Hello

I have a couple of posts on the Tether debate that may be of interest to this community.

The post was in response to this article on medium (I have responded below with 2 posts citing the fact that the BitAssets basically have a protocol based contractural relationship between the pegged asset holder and the backing collateral, whereas Tether has no contractural relationship at all, neither protocol based nor legally based).

https://medium.com/@MC_Ross1001/controversial-tweeter-bitfinexed-has-been-shadowbanned-on-twitter-1530a066a35e

There is also some discussion on Reddit about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tether/comments/7vz6sp/youve_got_this_all_wrong_the_problem_is_not_with/

Quote from: biophil on January 08, 2018, 07:22:27 PMIf I want to realize my BTS profits, I sell BTS and buy BitUSD

But wouldn't that cause an inverse correlation ? What we're seeing is a positive correlation. There might be something to it though because I now remember that there was a 2-week delay between the BTS and BitUSD spikes back in June.

All the same, look at the market now. We have a massive spike in BitAsset liquidity and ALSO a buoyant BTS valuation. That seems to me positively correlated, implying that the BitAsset demand is independent of BTS market demand. BTS is needed anyway to collateralise that liquidity even if itself is also experiencing a sell-off.

The fact that there's BitAsset growth is the significant thing. It doesn't really matter where its coming from because the system is starting to work by virtue of delivering liquidity to complimentary markets:

• those requiring store of value
• those requiring pegged trading liquidity

The difference with Tether is that BitUSD is "real money" held on the blockchain so when you hold it it cannot be defaulted on. Tether on the other hand is just a worthless token promise. It's the bank that holds the actual liquidity. Subtle theoretical difference but huge practical one because in one case you could be holding bottle tops for all you know and in the other the real thing backed by real markets.

Quote from: biophil on January 08, 2018, 04:47:03 PMthe correlation between BTS and BitAssets is because BitAssets are being used by holders of BTS to store their recent profits.

How does that make sense ? They'd be taking the short side of the bit asset whereas to "cashout" (i.e. do a genuine profit take) they'd have to take the long side which means sell their BTS for BitAsset liquidity (or real dollars) as opposed to simply collateralising it.

Hi

I am a long time lurker and holder. I generally keep one eye open for activity in the BTS markets but recently I noticed this huge growth in circulation of the BitAssets - particularly BitUSD and BitCNY. I've been expecting this for a long time (in fact I expected it would happen a couple of years ago and then went to sleep when it didn't).

Now I've woken up again.

I realise that $30 Million is a drop in the ocean (for BitUSD for example) but from a strategic point of view I think this is huge. I've been wracking my brain over 3 things:

1. why it so suddenly took off back in April
2. why it is now accelerating

and

3. why the BTC ratio is not as spikey as it was in June despite a far larger BitAsset growth (requiring proportionally more collateral).

Well 3 is easily explainable by BTC's massive growth against the dollar, so that's fine. My own theory for 2 is that with the Bitfinex/Tether adverse publicity, the advantages of a pure crypto, trustless pegged blockchain asset over a bank-backed one are starting to dawn on the market (lightbulbs going on).

I still have no clue to the suddenness of point 1 though. (By the way BitCNY is the same - off the charts growth in the last month so I didn't bother showing it separately).

*********** Market Observations ***********

There are some very interesting observations to be made from the last 8 months - namely, it's quite beautiful IMO the way that the BTS price perfectly correlates with the BitAsset supply (BitAsset marketcap can be used as a proxy for supply since the dollar price is constant). This indicates that the network and economics of the system is actually working as intended and that BTS isn't just being used as a speculative bottle-top asset like, say, Litecoin is. (That's why I invested in this in the first place).

Second observation is regarding the BTS/BTC ratio. We can see that despite BTC's massive 700% growth since last June, BTS is starting to recover its value even against BTC. What this tells me is that BTS is excellently decoupled in the sense that the more BitUSD et al get used as cash pairs for crypto markets, the better BTS can perform BOTH in times of BTC growth and especially during corrections (when increasing numbers cash out to BitUSD instead of the toxic Tether).

Third observation should be stark and slightly humbling: Tether has a circulating supply of 1.4 billion and is created by a single company, not a real crypto, not trustless and already toxic. The whole point of a blockchain is that you hold what you have in your wallet. i.e. it isn't a promissory note (as Tether is). Meanwhile BitUSD's circulation is approx 30 million. The BitAssets are bound to grow to at least the marketcap of Tether as understanding proliferates IMO.

The implication is a 1400% growth just to that level alone. If we confine the growth to only the USD cash market currently occupied by Tether then that would represent a 46 times growth in BitUSD. Given the close correlation shown in the traces below between BitUSD circulation and BTS dollar price, than would mean BTS at a Bitcoin ratio of 0.022 (currently 0.000042) if BTC were to stay at current $USD exchange rate.

