise shorters make 100% instantly.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xeroc on April 13, 2015, 01:44:39 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

Stock splits are holding us back too. Delegates would have to provide a feed that says when a stock is split, otherwise shorters make 100% instantly.
I am not a trader nor very familiar with all of those .. but why would you want to have a stock split if you can issue an asset with precisions >1 ..
same thing with bitcoin .. you don't need to buy a 'whole' bitcoin :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: btswildpig on April 13, 2015, 01:47:15 pm
From what you all tell me of Dark, it looks like they are supporting their price NuBits style, offering interest to encourage holding.  As long as the interest rate is above the long-term price decline everyone holding is breaking even.

I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

In effect YIELD == DRK model.  Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.

It won't encourage holding . Exchanges can easily "honor" the yield on their site so that people won't leave .
Also I doubt Dark's price is base on any of its features  , but rather a really well funded group of speculators to pump it .

The difference between the interest given by the banks and the interest in crypto is that , interest given by banks actually come from their business , from the borrower ,  so it's an actual wealth for the holders . While interest in crypto only gives you coins , but doesn't add extra value to the existing system , so in the end you get more coins , but you don't get more value .

The only way this will work well is the kind of interest supported by the business income instead of delegate dilution .
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 13, 2015, 01:49:25 pm
Companies do stock splits when the cost of the share gets too high, because you cant buy half a share. Its psychological. Yes you may be able to buy half a BitAAPL, but the asset that it tracks can only be bought whole.

I think Apple did one around when their stock price was $700.

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: svk on April 13, 2015, 01:49:45 pm
I also believe we should add stocks as market assets, specifically I'd like to see something like Vanguard ETFs. Google provides realtime stock prices so feeds should not be an issue, the only thing holding us back is the price of registration.

Stock splits are holding us back too. Delegates would have to provide a feed that says when a stock is split, otherwise shorters make 100% instantly.
I am not a trader nor very familiar with all of those .. but why would you want to have a stock split if you can issue an asset with precisions >1 ..
same thing with bitcoin .. you don't need to buy a 'whole' bitcoin :)

A stock split is when a company divides existing shares into additional shares (you can also do the reverse). The market cap remains the same but the price per share will decrease by the ratio of new shares to old shares.

ETFs or indexes would mitigate this kind of issue though, any individual stock split will have very little effect on the index.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 13, 2015, 01:52:53 pm
A stock split is when a company divides existing shares into additional shares (you can also do the reverse). The market cap remains the same but the price per share will decrease by the ratio of new shares to old shares.

ETFs or indexes would mitigate this kind of issue though, any individual stock split will have very little effect on the index.

But if we have a BitAsset that tracks an individual share, then this is still a problem. We cant always use indexes.

Maybe one way to solve this problem is to have a BitStock that tracks a portion of the entire market cap of the company, which like you said stays the same after a split.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: svk on April 13, 2015, 01:57:37 pm
A stock split is when a company divides existing shares into additional shares (you can also do the reverse). The market cap remains the same but the price per share will decrease by the ratio of new shares to old shares.

ETFs or indexes would mitigate this kind of issue though, any individual stock split will have very little effect on the index.

But if we have a BitAsset that tracks an individual share, then this is still a problem. We cant always use indexes.

Maybe one way to solve this problem is to have a BitStock that tracks a portion of the entire market cap of the company, which like you said stays the same after a split.

I'm a bit of a Boglehead so I'm not really interested in individual stocks anyway ;)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xh3 on April 13, 2015, 02:17:42 pm
This is what I see....


Bitshares is :(http://globe-views.com/dcim/dreams/clouds/clouds-06.jpg)

it needs to be
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Logan_Rock_Treen_closeup.jpg)

so that it can be used as

(http://my.whirlwindsteel.com/Portals/205050/images/metal%20building%20foundations.jpg)

to build

(http://desktophive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Skyscrapers-Mirror-1024x768.jpg)

and eventually

(http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/exposure/content/photo/photo/53330_chicago_u4otpkuoohegc34cxym6cgqbe3ncurxrbvj6lwuht2ya6mzmafma_610x457.jpg)


individual users are great, but what if bitshares could be used as a protocol by larger businesses.  That would drive business by orders of magnitude, and it seems to me that there are thousands of use cases out there.  The engine could do it all if it were solid enough for people to place large bets upon.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: joele on April 13, 2015, 02:27:41 pm
We need a business opportunity inside the wallet, one is lending business for traders.
Like I can lend my bitUSD so traders can short any market trading bitUSD at any price they want with no cover expiration as long as they continue to pay the % fee daily.
Then I can earn daily % of interest with % fee to bitshares as well.  Like how bitfinex,com works, but it is better from decentralized exchanger.

Another business opportunity  is insurance to lenders. 

How nice to invest more fiat money if we have this features in the wallet.

just my +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 13, 2015, 02:32:53 pm
We need a business opportunity inside the wallet, one is lending business for traders.
Like I can lend my bitUSD so traders can short any market trading bitUSD at any price they want with no cover expiration as long as they continue to pay the % fee daily.
Then I can earn daily % of interest with % fee to bitshares as well.  Like how bitfinex,com works, but it is better from decentralized exchanger.

Another business opportunity  is insurance to lenders. 

How nice to invest more fiat money if we have this features in the wallet.

just my +5%

Yes! Unfortunately bond market is post 1.0.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: MrJeans on April 13, 2015, 02:37:52 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Totally agree. options would be great.

 +5% +5% +5% +5%

Do we have enough liquidity to hold the pegs though?

I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program
Got my  +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fuzzy on April 13, 2015, 03:07:20 pm
I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
Totally agree. options would be great.

 +5% +5% +5% +5%

Do we have enough liquidity to hold the pegs though?

I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program
Got my  +5%

Now this is what I call solution-oriented, constructive feedback. Maybe we should have you giving your thoughts more often.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: nz on April 13, 2015, 03:23:08 pm
I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program


This makes the most sense from everything i have read so far. Practical and realistic IMO.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: donkeypong on April 13, 2015, 03:30:41 pm
I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program


#1 is a must. #'s 2 and 3 could be done together. For many successful businesses, building a robust referral network IS part of ordinary marketing.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 13, 2015, 03:35:30 pm
We need a business opportunity inside the wallet, one is lending business for traders.
Like I can lend my bitUSD so traders can short any market trading bitUSD at any price they want with no cover expiration as long as they continue to pay the % fee daily.
Then I can earn daily % of interest with % fee to bitshares as well.  Like how bitfinex,com works, but it is better from decentralized exchanger.

Another business opportunity  is insurance to lenders. 

How nice to invest more fiat money if we have this features in the wallet.

just my +5%

We also need margin trading, and some composite indexes.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: davidpbrown on April 13, 2015, 03:35:54 pm
I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program


This makes the most sense from everything i have read so far. Practical and realistic IMO.


