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Topics - George_Bitspark

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Introduction:

Today I am presenting to the Bitshares community our proposal for your consideration as a block producer (witness). As you may know, Bitspark (Bitshares account: bitspark-delegate) is also a current member of the Committee (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=28395.0) and we operate the Sparkdex gateway at https://dex.bitspark.io. We have also have a custodial web and mobile app which includes fiat deposits and withdrawals in a number of currencies and countries at https://www.bitspark.io/.

We have demonstrated a commitment to the Bitshares ecosystem for a while now and started running our API node SparkHK last year for Sparkdex users. We own all of our own infrastructure as dedicated servers and as a for-profit company we have a vested interest in making sure uptime is as close to 100% as possible. We have a dedicated tech team available to maintain and update our infrastructure as necessary and we do this on a daily basis as part of our business operations anyway.

We recently were voted as block producer on testnet and currently have 5 missed block so far, you can check here: https://testnet.bitshares.eu/explorer/witnesses.

We will focus on block production only at the moment. Regarding price feeding, we may look to provide price feeds in future for committee assets but all formulas to derive prices will be public via our github: https://github.com/Bitsparkltd/bitshares-pricefeed-ruby just like our existing price feeding for Stable.PHP. There will be no manipulation of price feeds by bitspark-delegate, we do not care what some people say should be ‘consensus’ as the whole point of price feeds is to have a diverse set of witnesses providing a diverse set of prices converging on the true value of an asset. Prices fed should reflect the real value of BTS relative to that asset and we use the common principle used in institutional markets for pricing assets as using the ‘most liquid market’ principle when pricing BTS. 

We therefore hope you will consider voting for bitspark-delegate as a witness and we will provide updates to this post.

Current Server setup:
 
Block Production:
Type: Dedicated
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700
CPU Cores: 4
RAM: 64GB DDR4
Disk Space: 2x 512 GB NVMe SSD
Connection: 1 Gbit/s port
Location: Germany

Type: Dedicated
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700
CPU Cores: 4
RAM: 64GB DDR4
Disk Space: 2x 512 GB NVMe SSD
Connection: 1 Gbit/s port
Location: Finland

API Node:
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2650 v4
CPU Cores: 12
RAM: 128GB DDR4
Disk Space: 4x480 GB SSD
Connection: 1 Gbit/s port
Location: Hong Kong
wss://ws-dex.bitspark.io

Value add to Bitshares community:

* Dedicated infrastructure
* Professional tech team maintaining infrastructure
* Track record and involvement in Bitshares on testnet
* Engaged in on-chain governance of Bitshares

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Hi all,

BSIP70 "Lending for Margin Trading" is getting closer and there remains a few key points to address. One is important and warrants a thorough discussion is about how to determine 'the price' of the asset being lent relative to the collateral held and market price of the collateral vs the lent asset.

Firstly a lender defines the markets in which he is willing for the borrower to use his lent asset. Therefore the lender assumes risk and takes responsibility for the liquidity, pricing and legitimacy of those markets. The risk for the lender is he may not get back the amount lent in the case of a catastrophic collapse in price of the the lent asset vs the asset the borrower buys. Discussion on margin call mechanics aside (which I think was covered well in Github) the main point for community input now is on 'the price'- what is it, where is referenced to and the best method for insuring a robust pricing for these margin loans.

A price is required for many of the key operations required for BSIP70. You need a price to determine the collateral ratio of the borrowers collateral vs the the size of the loan. You need to monitor the price for a margin call event and you need to execute a limit order in the case of a margin call at some price in order buy back enough of the loan to repay the lender. An accurate price is needed in all these cases, we will call this a 'reference price'. Lets examine how similar lending and margin markets have existed on other platforms:

Bitfinex: Bitfinex has the most similar proposed margin trading and lending system to BSIP70. Bitfinex choose what markets can be used for lending so they limit the issue of exposure to illiquid markets. The Bitfinex price they use for the loans is based on the 'Last price' in that market. That means that the last executed trade represents the pricing of that asset pair. This is a simple and direct method of determining the price.

Bitmex: Bitmex, while not employing the same P2P CFD style of margin trading as BSIP70 still needs a price for their margin mechanisms. Bitmex use an external price feed of the bitcoin price relative to their self selected set of coins they list. They use multiple datapoints to ensure the robustness of their pricing feed based off the prices of several exchanges.

Other solutions: Perhaps a Middle price could be used which is = ((highest bid + lowest ask) / 2). However we would need to carefully think of the implications of this and how to game it. I have some initial thoughts but open to ideas here.