Lets say that BTC grows to $40,000 this year though and BitUSD only captures 10% of the Tether market. That would still represent a doubling of the BTS price in bitcoin and a 460% increase in the BTS dollar price. The reason I'm becoming increasingly bullish now is that the growth in BitAsset circulation seems to be finally taking off after years of laying the groundwork. Confidence in the network, calamities in competing "pseudo pegged-assets" and a general explosion of capital arriving in the sector as a whole seem to have lit the touchpaper.

All to play for !

Quote from: Methodise on June 10, 2017, 12:55:07 AM
Ultimately, a paper wallet is just a print out of your numbers & letters..

Thanks for your previous replies. This is the part I don't understand - what numbers and letters ? The username and password for the account ? But according to messages, this only works on the local browser. If I switch to another machine it won't work (as I understand it). Is that correct?

Is this correct ?

Hi !

For 2 years I've kept my BTS on the exchange because it's so different from Bitcoin that I felt safer keeping it on an exchange than downloading to wallet. I once saw someone post a 'best practice' procedure for bitcoin cold wallets that I've used ever since. What is the equivalent in Bitshares ? If I could get some basic questions answered here it would be much appreciated:

I created an account with Bitshares wallet (of the 'more secure' type, can't remember what the name of that option was). I did a test withdraw from Polo of 10 BTS but it hasn't turned up yet:

• is there an equivalent of a BTS block explorer that one can check progress of transactions
• is there an equivalent of a BTS paper wallet (I exported the backup wallet but it's electronic. Nothing like seeing a bunch of numbers & letters in your face for the feeling of security)
• you know the account name that you create in the BTS client. Is that the 'address' that one should use for withdrawing to from the exchange ? (It's what I used)
• you know how in Bitcoin people create multiple addresses for different purposes (trading, cold wallet etc). Is that also recommended practice in Bitshares or do we just hold everything under the one account ?

Thanks for any answers ! in the meantime my balance still didn't turn up. Maybe I used the wrong address.

P.S. Does the Bitshares client use some kind of API in the default browser engine ? (e.g. I'm on a Mac. Does that means I'm actually looking at the Bitshares client through a Safari window ? I notice all other windows grind to an almost halt when the BTS client is running).

Hi

Reading the description of this blockchain model, it's doing exactly what Bitshares is - leveraging base collateral to produce pegged assets. Is there any difference from the Bitshares model ? I can't see any.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2017/05/19/disruptive-blockchain-backed-salt-loans-platform-in-launch-to-leverage-bitcoin-assets/#5531b69727cc

I'm amazed that there does not appear to be more pro-active engagement and "amber alert" in the Bitshares community at the current state of the altcoin market.

The clamour for blockchain-based pegged currency tokens is becoming the next elephant in the room as exchange-based fiat gateways get increasingly crisis-ridden.

Traders want to trade against national currencies and to take profits in them. Commercial vendors want to accept blockchain payments but denominated in national currencies. Exchanges want to host fiat pairs...you name it.

Yet there is a huge problem here. Any direct interaction with banks is toxic and subject to all kinds of regulator red tape, not to mention trust-issues. Until now, Tether has been filling the gap. But it's not a true blockchain token with intrinsict value, it's just a trusted service backed by real fiat and that fiat-gateway toxicity is now starting to infect that asset with all kinds of knock-on integrity issues.

What's needed is a true blockchain-based fiat proxy with an economic peg and the demand for liquidity is rising. Thether's doing $17 million in volume PER DAY.

Why can bit assets not meet his liquidity demand ?

Quote from: intelliguy on March 22, 2017, 02:27:44 AM
It is succeeding, the product is built. It works.  Now it's simply a matter of attracting more business to start using it.  Stan's is already on that, and any of us can do that too if we like...

Many thanks. Glad to hear it !

Quote from: intelliguy on March 21, 2017, 11:41:16 PMBitshares isn't evil.  Dash's initial founder = definitely evil.

No. I'm afraid not.

If you really want to couch in such tribal terms, Bitshares is a good 20 to 50 times more evil than Dash.

I spent a whole year pumping Bitshares around forums, extolling the virtues of a beautifully designed, market driven peg which served as an axis between two mutually exclusive monetary requirements - price stability and store of value.

I bought BTS at about every price level going assuming it was going to succeed. Next thing I knew its founder turned up in @steem (I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the background to make any judgement about that). The whole time, all it did was loose, loose, loose value.

Meanwhile, my Dash investments grew, the founder stuck with the project, made good design decisions, good marketing decisions, hired good team members and made good delivery commitments. The coin did well in markets - just take a look at its 21-week EMA over 3 years. Barely a dip and now it's breaking out due to the reputation they've got for delivering on roadmaps.

If you want to use the word "evil" without making yourself look ridiculous, save it for the trolls who deprived investors of a sound lead or conned noob shorters into being skinned alive in markets - some of them out of their entire life savings - because they drank the "it's a scam" coolaid.