 +5% +5% +5% +5%

Those 1.2.3. priorities (and in that order) are exactly what I've been looking for .. simple to understand and easy to communicate.
If those are then backed up in the marketing narrative, with or without milestones, such clear focus will go a long way to maintaining interest and confidence.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: carpet ride on April 13, 2015, 03:45:25 pm

I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program


#1 is a must. #'s 2 and 3 could be done together. For many successful businesses, building a robust referral network IS part of ordinary marketing.

+5%
Referrals are ordinary marketing.  There are really only two steps. 1) and 2).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fav on April 13, 2015, 03:46:07 pm
I am glad I am not the only one, who finds this idea attractive. Is there enough liquidity? I don't know, but I will tell my perspective: I am a conservative investor in BTS terms, but I trust the bitUSD peg to hold and I believe, it would hold also for other assets (if they were useful - such as indexes). And indexes are far less speculative investment than BTS, so I could invest like 2x - 3x more than I am currently in BTS

To me, a referral program is completely worthless. At present I don't tell my friends/family about BitShares, because there is nothing useful for them here (I just discuss with them the theoretical aspects of BS, mostly without mentioning it). And a referral program won't change it. On the other hand, as soon as there appears something useful for them in BitShares, I will begin spreading the word WITH or WITHOUT the referral program.

My priorities:

1) Finish 1.0 and introduce other pegged assets (stocks, indexes, commodities)
2) Wait for the word to spread + use ordinary marketing channels
3) If this doesn't help, start referral program


#1 is a must. #'s 2 and 3 could be done together. For many successful businesses, building a robust referral network IS part of ordinary marketing.

 +5%

I don't see any reason not to add an affiliate program. some may not like it on personal level, but it's a cheap and incredible tool to get the ball rolling.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: joele on April 13, 2015, 03:50:13 pm
In the coming 1.0
  Does the 30 days short auto cover going to remove?
  Can we short below the peg?

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: luckybit on April 13, 2015, 04:34:05 pm
From what you all tell me of Dark, it looks like they are supporting their price NuBits style, offering interest to encourage holding.  As long as the interest rate is above the long-term price decline everyone holding is breaking even.

I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

In effect YIELD == DRK model.  Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.

This is an interesting idea.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Helikopterben on April 13, 2015, 06:50:13 pm
Bitshares hasn't taken off yet because there isn't a working product yet, IMO.  End users are not going to use a resource-intensive full client.  They will use a web or mobile client.  Only delegates need to run full nodes.  We are very close to the end user solution. 

I have used many exchanges:  bitstamp, bitfinex, coinbase, bter, poloniex, mtgox, btc-e, vircurex, mcxnow.  Bitfinex is by far the best as far as functionality and ease of use IMO.   Maybe I can explain this graphically:

(http://i.imgur.com/OmiI5zX.png)

1)  Direct exchange between assets.  From what I understand, this is tricky to do but it is absolutely necessary to compete with centralized exchanges.  A BTC/USD asset pair is essential and could be the focus to begin with for a real, working product.  Bitfinex alone had over 1.2 million bitcoin exchange volume in February.

2)  Advanced order types.  These order types are very useful to traders.  Coinbase exchange does not have these order types, only bare bones buy and sell, yet monthly volume in February was over 320,000 BTC - and this is only their 4th month trading.

3)  Deposit/withdrawal.  This is necessary and could go through direct links to on/off ramps such as metaexchange. 

(http://i.imgur.com/XSEgla3.png)

As others have stated, leverage is something traders absolutely want.  Bitfinex uses 2.5:1 and OKCoin goes all the way up to 20:1.  Bitfinex uses a P2P style lending between users.  This may also be tricky to do in a blockchain-based system, but is necessary to compete.  A P2P lending market may be the easiest to implement.



A simple web-based platform for buying and selling bitcoin and USD would be a good start.  The key selling point would be that you are trading in a trust-minimized, blockchain-based environment with no third party risk.  A report (http://45% of bitcoin exchanges fail, study finds) as of April 2013 states that 45% of all bitcoin exchanges fail.  That rate may be higher by now.  If you percieve the risk of catastrophic systemic failure (where everyone loses all of their money) from bitshares at less than 45%, then the decentralized exchange is your best option, and bitshares has been in existence for nearly one year now without systemic failure in which you lose all of your money and that type of failure has never really been a threat.

This should lead to other markets being bootstrapped for trading.  Eventually, the web-based interface could have a similar user experience to something like TD Ameritrade (https://www.tdameritrade.com/investment-products.page), without the threat of third-party risk or censorship from using the system for any reason.  End user security is very important with 2fa or something similar being mandatory. 

Also, I don't like the rule requiring shorts to cover after 30 days.  This was done to increase liquidity in the system, but may be taking liquidity from the system as users don't like the time limit on their trade, therefore they are being discouraged from initiating a short in the first place.  I would like to see this rule removed completely or at least scaled back quite a bit.



tl;dr - We need to mimic the user experience of centralized exchanges such as bitfinex while using the bitshares blockchain as the backend to create a trust-minimized trading and asset storage environment.  We should start by bootstrapping the BTC/USD market, which had a monthly trade volume of over 15 million coins in February alone.  Just 0.5% of that market should be plenty to bootstrap the entire bitshares system with a healthy market cap and reasonable pay for developers.  Then, more functionality can be added.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Volker on April 13, 2015, 06:58:29 pm
From what you all tell me of Dark, it looks like they are supporting their price NuBits style, offering interest to encourage holding.  As long as the interest rate is above the long-term price decline everyone holding is breaking even.

I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

In effect YIELD == DRK model.  Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.

This is an interesting idea.

Unclaimed delegate funds would otherwise not be in circulation, right? Wouldn't adding a yield introduce new dilution? The idea is to reduce BTS in circulation so that unchanged demand results in higher prices.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: NewMine on April 13, 2015, 07:14:02 pm
We need a business opportunity inside the wallet, one is lending business for traders.
Like I can lend my bitUSD so traders can short any market trading bitUSD at any price they want with no cover expiration as long as they continue to pay the % fee daily.
Then I can earn daily % of interest with % fee to bitshares as well.  Like how bitfinex,com works, but it is better from decentralized exchanger.

Another business opportunity  is insurance to lenders. 

How nice to invest more fiat money if we have this features in the wallet.

just my +5%

We also need margin trading, and some composite indexes.

You can't lend to other traders because of risk and trust issues. You might be able to lend to the blockchain though.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 13, 2015, 07:17:59 pm
Bitshares hasn't taken off yet because there isn't a working product yet, IMO.  End users are not going to use a resource-intensive full client.  They will use a web or mobile client.  Only delegates need to run full nodes.  We are very close to the end user solution. 

