@tonyk I never claimed I made any significant profits from shorting eth and yes I was extremely lucky since I closed my position when someone dumped 100btc yesterday...

What is most of concern now and I don't want to spread any FUD is that there are a lot of btcs trading at Polo so please consider withdraw your bts holdings from there if you don't intend to sell them..Don't get surprised if Polo gets hacked, although I am pretty sure the admins are doing a great job security wise, nonetheless I wouldn't like to see that Polo gets hacked and a lot of bts were stolen..

I have shorted eth yesterday, closed my position before the next pump and with the profits I bought some bts. I will do this again today. Shorting ethereum and buying bitshares is no brainer for me now just make sure you have sufficient collateral when you short and don't get very greedy..
Qora and bithsares are a strong buy for me now..

I'd like to be able to buy anything with bitGold or bitSilver 

In the short to medium term though, i'm hoping to enable the ability to buy vaping products (hoping to integrate BitShares into vapeemporium.com) and BitShares merchandise like branded clothing (I'm trying to work something out with my brother who lives in Indonesia.)

bikelounge will be more than happy to sell you a bike for some bitsilver or bitgold.. Check out the web page www.bikelounge.gr , choose a bike send me a pm and we are good to go..bikelounge can make deliveries abroad..

Can we consider not to have any fees whatsoever (just antispam fees) so we can enable micro transactions and do not pay witnesses or committee or anyone from the fees generated?

The way I see it is that if I am a big shareholder I have an incentive to pay people witness and committee to do what they do. So the shareholders should vote for committee and witness as usual, negotiate their salary and pay them accordingly proportionally to their shares. Eventually shareholders will find the balance of hiring the correct people to do the job done properly. Not all of them will have the same salary and their salary will be based on reputation and proper handling.

If I am a big company with lots of funds and I can take over bitshares, I would vote for the people I want and pay them a salary from my holdings and make sure they do the job properly otherwise my shares would fall in value.

So why do we need fees in the first place? Personally I think that current fees are very low but a lot of people have different opinion especially Chinese people who are used not to pay any fees. So it is more important to bring liquidity and these people to trade in a free fee platform than to generate some insignificant amounts from fees..

Maybe I am thinking something wrong here since I don't know the exact mechanics but anyway..

You can buy a bike with biteur, brownies, bitusd, bts

www.bikelounge.gr

Is there a way bitshares can partner with simplex? I have a feeling that this is a company with potential and important partnerships may be formed that bithsares can use.

Any ideas if a collaboration is possible?

what if Bob is a big bank? Does the big bank(s) have any incentive to buy up at least half of the bts, own the system and use the dex for trading smartcoins?
I see in the news that banks invest something like $50-$60 mil to build their own blockchain solutions. Is the assumption that someone with $20 mil buying bts slowly could easily acquire at least half of bts now and own the system correct?
Why they don't just do that instead of reinventing the wheel? They can obtain the control of an amazing system at very low price currently, most of the work has been already done, they can issue their smartcoins on bitshares blockchain, provide liquidity and increase the confidence of their clients that they actually have their customers funds verifiable on the blockchain. What am I missing ?

we need to figure out why new people that register under our referral don't trade. I see that people you referred never tried the dex, except 2 people which is great because in my case no one tried it....There is no point sending them our precious bts if they never trade and use the system..I want to send bts, usd, btc to people that will actually use the system.

So any marketing ideas from anyone would be helpfull..