So, per this thread, https://stellartalk.org/topic/4604-ripple-labs-guys-are-showing-their-muscles-jumped-100-million-in-marketcap/ it appears that one should subtract 20B ish from the actual amount of XRP in general distribution. If this is true, then Ripple's true market cap is more close to $182,000,000.

If that is true, then Bitcoin's market share today is 87.7%. Control for paycoin, and it is up to 88.4%.

That would suggest that Bitcoin has lost a couple percentage points, but nothing serious, which means that the title of Crypto 2.0 is still up for grabs. Ripple does appear to genuinely be in the lead, though. Meanwhile Bitshares distribution is on bitsharesblocks, and it would appear to be a fairly standard long tail, with 90% of all BTS owned by around 8K addresses. TITAN obfuscates who really owns what, but we can speculate that the distribution is probably pretty similar to Bitcoin.

Rereading my original post, I think I wasn't clear. Sorry!

I am looking for wealth distribution data on Bitshares, and Ripple. Then we can use that data to get a more accurate (less inflated) measure of the market share of those Bitcoin, Bitshares, and Ripple based on their actual liquid supply. Paycoin and Litecoin and similar will be counted as part of the general market, but they will not tend to move the denominator much, because they are pretty small. Of course more data is better. If anyone has a wealth distribution analysis of Paycoin, Litecoin, Nxt, etc etc I would welcome it and we could get much more accurate data.

I am just very suspicious that the market cap of Ripple in particular is being inflated by hundreds of millions of dollars by using weasel wording around which XRP has actually been "distributed". This caused a discontinuity in Bitcoin's market share, but it also may be the case that Ripple is actually lower than Bitshares on the rankings.

Any pointers to wealth distribution data are welcome!

Several people have attempted to explain why the price of BTSX has fallen so dramatically recently. I can't claim any special authority, but I haven't seen my theory expressed yet, so I will do so and let the community judge the correctness.

BitShares offers some of the best technology in the cryptocurrency space. Specifically, DPOS and the peg mechanism are both brilliant economic / technological solutions that are proven, solve two of the largest problems with Bitcoin, and represent a real advancement over their competitive ideas.

Unfortunately, I am seeing a pattern that I have seen at several of the early stage silicon valley startup flame-outs that I have participated in as an engineer. (OK, so I guess I am claiming a LITTLE bit of special authority). Namely, the following pattern.

1) A brilliant engineer and technologist comes in and produces an amazing new solution to a real problem, and collects a sizable seed community. This attracts VCs (or in this case, capital from investors like myself).
2) The technologist now turned CEO, upon receiving this massive validation of their work in the form of millions of dollars of capital inflow, correctly concludes that the ideas that they have had so far were brilliant.
3) The technologist concludes that since their past ideas were great, that the future ones will be also. This is also probably true. However, large swaths of the community get alienated. They were buying into a particular vision, and that vision is now being discarded. They pull their capital, and the business suffers deeply. Sometimes it recovers, and sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not pulling my funding, but I suspect large swaths of our community have. It's important to know when to stop drawing outlines, and when to start coloring in the details of the vision. The most successful entrepreneurs know when to do that. Some of them go too far in the opposite direction, stop innovating altogether, and coast for the rest of their lives, but all the successful ones know when to stop making sweeping changes, or when to put the sweeping changes into a new vehicle.

Bytemaster, this particular set of changes you are advocating implementing might be good. Frankly, I'm not equipped to figure it out, and I suspect that it will take years of market validation to determine the answer. However, the BitSharesX of just a few weeks ago was brilliant, and was growing by leaps and bounds (if you compared it to a traditional business) even when the larger industry (cryptocurrencies in general) were shrinking. This is hard feedback, but I hope that you understand that I am coming from a place of constructive criticism, and an honest desire to improve BitSharesX.

I think what people are worried about is that you won't stop here. Once you have erased a hard line you put in place (no dilution), how can the random investor know which other lines will be preserved? The uncertainty is hurting the community, and we are not without competition.

Quote from: bytemaster on September 18, 2014, 12:33:46 am

You can think of increasing the collateral requirement like decreasing the leverage and thus the ROI.   

There are two ways to adjust short supply:  provide constant leverage (2:1) and variable cost (interest rate)  or provide variable leverage and constant cost (0 interest rate).   There comes a point where the leverage gained by going short is not worth the risk.

If you want the interest rate model to work you require two prediction markets working at the same time. This approach is potentially viable because any attempt to "short BitUSD out of existence" would end up in sending the interest rate prediction market through the roof.

The demand for BitUSD is highly correlated to how well the peg is holding up.  If it does not hold up well and has a wide spread then the demand will be low.  If it holds up very well then the demand will be very high because it is a proxy for the dollar.

The "dual market" approach may be the only viable solution that can operate without a price feed.  It is very challenging in deed.   

Given a price feed we can prioritize shorts very effectively by collateral.

Why not a third, variable leverage and variable cost.

Have the collateral base the effective range of what interest a short would be required to pay.  Rank the shorts by the amount of interest they are willing to pay.  Shorts willing to pay higher interest take priority.  higher leverage requires higher interest.

Average the % interest from actual trades and this is your base interest requirement.

I'm very much more in favor of the proposed interest rate models around Gulu's line, and agree that having a working client is by far the most effective, most needed work.

So I was proposing a fixed up front fee, rather than interest, since it is easier for a person to understand what their costs would be up front. However, from a game theory perspective it shouldn't matter.

Regardless, the problem with letting both things float is that you end up with a "two dimensional" market, where shorts and longs have to agree on two parameters instead of one. This adds complexity, and provides a greater opportunity for shorts and longs to not agree and sit out of the market. That said, the more I think about it, the more I think this is required.

The entire point of the peg is that we want price of btsx / $ to always equal btsx / bitUSD. So we really don't want shorts and longs competing with each other on price. They need something else to compete with. The feed encourages them to stay near the peg, but it won't respond to volatility in the btsx / $ market fast enough. People just sit out of markets if they think they can't make money, and all of our attempts so far with feeds and only letting shorts trade in a range is just making people sit out of the market.

I think we need to let the fee or interest paid float, as well as the price. Then the consensus of the market will encourage the fees to vary, rather than the price straying from the peg, but it still gives somewhere for the "market pressure" to go without forcing them out of the market entirely.

Hi!  I need to register as well!  Thank you so much for getting all of us in the ecosystem!

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