I have used many exchanges:  bitstamp, bitfinex, coinbase, bter, poloniex, mtgox, btc-e, vircurex, mcxnow.  Bitfinex is by far the best as far as functionality and ease of use IMO.   Maybe I can explain this graphically:

(http://i.imgur.com/OmiI5zX.png)

1)  Direct exchange between assets.  From what I understand, this is tricky to do but it is absolutely necessary to compete with centralized exchanges.  A BTC/USD asset pair is essential and could be the focus to begin with for a real, working product.  Bitfinex alone had over 1.2 million bitcoin exchange volume in February.

2)  Advanced order types.  These order types are very useful to traders.  Coinbase exchange does not have these order types, only bare bones buy and sell, yet monthly volume in February was over 320,000 BTC - and this is only their 4th month trading.

3)  Deposit/withdrawal.  This is necessary and could go through direct links to on/off ramps such as metaexchange. 

(http://i.imgur.com/XSEgla3.png)

As others have stated, leverage is something traders absolutely want.  Bitfinex uses 2.5:1 and OKCoin goes all the way up to 20:1.  Bitfinex uses a P2P style lending between users.  This may also be tricky to do in a blockchain-based system, but is necessary to compete.  A P2P lending market may be the easiest to implement.



A simple web-based platform for buying and selling bitcoin and USD would be a good start.  The key selling point would be that you are trading in a trust-minimized, blockchain-based environment with no third party risk.  A report (http://45% of bitcoin exchanges fail, study finds) as of April 2013 states that 45% of all bitcoin exchanges fail.  That rate may be higher by now.  If you percieve the risk of catastrophic systemic failure (where everyone loses all of their money) from bitshares at less than 45%, then the decentralized exchange is your best option, and bitshares has been in existence for nearly one year now without systemic failure in which you lose all of your money and that type of failure has never really been a threat.

This should lead to other markets being bootstrapped for trading.  Eventually, the web-based interface could have a similar user experience to something like TD Ameritrade (https://www.tdameritrade.com/investment-products.page), without the threat of third-party risk or censorship from using the system for any reason.  End user security is very important with 2fa or something similar being mandatory. 

Also, I don't like the rule requiring shorts to cover after 30 days.  This was done to increase liquidity in the system, but may be taking liquidity from the system as users don't like the time limit on their trade, therefore they are being discouraged from initiating a short in the first place.  I would like to see this rule removed completely or at least scaled back quite a bit.



tl;dr - We need to mimic the user experience of centralized exchanges such as bitfinex while using the bitshares blockchain as the backend to create a trust-minimized trading and asset storage environment.  We should start by bootstrapping the BTC/USD market, which had a monthly trade volume of over 15 million coins in February alone.  Just 0.5% of that market should be plenty to bootstrap the entire bitshares system with a healthy market cap and reasonable pay for developers.  Then, more functionality can be added.

thanks for the time to analyse this.

most of the points i agree with you.

we should really rethink the 30 day rule. It hurt me a lot, because i couln't cover my short exposure because of existing market bugs. the 30 day rule was integrated to help increase liquidity, but in reality i just shorted most of the time to my self with 0.0 yield.

1. we should remove the 30 day rule
2. we should take a minimum fee for shorting - say 2%. Maybe the contract will run 30 days and if i not cover he will prolonged for .5% more interest to pay - so for the second period i would have to pay 2.5% to let my short active our cover and start a new short.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Method-X on April 13, 2015, 08:10:08 pm
bugs still exist in the market place, according to the designed rules, some BitUSD/BTS orders should be traded but now they do not, even the old  users are disappointed for this, please try to fix the bugs ASAP.

 +5%

we are selling top notch bicycles without wheels and we are wondering why we have not enough sells...

I guarantee you:
1)even if we raise the salary of our bicycle sellers (we already tried that with the merge)
2)even if we use fancy colors to attract more buyers
3)even
4)even
5)...
6)...
7)...
...
...

I bet we will not have much better results if we don't...
Install the fu#@# wheels >:(
Think simple NOT complicated

(http://stompernet.com/products/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/bicycle2.jpg)

 +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: betax on April 13, 2015, 08:29:11 pm
Fantastic, this is the Bitshares community getting involved. Bytemaster starts an idea (referrals), and now we are all talking again.
It is pointless that developers (bytemaster) cannot talk, as long as we don't do another merger.

I love the feedback:

1. Finish the product
2. Bonds, lending (can be done in parallel to point 1?, to no stop innovation... do we need resource)
3. Shorts 30 days not working.
4. Light wallet

My random points:

We need a roadmap and backlog! that everyone can contribute with ideas.

We should collaborate and complement bitcoin and other chains, stop competing where possible. (Bitcoin killer, bank killer, anything else killer...)

I don't think referral is important, what is important is a business value to continue using the product. If I can make money by p2p lending, I will use it. If my crypto currency investment is protected in USD (other currency) and I can easy (liquidity) exchange it I will use it. If I can easily convert to Fiat my bit(Asset) earned in my website, I will use it, and once I have confidence on the product I might keep it here. (we also have already plugins for ecommerce but without a full working product we cannot "sell" them).

I would love to see crosschain integration, will the moonstone wallet allow this?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xh3 on April 13, 2015, 09:57:47 pm
emulating Bitfinex would be a good place to start IMO

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: arhag on April 13, 2015, 09:58:44 pm
1)  Direct exchange between assets.  From what I understand, this is tricky to do but it is absolutely necessary to compete with centralized exchanges.  A BTC/USD asset pair is essential and could be the focus to begin with for a real, working product.  Bitfinex alone had over 1.2 million bitcoin exchange volume in February.

I agree that direct exchange between assets (really it is an exchange of IOUs that one can use to redeem the underlying asset) is a big deal. I am a fan of using the delegate system as a multisig (and/or threshold sig) to hold the reserves of cryptocoins (like BTC) backing official IOUs of those cryptocoins on the BitShares blockchain. However, if you want "direct" exchange against fiat (like USD) then we must wait until fiat gateways come online. Who knows when that will happen.

2)  Advanced order types.  These order types are very useful to traders.  Coinbase exchange does not have these order types, only bare bones buy and sell, yet monthly volume in February was over 320,000 BTC - and this is only their 4th month trading.

I am a fan of adding "limit order" types to the DEX. I have discussed this elsewhere but the idea is that it would actually be an Immediate or Cancel limit order (not a regular limit order which is why I put it in quotes) to prevent front running. Then the client can automatically place any remaining unfilled amounts as a regular YGWYAF order in the next block. This would effectively simulate a limit order while removing the risk of front running.

