Great thread.  I think It's all starting to sink in!!

...I have a lot more skin in the game as I'll only be rewarded for my efforts and results now and no longer paid for my time....

Good idea.  You now become more of an investor with great upside potential for your efforts.

Here are a few off-the-cuff "infomercial style" selling points for why someone might want to buy lots of BTSX.

What other selling points should we push and what other types of buyers should we target?


IF YOU ARE A SPECULATOR SEEKING RAPID APPRECIATION

1.  BTSX is a better choice than Bitcoin if you are interested in rapid appreciation - it has better technology and much more room to grow.

2.  BTSX is a better choice for the growth investor than any other crypto-asset for the following reasons:

   It’s transactions are the fastest in the industry - exhilerating 10 second confirmations, not minutes or hours.
   It’s easier to use - named accounts not long crypto-keys.
   It’s transactions are completely private and untraceable.
   It spends its fees via elected delegates who compete to grow the industry rather than wasting them on environmentally unsound miners to burn precious energy resources.
   It gives some of its fees back to its holders by reducing the currency supply to increase their percentage share.
   It provides unique new services that will have very high demand - full-scale trading and low-volatility market pegged assets.
   It is part of the BitShares family of profitable unmanned companies - each reinforcing the brand recognition of all the others.  Own them all!
   It has this marketing campaign driving its growth.  No other coin does. 
   
All of these things make BTSX the best growth asset to own this fall.

IF YOU ARE A TRADER SEEKING NEW INVESTMENT FLEXIBILITY AND FREEDOM
   In a new domain where there is less experienced competition and no unfair high-frequency-trading.
   Where you can be a big fish in a new pond.
   Trade inside your "coin" without certain tax penalties associated with moving in and out of fiat until you are ready to "cash out".

IF YOU ARE A SAVER SEEKING A STABLE ALTERNATIVE TO BITCOIN VOLATILITY.
   Buy a digital asset that is market pegged to a more stable commodity or national currency.

IF YOU ARE A PREPPER LOOKING FOR A FLEXIBLE ALTERNATIVE TO OUT OF CONTROL FIAT PAPER.
   Keep your wealth outside the system but where you can easily access and use it without interference.

IF YOU ARE AN ENTREPRENEUR LOOKING TO RAISE FUNDS
   Issue your own assets and trade them against everything else.

USE BITCOIN FOR "CHECKING" AND BITSHARES FOR "SAVINGS"!
   Bitcoin has the most mature network of merchants and fiat on-ramps,
   BitShares lets you safely put to work what you don’t plan to spend right away where you control the mix of stability and leverage.
   Use the right tool for the right job.  They work together in powerful synergy.

Good Stuff, Thank you. 

Quote from: GaltReport on August 08, 2014, 10:25:10 pm

Quote from: onceuponatime on August 08, 2014, 08:03:28 pm

Quote from: luckybit on August 08, 2014, 01:25:12 am

Quote from: bitcoinerS on August 08, 2014, 12:15:51 am

I want a Bitshares T-shirt too! 

Why aren't they selling merch? That is probably the easiest way to market the product. I want to buy a tshirt too.

Me three!

Me as well.  Would be nice to have a little store with shirts, coffee mugs etc....

Why does everybody wait until "they" do it? 
This is a decentralized industry with opportunities for everybody! 
Entrepreneurs of the world arise! 
A rising tide raises all boats!

Ah, I didn't know that anyone was free to use BitShares Names, Logos etc...? So, none of it's trademarked etc???  If not, I would think it would be profitable for anyone who does have the time.  I do not have the time to manufacture things.  I would be a buyer and would be willing to offer them for sale on my site if I had a supply.

Is their anything already available from Invictus?  Will you take orders and ship them out or can someone drive to your offices and pickup a truckload of shirts and sell them on the Internet?

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I really do not want to undervalue your effort to collect that much more money. I know it is hard, very hard.

My point is that Ether and Bitshares X will not likely fail (if they do) because the product was not well financed, i.e in a result of not being well developed (coded).
 Either of them will fail because the core ideas were not workable. Not meant to work in the real world.

My point wasn't the raw amount of money collected, it was strictly about adoption. Ideas are worthless without people who subscribe to them. Even flawed ideas can be more powerful than pure ones if there is a legion  of followers- look at a lot of wack job religions.

Ethereum in its sale numbers has demonstrated a large community of people who now have  a financial interest in being advocates for the ecosystem and its ideology. That was my point.

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I did lol a bit.

