I doubt the community can help all that much with ideas and suggestions right now, seeing as how the website and blockchain aren't launched yet. Better to wait to do a mumble until next month, after the soft launch. Besides, cob, Eddie, et al are probably super busy now.

Nice job.

What about a link for Merchants? Wasn't uptake by merchants supposed to be one of the keys to getting widespread adoption by the masses?

First of all, it depends on what type of gateways we're talking about. Gateways for BTC, BTS are well and good, but what we really need most of all is on- and off-ramps between BitUSD and fiat. I can't think of anything else (except for perhaps a stable client and good user experience) that is more important for BitShares' success. It's the BitUSD/USD ramps that BitShares desperately needs to tap into the mass market, appeal to merchants, and achieve a huge network effect. Marketing is also important, but marketing by itself doesn't guarantee victory--just look at Bitcoin, which, despite receiving a ton of mainstream media attention (e.g., the recent Bitcoin Bowl) is still only used by a tiny fraction of the population. But good marketing + robust fiat on/off ramps? That would be an awesome combination that would be a nearly sufficient condition for BitShares' success, IMO.

Overall, I'm in favor of establishing gateway-focused delegate positions because it's easy to underestimate the risks, costs, and time involved in setting up a strong fiat gateway. It's not just a matter of technology development; there are KYC and regulatory issues as well. This is clearly hard stuff. If it weren't, no doubt Bp and others would've announced multiple deals and partnerships by now. So, sufficient incentives need to be in place for exchanges or other entities to take the plunge and be the first to develop the types of gateways we need. We could always try asking the Coinbases and BitStamps of the world nicely, but I doubt that by itself will be very effective.

Gateway-centric delegate positions could (1) serve as a reward for creating and maintaining BitUSD/USD gateways or (2) provide a mechanism for funding a pool of free samples that can help encourage exchanges to try BitUSD. IIRC, that's how Ripple got BitStamp to become a XRP gateway--they gave them a bulk amount of XRP upfront.

This area of infrastructure development should be made a key focus of BitShares NOW given the substantial time lag that will be needed to develop a robust system of ramps and gateways.

"Sharedropping to" PTS is different from "working for" PTS, is it not?

Quote from: mf-tzo on December 18, 2014, 02:27:55 pm

Quote

Ok, I misunderstood your answer. I thought you were saying swift only transferred $22M / day! So, what is the true daily volume?

I don't know that answer but still... even if it is trillions a swift message will  cost you $20 irrespective of how much money you transfer..

The whole argument here is I am trying to compare "swift" as a company with "ripple" as a company (which obviously will provide a better and much cheaper service than swift in the future) and Bitshares company..

So if "swift" as a company is worth now $20 - $40 bil then "ripple" as a company worthing $2.5 bil is overvalued..
BTS as a company worth anything below $500 mil is way undervalued... Now which one of these have the most upside potential with the least risk? that is the question to be answered and i think the answer is obvious...

I think that's over complicating matters; to get a ballpark idea of the relative valuations, just using transaction volume alone will give you some idea. Then you can use the same metric to compare bitshares current valuation to what it would be if it replaced n% of the transaction volume of swift/ripple.

I don't think ripple XRP will replace Swift anytime soon, if ever. Swift is evolving and adapting, and the shareholders of Swift are the very institutions that use it. And if the value of replacing Swift with ripple ever grew large enough to make it worthwhile, institutions would just create their own fork rather than give up all the value.

agree with Rune, Ripple rise would be rather positive for BitShares.
Both because it draws serious institutional attention into crypto 2.0 projects, and because BitShares is complementary to Ripple.

Ripple  is targeting to replace SWIFT etc. for the existing banking system, with the nodes will likely be controlled by some interbanking network. So not exactly centralised, but definitely not as decentralised and democratic as BTS!

Much higher XRP market cap is reflective in my view of rather mature system. As far as I understand, Ripple Labs had certain time advance versus Invictus with regards to product design, team building, development, marketing. BTS is much more "work in progress with moving targets" which will imo a fundamentally new type of economic organization and will prove its strength over time due to its inherent flexibility.

Still, just a few months ago, Ripple had major issues with dev team stability and initial stakes distributions, suffering huge declines in market cap (from $10bn peak for all 100bn xrp in Dec 2013 to some $400m a few months ago). The possible reversal of the fortunes now provides a good example for BitShares to stick in and continue to work on improvements, resolving issues, and keeping enthusiasm independently of price action...

I'm thinking that the recent upward surge in Ripple XRP might be driven largely by Chinese investors, which is reminiscent of what happened to BTC last Nov. Interestingly, when you click on the price details of XRP on Coinmarketcap, you see that the BTC38 price (XRP/CNY in $ terms) is way higher than prices on the other high-volume ripple exchanges. This price gap has been persistent for a while, suggesting that Chinese traders have been leading the price upwards.

The same pattern is also apparent for Stellar, Jed McCaleb's offshoot of Ripple.

Quote from: vlight on December 16, 2014, 11:56:27 am

So all those smart people at Ripple forums who said that Ripple is the next big thing were right after all... so much for it being centralized to fail...

Price rallies and its next big thing?? really?

Sometimes, perceptions can become reality. If ripple manages to overtake btc in market cap, they will be a more formidable competitor for BitShares, without some of the key weaknesses of Bitcoin: slow confirmation time, wasteful mining, and changing supply. They will then get a lot of attention from the community. They will also have a really big war chest in terms of XRP that they can spend to fund development.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Which all points to the importance for BitShares of getting to a stable Client 1.0 as soon as possible. Every day that goes by without that further reduces our chances of success.

Anyone who is even a casual observer of Coinmarketcap has seen that Ripple has been on a very strong uptrend over the past month or so, even as Bitcoin and nearly all other cryptos have languished.

If you consider all of the XRP ripple currency units (most are not necessarily freely traded, but they are outstanding), the market cap is nearing $2 billion. That's almost fifty times (50x) the market capitalization of BitShares. 

Maybe Ripple is on a trajectory to displace Bitcoin as #1. Maybe BTSers should be alarmed and just a little worried. Thoughts?