As for the other fancy order types (stop, trailing stop), I believe we should leave that to smart contracts. Once a DApp / Smart contract / Turing complete script mechanism is on the blockchain, traders can utilize those to do all kinds of fancy order that haven't even been thought of yet. The smart contract would be responsible for actually placing and canceling the limit orders on behalf of the trader according to the programmable script. The obvious scripts (like stop and trailing stop) would initially be made available for traders, but in theory people could design their own.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Fox on April 13, 2015, 10:34:01 pm
We need a roadmap and backlog! that everyone can contribute with ideas.

I follow this:
https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/milestones

Been disappointed of late with slipping dates. Awaiting updates for 8.2 and 9.0 now past due. I endevour to make contributions as well.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Helikopterben on April 13, 2015, 11:33:44 pm
emulating Bitfinex would be a good place to start IMO

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)

The concept is quite simple really.  Copy the user experience of centralized exchanges.  The difference being a backend controlled by the bitshares blockchain instead of a centrally managed database. 

I like to think of it as similar to http vs https.  Users are trained to look for the 's' at the end to know they are on a secure website.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.  They see no difference when interacting with the secure vs non-secure site.  They just know that general consensus is that the 's' means it is secure. 

Users should see no difference between interacting with a centralized exchange vs a decentralized exchange.  Perhaps they see something that says 'Powered by Bitshares' to confirm security, just as they see an 's' to confirm security.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, they just know that 'Powered by Bitshares' means they are in a secure environment, and that secure environment utilizes the bitshares blockchain as the backend instead of a centrally managed database as the backend.


@arhag
advanced orders could be added later.  A simple web-based interface for trading between bitcoin and USD would be enough to have a working product that could get things up and running.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: godzirra on April 13, 2015, 11:53:07 pm
emulating Bitfinex would be a good place to start IMO

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)

The concept is quite simple really.  Copy the user experience of centralized exchanges.  The difference being a backend controlled by the bitshares blockchain instead of a centrally managed database. 

I like to think of it as similar to http vs https.  Users are trained to look for the 's' at the end to know they are on a secure website.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.  They see no difference when interacting with the secure vs non-secure site.  They just know that general consensus is that the 's' means it is secure. 

Users should see no difference between interacting with a centralized exchange vs a decentralized exchange.  Perhaps they see something that says 'Powered by Bitshares' to confirm security, just as they see an 's' to confirm security.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, they just know that 'Powered by Bitshares' means they are in a secure environment, and that secure environment utilizes the bitshares blockchain as the backend instead of a centrally managed database
+5% Brilliant. I like the way you think.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bluebit on April 14, 2015, 12:26:13 am
From what you all tell me of Dark, it looks like they are supporting their price NuBits style, offering interest to encourage holding.  As long as the interest rate is above the long-term price decline everyone holding is breaking even.

I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

In effect YIELD == DRK model.  Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen.

I mentioned this once in the forums but nobody listened. It needs to be at least 5% interest per year, more would be better. Anything lower and you will not attract many investors.

In the code you should make it possible that the longer you keep it in your wallet, the more interest you earn. You get paid every week interest. This encourages holding. Once the price moves up, naturally people will start to sell.

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: merivercap on April 14, 2015, 12:49:23 am
emulating Bitfinex would be a good place to start IMO

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)

The concept is quite simple really.  Copy the user experience of centralized exchanges.  The difference being a backend controlled by the bitshares blockchain instead of a centrally managed database. 

I like to think of it as similar to http vs https.  Users are trained to look for the 's' at the end to know they are on a secure website.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.  They see no difference when interacting with the secure vs non-secure site.  They just know that general consensus is that the 's' means it is secure. 

Users should see no difference between interacting with a centralized exchange vs a decentralized exchange.  Perhaps they see something that says 'Powered by Bitshares' to confirm security, just as they see an 's' to confirm security.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, they just know that 'Powered by Bitshares' means they are in a secure environment, and that secure environment utilizes the bitshares blockchain as the backend instead of a centrally managed database
+5% Brilliant. I like the way you think.

I think this is good, but are you suggesting the core devs focus on the front end too or mainly be the backend blockchain & market engine and provide an SDK for other companies to build various UI/UX (ie. Etrade/Think or Swim/Tradestation/Bitfinex/Kraken etc.)?  I think the current BitShares webwallet can be combined with a good UI/UX trading platform, but there is so many ways to go with the UI/UX I'm wondering if it could be left to other companies to run with it just like for wallets.  I think it would be good to use Bitfinex as the model for the bitShares version because it's one of the better ones out there.  I think even Bitfinex can significantly be improved, but they have a relatively simple UI/UX which is very good compared to others.  They get most of their volume through leverage, ability to margin/short & earn interest on Bitcoin.  The UI/UX is very good, but it's secondary to the features.   
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: arhag on April 14, 2015, 12:59:15 am
I got to thinking about why it is so hard to bootstrap a business in crypto and it is because NEW investors are always bailing out OLD investors which sucks up all of the capital.   We can easily resolve all of this by placing unclaimed BTS from delegates INTO a yield fund for BTS holders.   Having a yield fund would encourage people to move their money off of exchanges and to hold it for longer periods of time. 

The side effect of a yield fund is that it wouldn't actually debase ANYONE except those who are looking to cash out short term. IE: transfer of value from those who want short term liquidity to those who are in this for the long run.

This adds considerable complication at the risk of not achieving the goals you want. As btswildpig mentioned, the exchanges can simply collect the interest (and design the BTS deposit and withdrawal process to maximize interest collected) and pass that interest on to their customers.

But if you wanted to implement something like this I would demand it be done better than the way BitAsset yield is done. First, the order in which people claim the yield should not effect the yield amount collected. The yield amount collected should purely be a function of the quantity of BTS in the balance and the time elapsed since it was last moved. Second, in order to not penalize delegate voters, updating a BTS balance's delegate slate should not reset the time. Furthermore, it should be possible to withdraw some amount of BTS from a balance and have the remaining BTS balance keep the old move time (so it doesn't negatively impact future yield on the remaining balance).

Personally, I don't think it is worth it.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: botfund on April 14, 2015, 01:03:44 am
Bitshares hasn't taken off yet because there isn't a working product yet, IMO.  End users are not going to use a resource-intensive full client.  They will use a web or mobile client.  Only delegates need to run full nodes.  We are very close to the end user solution. 

I have used many exchanges:  bitstamp, bitfinex, coinbase, bter, poloniex, mtgox, btc-e, vircurex, mcxnow.  Bitfinex is by far the best as far as functionality and ease of use IMO.   Maybe I can explain this graphically:
...
+5%
Also expect to change the rule of "you get what price you ask" to align with almost every other exchange to "get the same or better price". We have dilution and the rule of "you get whatever price you ask no better price" makes no sense now. All in all, make it feel more like a traditional exchange.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: botfund on April 14, 2015, 01:16:07 am
+5%
Also expect to change the rule of "you get what price you ask" to align with almost every other exchange to "get the same or better price". We have dilution and the rule of "you get whatever price you ask no better price" makes no sense now. All in all, make it feel more like a traditional exchange.

