"It looks like we funded the BitShares team to develop a proprietary toolkit software where all profits from this will not benefit the BTS holder but in fact destroy them?"

This sounds like an assumption to me.

Interesting project

http://www.blockchainsingularity.com/

With enough automation, we can get to the point where the network itself provisions it's own witness nodes based on a set of risk parameters.  We dictate that the network retain at least 5 nodes around the world that it operates in case of emergency.

Just thinking when we reach the point that VPS providers and hardware vendors accept BitAssets for products and services, the Bitshares network will be able use its own bitassets to pay for the computing power its needs to secure and generate itself!!! It will be it's own renewable energy!!!

Smartcoins can represent the fiat based portions of Bitassets. So it's a subset of the Bitasset class. By defining the different classes you more easily market to different segments.

Don't forget, apple had clearly superior product that average person could understand.

How about the Amazon Prime model. Pay a membership fee once per year and never pay a fee anything else that year.

That was a great panel. It definitely made PeerTracks look like the innovators in the space. Cob was excellent!