This person is probably using the power of their stake to Sorc the market.  They'll be back with a few million more, just watch.

...or someone could have made a market here.

this should all  be handled by the trader-coders.  I would love to help in any way I can

This opens up into a larger discussion on how to make the DEX attractive to traders.
       
        Who are these traders and what are their values?
               Who are serious traders?
                    What types of serous traders are there?
                          What is the thing they all want?
        What is really necessary to become the best game in town?
               What is the best game in town?
                   What is the best game in all of trading?
                      What is the best game in crypto-trading?
                          What do they all have in Common?
How to Implement what traders want?
     How to delegate roles?
         Is there anything in the protocol itself that can be modified to make trading more attractive?
             Can the protocol interface with other widely used trading tools?
         What sorts of extensions could be written to extend functionality to less technically savvy traders?
             What type of Apps, services, and businesses would need to be in place to stimulate trade?
                    How to stimulate such development.

------------

"Serious" traders do not generally trade in the crypto because it does not meet their criteria for safety.  I suspect that the development that they are waiting on is legal.  All other risks can be quantified, but the liabilities involved in trading crypto are not well defined, and the methodology for safely doing so has not been exposed .

The types of traders in crypto tend to have a reckless gambler's edge, but they too are proving the thing that they want.
Traders want everything to be solid up to the point where they're deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold.  Traders want to be free to just trade, because the mental bandwidth required to trade well doesn't leave room for other concerns.

The best trading platforms take this into account, and deliver the capabilities to traders that they need in order to just trade.  Think of trading Nasdaq on Tradestation.... what's on your mind besides just making good trades?
The best platforms in crypto do not even approximate that experience really.  Personally I feel mostly fine on Bitfinex, but when trading Polo I feel like there's something nasty around the corner, the whole thing seems glitchy, and I have a hard time getting the information I use to trade with. However, I still trade there because it provides a number of liquid volatile markets that I can trade at with leverage.... which is worth quite a bit to a trader.
Traders are just opportunists really, if you create opportunity, they will show up to harness it.

All that being said, I think we can all agree that the first and primary business of crypto-currency is the speculation on it's own value, and that success in the space right now involves granting people the ability to exchange things.

I'm fuzzy on the current implementation details of the bitshares protocol, but it does provide basic market services.

       I do wish it provided the capability for an issuer to buy all possible asset names starting with a numeric prefix eg.
       I buy all possible asset names beginning with 854-896-5547..... etc.
       this would allow me to issue assets and everybody knows that if it's in my               prefix, it's mine.  I can later use this in my app to organize
       my markets and alias my assets in the UI.

The development I would like to see as a shareholder is in apps, businesses, gateways, partnerships, etc.
Let the protocol provide basic clearing services and capabilities.  Let third party developers grind out some apps to leverage it.
Interfacing with MT4 would be a great thing, but if that's not possible, some sort of clone of it would be useful too.

In general anything that can be done to make it easier for traders to just trade, and for there to be ample opportunity when they do, will be for the better of the DEX.

Is there a preconfigured Linux release that one could use to spin up a node?  that would be cool.

A good amount should be from traders, which don't really care about bts so...

Traders are important to the health of an asset,  and are a very literal breed.  If BTS is to collect traders from the centralized exchanges, it must provide a very literal reason for why they should trade there.  I would say that this provides a great opportunity for someone to code a virtual centralized exchange.  Also it might end up being good if there's a major heist because this would add intangible value to BTS' abilities, and provide a great opportunity for BTS bulls to get  way longer.

there is only environment. Inside the environment the only things that can exist are useful and resonant with the forces of the environment.

Ripple is making a play for the mainstream. Think about it, in the last few months they've partnered with banks, submitted to the SEC, courted WU and proven that they're willing to exert freezing power over then network on behalf of the powerful entities that use it....therefor making it more appealing to people who play by the same set of rules. Ripple is not run by crypto idealists, it's run by straight up entrepreneurs.