For transaction fee purpose, the delegate now has the dilution. For market depth, it's much better to use maker-taker mechanism. With some automation, it's still quite easy to wipe the depth.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: joele on April 14, 2015, 04:56:20 am
Then we can rebrand Bitshares once all these great ideas implemented, we can called it BitsharesX :D
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: btswildpig on April 14, 2015, 05:01:42 am
Then we can rebrand Bitshares once all these great ideas implemented, we can called it BitsharesX :D

lol....BitShares was called BitSharesX before .....
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: clayop on April 14, 2015, 05:11:02 am
Then we can rebrand Bitshares once all these great ideas implemented, we can called it BitsharesX :D

lol....BitShares was called BitSharesX before .....
Then BitSharesY?  :P
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fav on April 14, 2015, 05:19:47 am
Then we can rebrand Bitshares once all these great ideas implemented, we can called it BitsharesX :D

lol....BitShares was called BitSharesX before .....

how about SuperBITnet :D

my top 3:

1. Affiliate System - marketer will bring users, merchants, devs and whatnot.
2. "User Experience like centralized exchanges" (moonstone?)
3. 1.0 features
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Markus on April 14, 2015, 06:02:40 am
What about YBitShares?
… the question mark is of course part of the name :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xeroc on April 14, 2015, 06:05:32 am
emulating Bitfinex would be a good place to start IMO

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)

The concept is quite simple really.  Copy the user experience of centralized exchanges.  The difference being a backend controlled by the bitshares blockchain instead of a centrally managed database. 

I like to think of it as similar to http vs https.  Users are trained to look for the 's' at the end to know they are on a secure website.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.  They see no difference when interacting with the secure vs non-secure site.  They just know that general consensus is that the 's' means it is secure. 

Users should see no difference between interacting with a centralized exchange vs a decentralized exchange.  Perhaps they see something that says 'Powered by Bitshares' to confirm security, just as they see an 's' to confirm security.  They have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, they just know that 'Powered by Bitshares' means they are in a secure environment, and that secure environment utilizes the bitshares blockchain as the backend instead of a centrally managed database as the backend.


@arhag
advanced orders could be added later.  A simple web-based interface for trading between bitcoin and USD would be enough to have a working product that could get things up and running.
I was talking about this somewhere else and got the following response from Dan Notestein:

Quote
dannotestein 10:20 PM

I think we'll essentially have this very soon via the web wallet. You'll have your account there, and it will have a "Deposits/Withdrawal" type page with links to blocktrades and metaexchange.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 14, 2015, 10:34:18 am
As well as easy deposits/withdrawals, the web wallet needs a decent 4 letter domain name. It deserves more than just being a subdomain at wallet.bitshares.org.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: liondani on April 14, 2015, 10:43:05 am
Then we can rebrand Bitshares once all these great ideas implemented, we can called it BitsharesX :D

lol....BitShares was called BitSharesX before .....

it was more successful with this name :P
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: lil_jay890 on April 14, 2015, 02:43:45 pm
So what exactly is happening right now?  Is bitshares once again pivoting in a completely new direction?  Has 1.0 been delayed?  I see no milestones have been updated or achieved recently.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 14, 2015, 02:54:36 pm
I totally agree with Helicopter Ben's analysis. The reason its not taking off is because the product is incomplete (but its getting close). A referral scheme is not going to help if we dont fix that first.

wallet.bitshares.org:

Btw there is a fun video game where you can play as helicopter ben: http://projects.wsj.com/games/thefederator/
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: nz on April 14, 2015, 03:01:50 pm
I totally agree with Helicopter Ben's analysis. The reason its not taking off is because the product is incomplete (but its getting close). A referral scheme is not going to help if we dont fix that first.

wallet.bitshares.org:
  • Has no easy deposit page - integration with metaexchange and blocktrades needs to be seamless, not just a link
  • Still feels kinda slow
  • Needs its own brand identity
  • Logging in as a guest and the dashboard is totally empty - needs to be buzzing with activity.

Btw there is a fun video game where you can play as helicopter ben: http://projects.wsj.com/games/thefederator/
good suggestion speedy
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Helikopterben on April 14, 2015, 03:07:29 pm
I think this is good, but are you suggesting the core devs focus on the front end too or mainly be the backend blockchain & market engine and provide an SDK for other companies to build various UI/UX (ie. Etrade/Think or Swim/Tradestation/Bitfinex/Kraken etc.)?

Delegates can be hired to work on both the front end and back end.  Of course anyone could utilize the back end as a market engine for their platform. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xh3 on April 14, 2015, 03:55:42 pm
Traders want

(https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10360352_898759343503540_4493373999957082142_n.jpg?oh=8a5ee4e04a81289734788caa762c0ad0&oe=5598F51E)

and

(https://www.bitfinex.com/assets/logo.png)


and

(https://d1ewxbznfa539k.cloudfront.net/s/_logo/0322ba46f5ed85b4b30d32aaadc19af0.png)

businesses want

(http://highnames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Visa-Card-With-High-balance-small.jpg)

and
(http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m13445304_Wells-Fargo-Logo_514x260.jpg)

and

(http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/wstern_union_monogram.gif)


Everybody wants

(http://www.sweepspros.com/img/flag_what_we_do.png)

and

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Logan_Rock_Treen_closeup.jpg)

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: davidpbrown on April 14, 2015, 05:37:23 pm
Before this thread becomes charades, can I just suggest another hurdle to adoption? For Linux users having a repository would be a big positive and save them the worry and time building it. I wonder perhaps 20% of Linux users know how to build from source and follow instructions but perhaps there's then an untapped 80% just waiting in the wings? Bitcoin has a PPA, I'm not sure of any others though some are java download but still having that would be an advantage welcoming all levels of user. Yes, it's a hassle to get it working but then it'll save an order of magnitude more users that time.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Stan on April 14, 2015, 06:50:51 pm
So what exactly is happening right now?  Is bitshares once again pivoting in a completely new direction?  Has 1.0 been delayed?  I see no milestones have been updated or achieved recently.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15576.msg200373.html#msg200373
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bitmarket on April 15, 2015, 06:58:17 am
Chiming in late here, but just wanted to let everyone know that I think a built in referral program is a great idea.    A killer idea if you will under the heading of marketing.  But as StarSpirit pointed out the needs of bitshares in priority are below.  Userbillity and UX are orders of magnitude more important than marketing right now for the exact reason BM named in his OP.