I just want to hear good reasons for why someone supports POW at this point.   Not really POW vs POS, just expecting thorough reasoning.  Charles, you put so much thought into your words that I expect only the best.  I don't argue with everyone, just those of which I have high expectations.  If such a person says something that doesn't make sense to me or seems wrong, I like to engage them.  Thats why I ended up here.  Blame it on Dan.

Yanno, you don't meet people like Charles at the local watering hole.....

So one starts with a database (the blockchain) that contains an initial state and transitions to another state. The fundamental question is how one verifies that the state change is correct versus any other proposed change. PoW and PoS are both mechanisms to accomplish state transition in a decentralized way.

PoW is an algorithmic meritocracy taking work in the form of something that runs O(n) with an associated global difficulty and verifies in O(1). This requirement has prevented people from using PoW for beneficial tasks as most need either human judgement for verification or verify in same time as the work.

In principle, I like PoW if one can bundle activities that benefit the health of the overall network and then reward the largest contributors. In fact, Dan is attempting to do this with DPOS via delegate competition- those who do the most for the network at the lowest cost per user are most likely to be voted a delegate. No one has yet established a mechanism to accomplish this in a trustless, automated algorithm. So yes PoW is a waste of resources.

Now let's examine PoS in general. If one admits a solely store of value system, then PoS is economically aligned with the best interests of the entire network. The majority should be reasonably expected to use PoS to attempt to increase the value of their personal holdings. Also implementations of PoS are considerably simpler than PoW. As I said above, DPOS also adds network health to the list of considerations via the judgement of the voters.

Here's my primary problem. PoS is fundamentally controlled by people who own the tokens of the system. If one has developed a non-monetary system such as distributive computation, storage, or hosting services for example, then the vast majority of users likely will not hold a substantial stake in the system's tokens rather a small oligarchy of speculators, early adopters and perhaps infrastructure providers would. Thus you have a system where the people who use the network must accept the demands of a small group  as we currently do with the centralized web.

There are probably some soft corrections that could be implemented; however, from a philosophical viewpoint, it's not necessarily the best idea to endow the holders of a token to be the voting class of a network. For cryptoequities, matters of corporate governance, DACs in general, this structure makes perfect sense. In systems where the vast majority of users control only an aggregate small amount of tokens, then it doesn't seem to align interests properly. I hope that explains my viewpoint.

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What DACs should DPOS be applied to instead? If not a DAC but a brick and mortar business what advantages does it have to manage the IPO, board voting rights etc. with DPOS (apart from it being illegal to do an IPO (real IPO with hard promises) without a lot of additional (legal) work)

It's not necessarily illegal to do an online IPO in all jurisdictions and in fact some ecourage it. I've spent the last six months studying the topic very deeply to a great degree of recent success . In terms of what ought to be the focus on Invictus's efforts, if I was the CEO, then I'd build a licensed IPO platform that would allow companies to conduct crowdsales via launching specialized bitshares chains that would require honoring some part of AGS and PTS positions. Had they made a compelling enough system, then most of the recent coin sales would have likely been launched using Invictus software.

It makes more sense to chase profits stemming from a badly managed space instead of going after apple with music, enduring the dubious legality of gambling, and going after DNS without any public browser compatibility strategy. I could go into greater detail; however, it's a waste of time, I'm not the CEO of Invictus.

Bolded part sounds like a smart idea and  fairly straight forward.  I think they can still do this in parallel.  Of course, so many irons in the fire...probably need someone focusing just on that part.  Maybe something like product line managers for "champions" for each potential market who can share  in the success of the market they develop.

Thanks everyone who provided and will give name suggestions, but name related to gaming will not be considered, part reason is due to regulation consideration.

What about BitShares Game instead of Gaming? 

I've been trying to figure out what I think of all this. At first look, I'm thinking that this is kinda cheesy and not the kind of marketing that I was expecting...thinking more about mainstream financial services companies (business to business) etc...

Now, I'm starting to rethink about the direct to consumer market and wondering if aspects (certain use cases) might very well be successfully marketed in that manner direct to the consumer.  It could be crafted that way and it could be the fastest route to greater mainstream adoption.  Of course the path is full of potential pitfalls including wildly exaggerated claims to putting a bigger regulatory spotlight on all of it....but it also could also serve as the push the industry needs to get to the next level.

One thing for sure, these type of people are experts at identifying market niches, targeting them with precision and carefully measuring results. 

It could be awesome or horrifying!!

Is this product for the financial professional/elite or is this a product for the average working citizen?  Or both?

Hold on just one cotton-pickin minute!  I Had two of those Jack LaLane Juicers.  Like'd them both!! Just saying....