I think the best solution is just to use the last price for that particular market pairing, yes it is open to someone dumping price and forcing margin calls but the lender takes that into consideration when he allows his asset to be traded on that market knowing the risk is that he might not receive  what he lent in return. A conservative lender might only be willing to lend to high volume and liquidity markets to limit his risk of a giant margin call killing the last price. Also, even if this were the case, if I knew there was a market with a high chance of this happen this is an excellent opportunity for market makers. If there was alot of margin calls on one market I as a market maker would place bids 10% below market price knowing ill be able to scoop up cheap coins in the event of the margincall and sell them on another exchange for a price 10% higher using a cross exchange arb like via DEXbot.

What are the best methods in order to establish a reference price that is robust that you would like to see? Did I miss any potential implementations?

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Hi Bitshares Community!

I am George, Co-Founder and CEO of Bitspark and I am writing here today to hopefully gain your support for a place on the Bitshares Committee for our account bitspark-delegate. I first became aware of Bitshares in 2014 and attended a meet up in Hong Kong for a presentation about it by one of the BTS team, at the time (to my detriment) I wasn’t able to fully grasp the implications of Bitshares until I started seriously looking into it again in 2017 when bitcoin fees became an issue for our business.

You may be aware over the last year and a half we at Bitspark have been quite active in the Bitshares community. We started off in 2017 with our successful ZEPH tokensale where we identified some core features on the roadmap: launching our DEX Gateway (Sparkdex), beginning buybacks of ZEPH, deployment of our new centralised Bitspark product built entirely on the DEX for fiat money transfers and a mobile app for DEX assets to be deposited, withdrawn and exchanged for cash. I am pleased to say that almost all of those roadmap goals have been met with the exception of the mobile app which the new version is due in a month at the end of Q2.

On the marketing front we have been advocates for Bitshares at every opportunity and I daresay have probably got more coverage than every project on Bitshares combined- from about 2018 onwards we mention Bitshares wherever we can. For example, when searching for Bitspark you’ll see articles from many global publications with huge audiences like:

Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2019-01-29/stablecoins-great-for-cross-border-transactions-radio
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/bitcoin-started-with-all-men-now-crypto-is-opening-up-to-women
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-24/crypto-mania-grips-hong-kong-as-city-looks-for-life-beyond-banks

CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/this-26-year-old-dropped-out-of-college-and-built-a-multinational-blockchain-business.html

RT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsiYQ5Mn-_w&list=PLrou7z4TGqLNNW0QnCrjZtAO-D4uBhwX-&index=5&t=1s

Nikkei
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Southeast-Asians-get-to-grips-with-bitcoin

Coindesk
https://www.coindesk.com/bitspark-embarks-blockchain-remittance-trial-un-tajikistan
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-remittance-companies-strug-off-swift-blockchain
https://www.coindesk.com/bitspark-hong-kong-remittance
https://www.coindesk.com/bitspark-rolls-remittance-service-indonesia
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-firm-bitspark-joins-accentures-fintech-accelerator

South China Morning Post:
https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3001912/age-bankless-global-money-transfer-dawns-blockchain
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people-events/special-reports/topics/xxiv-2017/article/2120698/how-maxine-ryan
https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1919116/beyond-bitcoin-will-hong-kong-disrupt-and-shape-future-finance

….and many more we lost count, including New York Times, Accenture, AFR, Cointelegraph, Bitcoinist, Podcasts, TV interviews and many more including this article with an interesting headline for BTS holders: “BTS spikes 24% as token gets mainstream attention from CNBC” https://hacked.com/bitshares-bts-spikes-24-as-token-gets-mainstream-attention-from-cnbc/

Suffice to say I think this is a positive on the marketing front for Bitshares.

Bitspark was the first cryptocurrency remittance company in 2014 and ever since then we have been evolving and improving our products for our customers who are mainly people looking to send money for cash in/out in various SE Asian countries- this is our core business and expanding the ability for more people in more currencies to be able to exchange cash to crypto is our goal. It is out belief that right now Bitshares is best suited to be able to achieve this due to the ability to create a stablecoin for any national currency without the counterparty risk of needing collateral held in a centralised entity.

Our goals on the committee would be as follows:

* Ensure Bitshares can adapt to changing market conditions quickly and quick decisions can be made by the committee
* Ensure the continued viability of Committee issued assets and voice concerns about parameter changes we feel would jeopardise this
* Advocate for a fee structure that maintains the cheapest possible costs for customers of Bitshares balance with a slight deficit to the reserve pool as we believe spending money now is what’s required to get greater gains in the future.
* General support for proposals that increase the adoption, growth and usage of Bitshares in real products and services.