The reason users cost so much to acquire is because so many prospects once in introduced give up before making or using an account.

It is important to talk about all of these topics including marketing even though it is not the highest priority is so hopefully everything comes together all at once and we dont get somewhere and realize we missed a piece of the puzzle.

(i) Product usability (ii) Business model (iii) Marketing.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Empirical1.2 on April 15, 2015, 04:58:43 pm
I think the built in referral program is a great idea and will result in more marketing success than is currently achieved via the delegate system as marketers and third parties will be paid for results they actually achieve. 

However BTS has a product problem rather than a marketing problem at this stage as most have said.

We've actually already acquired enough users imo in the form of BTS shareholders to drive the BitAsset CAP to the $5-10 million range and hence a much stronger BTS valuation and it will grow easily from there.

I also think if the effect on liquidity won't be dire, making the 30 day cover rule much longer would be better.   

I really liked helikoperben's analysis https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15692.msg201882.html#msg201882
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 15, 2015, 05:38:08 pm
I think the built in referral program is a great idea and will result in more marketing success than is currently achieved via the delegate system as marketers and third parties will be paid for results they actually achieve. 

However BTS has a product problem rather than a marketing problem at this stage as most have said.

We've actually already acquired enough users imo in the form of BTS shareholders to drive the BitAsset CAP to the $5-10 million range and hence a much stronger BTS valuation and it will grow easily from there.

I also think if the effect on liquidity won't be dire, making the 30 day cover rule much longer would be better.   

I really liked helikoperben's analysis https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15692.msg201882.html#msg201882

The referral system would motivate companies like moonstone to solve the wallet / user facing issues.   Meanwhile we are actively solving blockchain/market level issues. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Ander on April 15, 2015, 06:27:22 pm
I also think if the effect on liquidity won't be dire, making the 30 day cover rule much longer would be better.   

We all need to come up with a new, better idea for how to ensure that shorts cannot short eternally to 0 and never cover, because the 30 day rule isnt working well and is hurting people. 

But we cannot simply remove the rule and replace it with nothing. 

Of course, if all the market making bugs were fixed it might not be a big issue anymore, so perhaps that is the solution.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Helikopterben on April 15, 2015, 07:40:55 pm
I also think if the effect on liquidity won't be dire, making the 30 day cover rule much longer would be better.   

We all need to come up with a new, better idea for how to ensure that shorts cannot short eternally to 0 and never cover, because the 30 day rule isnt working well and is hurting people. 

But we cannot simply remove the rule and replace it with nothing. 

Of course, if all the market making bugs were fixed it might not be a big issue anymore, so perhaps that is the solution.

We need to look at how supply is introduced on centralized exchanges.  Supply is introduced on centralized exchanges when users deposit coins and supply is reduced on centralized exchanges when users withdraw coins.  When supply is introduced, an IOU token is issued to the user for trading and the exchange becomes custodian of the actual asset.  If coins are not deposited, then order books are thin - just take a look at some of the order books for some of the lesser alts on centralized exchanges.  In some cases, such as the gold and silver ETFs, shares are created when the exchange purchases the underlying asset for the user. 

Supply is introduced in bitshares when units are shorted into existence.  If a user wants to deposit bitcoin, they will be buying BitBTC from an existing seller or short seller.  Supply is reduced when existing shorts cover.  Forced covering forces a reduction in supply.  Would a centralized exchange have forced withdrawal?  Futures contracts, for example,  have expiration dates (mainly to generate fees) but expiration may not work well with units that are intended to also act as currency.

Users won't eternally short to 0, especially with the price feed.  In fact the opposite is occurring right now.  Look at the btc, gold, and silver markets.  There is very little on the ask side.  I, for one, have refrained from shorting because of the 30 day rule and I have been prevented from buying assets because of a thin ask book.  It's like a double-edged sword.  I think we should at least scale back this requirement to maybe 90 days, then 180 days, ect and see how that goes... and maybe eliminate the rule entirely eventually.  I know the rule was meant to increase liquidity but it didn't work.  Mores users will be required to increase liquidity and we may attract more users by removing the forced covering rule.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: starspirit on April 15, 2015, 11:32:57 pm
Extending expiries would mean that when bitAsset demand is relatively low compared to short demand, bitAssets would trade at larger discounts to the feed price. Its important to have the right balance for both longs and shorts.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: zerosum on April 15, 2015, 11:47:18 pm
Extending expiries would mean that when bitAsset demand is relatively low compared to short demand, bitAssets would trade at larger discounts to the feed price. Its important to have the right balance for both longs and shorts.

I agree. Actually blaming the 30 days cover rule for anything negative going on is misplacing the blame/problem. Unfortunately people way high on this project share this misconception. Unfortunately no one want's to listen what the real problem is (aside from current bugs and sever bear market) - The real problem is the 200% collateral from shorts. With that collateral only real bulls (should I add unwise one at that) are ready to short. 100% collateral will bring tons of more shorts .Even neutral on the BTS price market participants will be willing to short some % of their holdings, just to help the market or for market making.. As a side effect the yield will also increase dramatically.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Helikopterben on April 16, 2015, 12:23:23 am
Extending expiries would mean that when bitAsset demand is relatively low compared to short demand, bitAssets would trade at larger discounts to the feed price. Its important to have the right balance for both longs and shorts.

Right now bitusd is trading at an 8.5% premium to the feed price.  It goes both ways.  I'm sure the right formula can be found but shorts are dis advantaged with the 30 day rule.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Troglodactyl on April 16, 2015, 02:07:41 am
Extending expiries would mean that when bitAsset demand is relatively low compared to short demand, bitAssets would trade at larger discounts to the feed price. Its important to have the right balance for both longs and shorts.

Right now bitusd is trading at an 8.5% premium to the feed price.  It goes both ways.  I'm sure the right formula can be found but shorts are dis advantaged with the 30 day rule.

Any thoughts on this alternative to the short expiration?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,14336.msg186635.html#msg186635
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Tuck Fheman on April 20, 2015, 12:44:24 pm
make a stable client,

 +5%

It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 20, 2015, 12:50:17 pm
make a stable client,

 +5%

It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

Good idea.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: speedy on April 20, 2015, 12:54:07 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 20, 2015, 12:57:02 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.

This is actually huge, customer conversion requires minimizing steps and signup hassle.   Ultimately everyone will be using hosted/web wallets with browser plugins. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: cass on April 20, 2015, 01:59:24 pm
make a stable client,

 +5%

It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

Good idea.

 +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: nz on April 20, 2015, 03:20:52 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.

This is actually huge, customer conversion requires minimizing steps and signup hassle.   Ultimately everyone will be using hosted/web wallets with browser plugins.

