I went through the Bitshares wiki page and realized we are missing the most important topic there: what is the main concept of Bitshares X.

We have the white paper (highly technical as it should be)
We have the market peg (again highly technical)
We have a description how to use the wallet (good)
We have a description of trading strategies (good for advanced users)

But we are missing the most important bit: what is the main purpose of Bitshares X and what are the mechanics that make it work.

The only thing a newcomer can find is this video made almost a year ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BV55IrZi7g
and to be honest when I watched it first a couple of months ago I did not understand it fully even though a have a strong economic and trading experience.
We definitely need something more comprehensive than that.

I've published my attempt to fill this gap on reddit and it seems that people do want to know it
http://www.reddit.com/r/BitShares/comments/2eo1sh/eli5_for_bitshares_x/

Anybody knows who is in charge of the wiki page?

The about page here has a pretty good overall description of the use for BitSharesX without a lot of technical info: http://bitshares-x.info/about.php

This is a good detailed (more technical) overview as well: http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Bitshares_X#FAQ_Section

My BTSX wallet isnt updating. I have 1 network connection yesterday and it was painfully slow, then that 1 connection failed and now. Okay now its back up to 1 connection, yah.... How can I connect to more nodes? My wallet will never update at this pace....

Are you on the 0.4.9 release? It is supposed to fix syncing issues.

Quote from: robrigo on August 28, 2014, 04:29:50 am

Here's the official page on PTS / AGS: http://bitshares.org/resources/ags-pts/

Community wiki page: http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Getting_a_stake

There has been a few DACs now that honor PTS. Another one is LottoShares. The DNS / VOTE DAC snapshot of the PTS chain was also taken just a week ago at August 21 23:59:59 PM UTC.

Thank you! I will look into that. Basically I'm just trying to understand how big stake I buy with 1 BTSX...

Quote from: robrigo on August 28, 2014, 04:29:50 am

Users can create new assets in BitSharesX but the price is steep to do so as they are encourged to be more serious assets. There is a platform called BitShares ME that intends to fill the user issued assets demand at a lower rate than BTSX.

My question was specifically about BTSX shares/assets and not about generic BitShareX assets.
Is there any way to issue new BTSX shares?
I'm asking because I've just seen the function in the client for the user created assets ("Issue new assets of an asset type you control.").

No problem. The number of shares is less than 2 bn because BitSharesX is a DAC, and DACs are deflationary by design to pay out "dividends" to stakeholders. Elected delegates in the system are capable of setting their pay rate to burn rate ratio. Pay rate is the % of transaction fees paid to the delegate, and burn rate are the % of fees destroyed, deflating the supply of BTSX and thus increasing the buying power. Delegates can campaign for votes on the basis of their ratio (i.e. spending their pay rate in a certain manner such as charity, marketing, development, etc. or also campaign on the basis of paying more dividends to stakeholders by burning).

In this manner the amount of BTSX should not ever increase.

The user created assets are for listing polymorphic digital assets on the BitSharesX exchange that are market pegged to an asset, where the price is decided on by market consensus.

Hey fellows,

I will send 1.337 bitUSD to each person to sign up for the Thunderclap campaign and post in this thread. You can access it here: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/15467-a-new-financial-world.  We currently have 58 / 100 users signed up, so this will be for spots 59-100 only.

Thanks to G1ng3rBr34dM4n for organizing this. Don't forget to snag your 10 free BTSX from his thread over here for your show of support: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7447.0.

Lets get this great tool for exposure of BitSharesX to the world past the target goal!

A friend of mind owning a company is thinking about creating asset in Bitshares X. The company will sell its shares in BTC.
In this case we have a couple questions.

1. How to distribute asset to investors (Get a memo of their BTSX name and issue to them?)
2. If the company makes annual profit, how can we share with asset-holders?

I believe that the legal distribution of regulated securities is something that is possible within the BitSharesX system but it hasn't been completed yet. Have you read BM's blog post regarding a cryptostock? It's a good outline as to what needs to be done. http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/overstock-to-cryptostock

A big problem seems to be passing the Know Your Customer info along as BTSX is designed to be anonymous, so I don't think this could be accomplished within the current release. New features to allow the registration / verification of an identity will need to be solved. I'm pretty sure the VOTE DAC is working on a similar concept for establishing the identity of voters.

Hey together,

Here is a good resource for this info: http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Bitshares_X

But to give you some basic answers:

1) Initial alloc. was 50% / 50% based on PTS and AGS holders. PTS (BitShares Protoshares) is a minable PoW coin and AGS is basically a donor list from the AngelShares crowdfunding campaign. One is liquid and the other is illiquid.

2) BTSX aren't pegged to BTC. But there should be bitBTC available on the BitSharesX market as soon as enough delegates publish feeds, which would be collateralized by BTSX.

3) In response to buying assets on margin, I think this is the inverse of what shorting bitUSD does? As that is selling assets on a margin... but don't quote me on that, I am learning about markets and economics everyday. So my unofficial answer to your question is no.

4) Non pegged assets sound like what other decentralized exchanges may offer today, such as the NXT marketplace. They are user issued and thus you have to trust the user to back the value. Market pegged polymorphic digital assets like bitUSD / bitBTC / bitCNY are different because the value is determined by a consensus of the participants in each market rather than a user.

5) You can trade USD -> BITUSD here: https://bter.com/trade/bitusd_usd

6) Users can create assets on the market but the cost is expensive. Another DAC is planned to handle user created assets for much less cost, called BitShares ME.

So FREE, LOVE, LAB are all user created market assets. They won't be tradeable until at least 50 delegates publish feeds for them and the required market depth is reached, I believe.

Quote from: robrigo on August 27, 2014, 06:31:10 pm

You could buy bitUSD for less than the price of an actual USD and then sell that on the internal exchange... it looks like the peg is stabilizing right now on the internal market so there is some profit to be scraped there if done correctly.

https://bter.com/trade/btc_bitusd
https://bter.com/trade/bitusd_usd

How can I buy bitusd at a good rate? can I post an order on bter?

Yes at the links I provided in this quote. I use BTC -> BTSX but now that you can buy BTC -> bitUSD you could buy bitUSD, transfer that into your BitSharesX wallet and then sell it on the internal market for BTSX as well. bter doesn't charge a withdrawal fee for BitUSD atm.