Apart from advocacy on the committee our plan to add value to Bitshares over the coming months is as following:

* Continue adding more fiat deposit and withdraw currencies for Bitshares assets. Right now you can deposit withdraw and exchange all Bitshares assets on bitspark.io for fiat. Yes fiat.
* Add more BTS collateralised stablecoins to the DEX
* Launch our revamped mobile app suitable not just for money transfers but for any crypto user globally to cash in/out crypto and fiat.
* Start adding more feeds to our witness nodes and feed committee assets with prices, open source our own feeds for our assets
* Support workers, BSIPs and proposals which continue to add value for BTS, in some cases fund development.

So given this, we think we would be a valuable addition to the committee and we welcome you to please vote for us at bitspark-delegate

Edit: Update: Ready for voting, made the proposal should see it in your voting section now on DEX-->Committee

4
I just wrote some initial ideas on how we can add Margin Trading via P2P swap contracts and an active lending market to the DEX which in my is the biggest single change we can do to add multiples more liquidity, volume and price pressure on BTS. Feedback welcome

Check it here

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Random Discussion / Bitspark is launching Zephyr rewards token soon
« on: October 06, 2017, 07:47:46 am »
Just wanted to throw the question out there, has anyone had any experience with rewards tokens?
If so would you kindly share your experience? Bitspark is about to launch the rewards token. 

URL link: https://zephyr.bitspark.io/

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General Discussion / Zephyr token is coming soon in less than 3hours
« on: October 06, 2017, 07:43:43 am »
Bitspark is about to launch the rewards token and we want to know has anyone had any experience with rewards tokens?
If so would you kindly share your experience?

URL link: https://zephyr.bitspark.io/

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Bitspark [closed] / Zephyr token is launching soon
« on: October 06, 2017, 07:36:29 am »
Just wanted to throw the question out there, has anyone had any experience with rewards tokens?
If so would you kindly share your experience? We at Bitspark are about to launch the rewards token. 

URL link: https://zephyr.bitspark.io/

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https://steemit.com/bitshares/@bitspark/part-3-bitspark-launches-zephyr-token-on-bitshares

https://zephyr.bitspark.io/

Welcome to the conclusion to our 3 part series on our switch to Bitshares for remittances culminating in the launch of our reward token Zephyr. The idea is simple, offer people a monetary incentive to join our remittance network and undertake economically beneficial actions in the network with a percentage of fees going toward buying back tokens on the DEX. There are some further subtle layers to this but we think this is the ideal way to accelerate our reach into new markets and grow the overall user base for Bitshares pegged assets.

Feel free to let us know your thoughts and feedback and we look forward to the next stage with the Bitshares community. Some important media announcements coming out in the next few weeks stay tuned!

https://cryptofresh.com/a/ZEPH

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General Discussion / Bitspark Switching to Bitshares for Remittances
« on: August 10, 2017, 04:24:00 am »
Hi all!

We have some big news today, we at Bitspark (www.bitspark.io) will be switching to Bitshares in future for our remittances, starting with our recent deal with the UN ( http://www.eurasia.undp.org/content/rbec/en/home/blog/2017/7/25/-From-Russia-to-Tajikistan-changing-the-way-money-moves.html ) in Tajikistan.

Heres why we came to this conclusion: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@bitspark/bitspark-switching-to-bitshares-for-remittances

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General Discussion / Pegged Cryptocurrencies for Remittances
« on: January 29, 2017, 07:45:46 am »
Hi Bitshares,

I am George, the founder and CEO of Bitspark (www.bitspark.io) we have been a pioneer in Bitcoin remittances conducting the first cash in cash out remits back in 2014 and I am interested to understand more about the state of Smartcoins in Bitshares. You may have seen my recent article on Coindesk where I discuss a little bit about pegged crypto's (http://www.coindesk.com/why-theres-still-hope-for-bitcoin-remittance-companies/) at the end I mention Nubits but I am open to whatever solution works. Since then, I have been investigating the potential options out there for a cryptocurrency with a pegged fiat value and thought it would be time to reach out to the Bitshares community to get your thoughts on what works and what doesn't. 

Essentially a cryptocurrency with a pegged value has business use cases in the remittance world, no so much in the consumer space transacting between one another (although obviously that works it just requires alot of pre-requisites) but more in the area of remittance companies managing their balances and FX exposure. I might also add that the opportunity is not in the 8 commonly FX'd currencies but of emerging markets currencies which are difficult to trade into and out of, it's easy to trade into and out of USD/EUR/CNY already. I have a few ideas but I'd like to understand from the community what the drawbacks have been (if any) in adoption of the Smartcoin pegged fiat assets? Is it finding adequate liquidity on exchanges? Lack of shorters to take the other side of the trade? Lack of buying pressure for the smartcoin? Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards

George Harrap
Bitspark

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