Absolutely true, but also make a simple and easy to use. It needs to be idiot proof as much as possible like bitreserve IMO
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 20, 2015, 08:47:11 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.

This is actually huge, customer conversion requires minimizing steps and signup hassle.   Ultimately everyone will be using hosted/web wallets with browser plugins.

Absolutely true, but also make a simple and easy to use. It needs to be idiot proof as much as possible like bitreserve IMO

I was actually thinking making it complex and hard to use would result in a more elite status and thus higher valuation.   We want natural selection to weed out the idiots.

My point is that "simple and easy to use" is obvious and entirely unhelpful.   We need specific suggestions on HOW to make it simple and easy.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Shentist on April 20, 2015, 09:00:29 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.

This is actually huge, customer conversion requires minimizing steps and signup hassle.   Ultimately everyone will be using hosted/web wallets with browser plugins.

Absolutely true, but also make a simple and easy to use. It needs to be idiot proof as much as possible like bitreserve IMO

I was actually thinking making it complex and hard to use would result in a more elite status and thus higher valuation.   We want natural selection to weed out the idiots.

My point is that "simple and easy to use" is obvious and entirely unhelpful.   We need specific suggestions on HOW to make it simple and easy.

1. Get rid of the Sync problems. It is scary for none technical people
2. Reduce the Sync time - maybe the wallet can already download after i started my Computer.
3. After starting the Wallet the Exchange needs far to long to start - reduce the time!

To make it short - make it fools proof to begin and in my opinion time is the most valuable commodity we should go for! So, we should save the users more time!
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 20, 2015, 09:08:15 pm
It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

I think in the long run the web-based client will attract more users. Choosing to use web technologies was a stroke of genius.

This is actually huge, customer conversion requires minimizing steps and signup hassle.   Ultimately everyone will be using hosted/web wallets with browser plugins.

Absolutely true, but also make a simple and easy to use. It needs to be idiot proof as much as possible like bitreserve IMO

I was actually thinking making it complex and hard to use would result in a more elite status and thus higher valuation.   We want natural selection to weed out the idiots.

My point is that "simple and easy to use" is obvious and entirely unhelpful.   We need specific suggestions on HOW to make it simple and easy.

1. Get rid of the Sync problems. It is scary for none technical people
2. Reduce the Sync time - maybe the wallet can already download after i started my Computer.
3. After starting the Wallet the Exchange needs far to long to start - reduce the time!

To make it short - make it fools proof to begin and in my opinion time is the most valuable commodity we should go for! So, we should save the users more time!

Funny you say that.... that is *EXACTLY* what I am working on.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: mike623317 on April 20, 2015, 10:31:27 pm
BM mentioned in the last mumble that crypto is moving slower than a lot of us think it is. This got me thinking about how long it will be before the blockchain technology really takes hold.

I'm sure its going to be an evolution rather than revolution, but what are peoples thoughts - 18-24 months or 5 years?

I saw coindesk had an article about 2015 being the year of the blockchain but i don't see it just yet, at least not yet in terms of mass adoption. I think we're 2-3 years away (based on my very scientific wet finger in the air analysis).

Anyone have any links or thoughts?
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: onceuponatime on April 20, 2015, 10:45:44 pm
BM mentioned in the last mumble that crypto is moving slower than a lot of us think it is. This got me thinking about how long it will be before the blockchain technology really takes hold.

I'm sure its going to be an evolution rather than revolution, but what are peoples thoughts - 18-24 months or 5 years?

I saw coindesk had an article about 2015 being the year of the blockchain but i don't see it just yet, at least not yet in terms of mass adoption. I think we're 2-3 years away (based on my very scientific wet finger in the air analysis).

Anyone have any links or thoughts?

Awareness of our blockchain advantage will be greatly stimulated by events (if we can get the message out):

Stunned Greeks React To Initial Capital Controls And The "Decree To Confiscate Reserves", And They Are Not Happy:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-20/stunned-greeks-react-initial-capital-controls-and-decree-confiscate-reserves-and-the
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Empirical1.2 on April 21, 2015, 10:09:50 pm
BM mentioned in the last mumble that crypto is moving slower than a lot of us think it is. This got me thinking about how long it will be before the blockchain technology really takes hold.

I'm sure its going to be an evolution rather than revolution, but what are peoples thoughts - 18-24 months or 5 years?

I saw coindesk had an article about 2015 being the year of the blockchain but i don't see it just yet, at least not yet in terms of mass adoption. I think we're 2-3 years away (based on my very scientific wet finger in the air analysis).

Anyone have any links or thoughts?

For the last 6 months I haven't been able to recommend either BTS as a good investment or BitAssets as a good product to non crypto-savvy investors. However once 1.0, Moonstone and BitAssets 3.0 are working well then you'll have a very easy to use, secure and liquid Bitasset that I will use and that we can easily recommend, especially against the backdrop of a very shaky traditional banking system. It's just a question of crossing that threshold where the market thinks you've got a strong enough product and package & then you're going to see very rapid adoption and growth within the space of 6 months imo,

Big volume and gains can arrive very quickly...

(http://i.imgur.com/bJHYX7E.png)

Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bitmeat on April 21, 2015, 10:40:40 pm
BTS can be very disruptive. I just don't see why would anyone get out of BTS at these prices unless they absolutely need to. I think the upside potential especially with the new direction is so huge, that NOT being in BTS is a huge risk.

The argument against inflation is really stupid. This is so powerful - stakeholders have the ability to hire and fire and vote with their money. It is SO much better than the politics and drama surrounding the Bitcoin Foundation elections.

I say - fix the bugs, deliver thin idiot proof client with deterministic wallets, do marketing and find partners. It is clear now that ALL crypto projects take much much longer to grow to their full potential, so BTS is not really "behind".

BTS will be explosive at some point, but probably more like 2016. At this point I'm just laughing at the low prices and hope elected developers can cover their bills.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: bytemaster on April 21, 2015, 10:44:17 pm
BTS can be very disruptive. I just don't see why would anyone get out of BTS at these prices unless they absolutely need to. I think the upside potential especially with the new direction is so huge, that NOT being in BTS is a huge risk.

The argument against inflation is really stupid. This is so powerful - stakeholders have the ability to hire and fire and vote with their money. It is SO much better than the politics and drama surrounding the Bitcoin Foundation elections.

I say - fix the bugs, deliver thin idiot proof client with deterministic wallets, do marketing and find partners. It is clear now that ALL crypto projects take much much longer to grow to their full potential, so BTS is not really "behind".

BTS will be explosive at some point, but probably more like 2016. At this point I'm just laughing at the low prices and hope elected developers can cover their bills.

I am more excited than I have ever been about BTS and its potential... expect some major, game changing, news this summer. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: clayop on April 21, 2015, 10:52:01 pm
I am more excited than I have ever been about BTS and its potential... expect some major, game changing, news this summer.