Quote from: Thom on March 21, 2017, 06:19:57 PMTHAT SAID, I must also confess I'm learning a lot about the details of Dash Amanda won't tell you about in Dash Detailed. The shady origins of Dash's early days. The premine, the coinjoin algorithm at the heart of Dash's "privacy". Of course a major weakness with Dash is that it's based on Bitcoin. A smart business move to get Dash off the ground but not a very good long term strategy.

Actually Amanda has OFTEN talked about this in Dash Detailed and these facts have all been in the public domain for years.

Far from being "shady" Dash's origins are just about the most discussed phenomenon in crypto after the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto so I can only assume you've been hiding under a rock during that time.

In addition to that, it's now one of the best distributed cryptos around, partly because it's 3 years old and partly because it's now had 4 major pumps and selloffs during which potential 'exiters' have done plenty of profit taking. The founder is thought to hold around 3% of the coins supply at most. Triple or quadruple that if you like and he's still outnumbered many times in terms of node voting.

Regarding "privacy", lets just examine that for a moment. Dash has very definite and well defined monetary model. That is that it is a deflationary base asset bearer token modelled after a mined commodity just like bitcoin. Being unbacked, it does not use encryption as this would obfuscate the blockchain and detract from its symmetric transparency. (I use the word 'symmetric' to mean that the same blockchain attributes are visible to everyone regardless of whether they are a keyholder or not, as opposed to an encrypted blockchain where the sender has one view and the receiver another).

Against this background, Dash uses a mixing algorithm to erase transaction history. In other words its privacy algo is modelled on cash which consolidates in a cash drawer and is then dispersed in different denominations than it arrived.

There is nothing deficient about this approach and in fact it's the optimal privacy algorithm for a cryptocurrency which is maximising value and authenticity since it doesn't need recourse to any 'hiding'. In addition to this the theoretical chance of tracing a particular anonymised balance back to its sources is negligible.

There has been a lot of nonsense written about Dash over the years, most of it by people with axes to grind. People should do their own research - as I did when I invested. If they don't like the instamine, no problem - invest in something else. But it's pre-history and the biggest holders at in the early days were buyers not miners.

See this for more debunking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzqGf_ak_2I

Sorry for the off-topic post. Believe it or not, I am a Bitshares holder going back years and am a great fan of Bitshares. I came back here to find out what's going on with this project but the first thing I read is posts about Dash which I'm sick of debunking. I'd appreciate if someone could spent as much effort filling me in on Bitshares as I have to do debunking nonsense about Dash.

I had all my Bitshares on there.

Kept promising myself I'd get round to "learning" how to make a Bitshares cold wallet with as much confidence as I have with QT and never got round to it.

Quote from: Empirical1.1 on November 29, 2014, 06:40:05 PMI think BitShares will pass it in value thanks to BitAssets, it won't be the crypto reserve currency though as BitShares is a crypto-equity. So I think there is a market for a crypto-currency Bitcoin replacement too.

I'm quite fascinated to see how the BitAssets thing goes.

It kind of blew my mind when I first discovered it to think of the vast potential. In particular, the capacity that BitAssests have for capitalising BTS indirectly. At the same time, I've got this cynical, kind of "too good to be true" notion bubbling in the back of my mind, so I think I have my feet on the ground about it.

My point about bitcoin isn't that nothing else could surpass it in marketcap, but rather that all alts wlil continue to be priced in BTC which gives it enormous status. For example, oil is a huge market that dwarfs the marketcap of the US dollar, but the dollar is still *the* reserve currency (well, in theory - rapidly diminishing).

I don't know if you stumbled across my other thread where I worked through a notional real world macro-economic application of the BitUSD concept....

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11784.0

EDIT: oops ! I just realised we're already corresponding over on that thread !  ;D

Quote from: Rune on November 29, 2014, 06:06:33 PMThere are pretty much none that accept bitcoin directly, they all go through processors and these processors could seamlessly begin supporting e.g. bitUSD, instantly stripping bitcoin of its biggest advantage

Well, I'd agree with you there that a pegged crypto (for the moment at least) has the advantage that they don't need to keep dumping and converting in theory. Thats one of the things I liked about the BitAssets.

Unfortunately, markets are fickle things. They don't always do what you expect. If the market decides that it has confidence in bitcoin and not much else then retailers will just have to swallow that, regardless of what "should" be the ideal solution.

Thats what makes this whole thing quite exciting IMO. We're watching evolution play out in realtime at a 1000x accelerated rate right in front of our eyes.

What's most exciting about it all is observing the ultimate fate of fiat currencies. It's kind of eerily coincidental that cryptos are evolving into an industrial strength worldwide financial network just at the time when central banks are busy pouring acid into the foundations of the fiat world.

The timing is uncanny.

What happened in Japan 3 weeks ago was the beginning of the end it seems to me. They basically threw in the towel and Abe said as much when he called an election and challenged anyone else to "see if you can come up with something better because I can't".