 +5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: JA on April 21, 2015, 10:55:05 pm
I am more excited than I have ever been about BTS and its potential... expect some major, game changing, news this summer.

 +5%

(http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA3LzA1LzU4L2FuZ3J5ZGFuY2UuMjgwMzAuZ2lmCnAJdGh1bWIJMTIwMHg5NjAwPg/cf7341d0/d4e/angry-dance.gif)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: fav on April 22, 2015, 05:19:10 am
1. Get rid of the Sync problems. It is scary for none technical people
2. Reduce the Sync time - maybe the wallet can already download after i started my Computer.
3. After starting the Wallet the Exchange needs far to long to start - reduce the time!

To make it short - make it fools proof to begin and in my opinion time is the most valuable commodity we should go for! So, we should save the users more time!

1+2 agree, also the re-index times are horrible

3 - 0.9 was lightning fast on loading the exchange. hope that was intentional :)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: infovortice2013 on April 22, 2015, 06:45:02 am
I am more excited than I have ever been about BTS and its potential... expect some major, game changing, news this summer.

 +5%

(http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEzLzA3LzA1LzU4L2FuZ3J5ZGFuY2UuMjgwMzAuZ2lmCnAJdGh1bWIJMTIwMHg5NjAwPg/cf7341d0/d4e/angry-dance.gif)

(http://ceslava.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/gif-animado-3D-sin-gafas-63.gif)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: clayop on April 22, 2015, 06:48:20 am
1. Get rid of the Sync problems. It is scary for none technical people
2. Reduce the Sync time - maybe the wallet can already download after i started my Computer.
3. After starting the Wallet the Exchange needs far to long to start - reduce the time!

To make it short - make it fools proof to begin and in my opinion time is the most valuable commodity we should go for! So, we should save the users more time!

1+2 agree, also the re-index times are horrible

3 - 0.9 was lightning fast on loading the exchange. hope that was intentional :)

1+2 Use Moonstone :)
3 Use Moonstone? ;)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xiahui135 on April 22, 2015, 11:43:47 am
You should read a book called: zero to one
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: xiahui135 on April 22, 2015, 12:03:36 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: lastagile on April 22, 2015, 12:47:11 pm
Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: nomoreheroes7 on April 22, 2015, 01:19:17 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Empirical1.2 on April 22, 2015, 01:50:54 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.

Both observations are correct. The Chinese are smart.

Until BitAssets 3.0 are introduced, BitAsset adoption is unlikely to increase in the interim, especially as the current BitAssets will be left to die as opposed to being rolled over into the new system. Hence the valuation will likely be constrained barring any other major news.

Using BitAssets to solve specific problems could rapidly increase their adoption. 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: lastagile on April 22, 2015, 02:02:47 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.

Both observations are correct. The Chinese are smart.

If I'm bad guy, and I have 1 million USD. I want BTS price keep falling down.
What I need to do is, change all my money to BITUSD, Then wait the monthly expire of short order. I'll hold all my BITUSD until we have no enough shorter, the expired short order have to get the BITUSD to cover. Shorter need to sell BTS to get BITUSD, while all the BITUSD is hold by me.This will keep the price falling. 

As a bad guy, I'll lose nothing, while earn some interesting.

I think the rule need be changed. The one hold BITUSD should pay people short for them.

In an bank I borrow money, and I can use the money to do more meaningful things and pay interesting.
In BTS, I short BTS to get BITUSD, but I can not use the BITUSD, other people get my BITUSD, and use BITUSD, and I have to pay the interesting to him. What a fuck???

BM, how u come up this ideal to make BTS as an bank? that is ridiculous.

BITUSD is for trade, not for people to hold. I'd like suggest people who short, set interesting to 0.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: btswildpig on April 22, 2015, 02:08:58 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.

Both observations are correct. The Chinese are smart.


These people are thinkers , and directly or indirectly contributed in the "turn around" things  nomoreheroes7 mentioned . It's normal for them to see more problems , because they researched deeper than others .

Many of the active members in the Chinese community are either programmers , lawyers , bankers , professors or economist , and they didn't just buy BTS and wait for good things to happen . They build business around BTS , they build groups to help out users , they use the wallet everyday despite it's a painful experience for some of them ....

It's takes more than a "good news memo" to make them happy .... because these are the people who can offer good news themselves when the time comes . 
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: ripplexiaoshan on April 22, 2015, 02:43:52 pm
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.

Both observations are correct. The Chinese are smart.


These people are thinkers , and directly or indirectly contributed in the "turn around" things  nomoreheroes7 mentioned . It's normal for them to see more problems , because they researched deeper than others .

Many of the active members in the Chinese community are either programmers , lawyers , bankers , professors or economist , and they didn't just buy BTS and wait for good things to happen . They build business around BTS , they build groups to help out users , they use the wallet everyday despite it's a painful experience for some of them ....

It's takes more than a "good news memo" to make them happy .... because these are the people who can offer good news themselves when the time comes .
+5%
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Tuck Fheman on April 22, 2015, 10:33:44 pm
make a stable client,

 +5%

It's that simple. I often wonder where BTS would be now if it had kept a small standalone fast wallet around while the behemoth client was worked on and released separately.

Good idea.

A year ago it was.
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: Tuck Fheman on April 22, 2015, 11:47:07 pm
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

In this aspect, Ripple also does better than any other crypto ... http://insidebitcoins.com/news/not-so-decentralized-ripple-freezes-1m-in-user-funds/31862 (http://insidebitcoins.com/news/not-so-decentralized-ripple-freezes-1m-in-user-funds/31862)
Title: Re: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.
Post by: jsidhu on April 23, 2015, 12:47:39 am
People need digital currency, but they do not need it like this.
It is like in the green energy area, many company died, not because they do not need green energy, but because they just need something to solve a specific problem. Tesla is an example.
In this aspect, ripple do beeter than any other crypo.

Will never up before the short rule change. . Ridiculous rule


从我的 iPhone 发送,使用 Tapatalk

...what's up with all the random, unsubstantiated pessimism from members of the Chinese community lately?

Things finally seem to be starting to turn around...guess they didn't get the memo.

Both observations are correct. The Chinese are smart.

Until BitAssets 3.0 are introduced, BitAsset adoption is unlikely to increase in the interim, especially as the current BitAssets will be left to die as opposed to being rolled over into the new system. Hence the valuation will likely be constrained barring any other major news.

Using BitAssets to solve specific problems could rapidly increase their adoption.
If they knew the short rule is about to change why wouldnt it get priced in within a few minutes? They didnt buy thus market still doesnt believe in the change or has it not been approved yet thats why we havent taken off?