I was listening to this podcast and it touched me and moved me to post a link to it for your consideration.

The thrust of the message I want to convey can be found at time index 38:21 which you can position to by clicking on the progress bar once enough of the podcast is read & cached.

I know BM is on the same page (tho maybe a different paragraph) given what he has posted elsewhere about his desire to end violence.

http://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/2838/the-truth-about-world-war-i-the-hidden-history

Normally I'd post this in the newbie section but there isn't many eyes over there lately.

I'm trying to dig into the concept of BitAssets and really understand them. About the only thing about them I believe I do understand is the psychological basis for why a BitAsset like BitUSD trades near $1. I don't see how that holds true for other assets like gold, silver & oil where the consensus value is more volatile.

It doesn't help that my grasp on futures trading is not rock solid either. I can't seem to retain if a short is a contract you buy when you want the value to go down or if that's the "long" position. As I analyze that now my guess is that short is you want the value to go down to make a profit and long the value to rise to make a profit. So that is one basic question.

When I read the BitShares wiki entry for BitAssets the opening paragraph was enough to motivate me to write this post. Then under Initial Creation I read this:

BitAssets are created whenever a short is matched with a buyer at a price set by the median price feed which is provided by delegates.

And was further confused by not understanding what a price feed is, how the delegates set it, on what basis they do so and whether it's individually set by each delegate or some sort of cooperation or consensus is at play.

Other questions related to futures trading procedure are:
1) what do I buy BitUSD with, BTC coins, BTSX shares, or any of the above at bter btc38 or other exchanges where BitUSD is traded?
2) can I buy BitUSD in my BitShares client directly without using an exchange?
3) do I need to "put up" some bond or form of collateral to buy BitUSD, since it's value is based on trade speculation?
4) if no to #3, do I have to "put up" collateral to short or go long on BitUSD?

If you'd prefer to discuss this with me on mumble I'll be listening in backroom #3 (just drag your username from the conference hall to backroom 3), or you could respond here. I really need to get these things nailed down in my brain.

Thanks!

I tried to post this a few hours ago but the forum was offline.

On 10/18/2014 bytemaster started this thread: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10148.msg132495#msg132495 relating his initial proposal for a merger. Two days later Ander started this thread: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10214.msg133796#msg133796 to summarize the merger discussion as of 10/22/2014.

At the end of the mumble session today I offered to document what I perceive is the majority consensus on some of the issues, but it is by no means a comprehensive summary of all of the points discussed in the session. Gamey always does an excellent job of that. My primary objective is to help document what appears to be points of consensus concerning the proposed merger. Upon reflection and a second listen of the entire session, I don't believe I have much of a consensus to document. Nevertheless, perhaps this post may help clarify some points for someone.

Translation of Existing Stakes Into BTS Shares

From what I have seen in the forums this week, the issues around what position each stakeholder of [AGS | BTSX | DNS | PTS | VOTE | MUSIC | etc.] will have in the new BTS ecosystem constitutes the majority of the contention and concern. No surprise there.

I was quite surprised however that no discussion of this took place in the mumble session. My personal take, given the large number of forum posts discussing this is:

• Either the majority of the community is satisfied and thus has reached a consensus
• None of those dissatisfied were present in the mumble session
• Those who were dissatisfied and present chose not to raise their concerns

As I think through the issues I read on the forum, I realize there are several aspects of the merger besides how a given stake will transform into BTS shares, such as how PTS will vest in BTS over time, will those vehicles continue to exist after the merger and how will they be represented on the exchanges, what market caps will be used to calculate investment values and issues about liquidity.

Since none of this was discussed at all in the mumble session, I tried to go back through the forum posts to come up with a concise position transformation formula, but I cannot, there is too many discussions and too many elements to factor in, at least for me.

Although much discussion was posted about the relative portions of AGS, BTSX, DNS & PTS etc to BTS It's not exactly clear to me when I see a statement like "7% AGS, 7% PTS, 3% VOTE, 3% DNS and 80% BTSX" what that even means. Percentage of what? If I have 1000 shares of PTS does that mean I get 70 shares of BTS? Is it a percentage of each funds market cap or of BTSX's market cap? It's very difficult to understand these discussions when so many elements are assumed or scattered on different threads.

Bytemaster was asked if DNS would be the same after the merger or if it would be a bitAsset. He said BTS would allow auctioning the domain names for bitUSD, but did not know the auction specifics.

Bytemaster also stated that PTS and AGS would not end but will continue on; they are not bought out or retired, contrary to his original proposal. Though PTS and AGS will continue to exist, he will no longer have any interest in them to divide his time and loyalties. But when asked if AGS would only be used for BTS "because they were bought out", he said yes. He also said that it's up to the shareholders of Music or Vote or other DAC team to decide whether to be a part of BTS or operate on their own separate blockchain, it wasn't his decision to make.

A summary of the current proposal should be stated for each of the entities in this ecosystem without ambiguity. Issues such as the vesting schedule and market cap should also be stated. But you'll have to wait for someone more capable than I at summarizing the forum discussions. When I asked Bytemaster  when a more formal merger description would be forthcoming he tentatively said next week.

Chinese Community

There was considerable time given to address issues from the Chinese community, as well as discussion about marketing efforts to them. Concerns were raised that individual efforts from the Chinese community were not being recognized or compensated. Bytemaster said he trusts in Bo Chen but would like to see more transparency and disclosure of how the funds he has provided are being spent.

It was stated early on in the session that we should all be aware of the language barrier and difficulty the Chinese community has in participating in the session, and to make an effort to speak more slowly. There were several people present helping with the translation in real time.

Some questions were posed by the Chinese community about the metrics for evaluating performance. Bytemaster responded by discussing what Brian Page was working on and the difficult position he is in. He related how pleased he is about the new, unified BTS and how Brian had been asking for it for quite awhile now. He said Brian's pay and that of the entire marketing staff are dependent on market cap growth, as it doubles.

They would get 10 - 20 million BTS shares if they are able to bring BTS' market cap up to match bitcoin's.
Bytemaster was asked about the model of how new developers would be added. He responded by saying anyone wishing to become a BTS developer should demonstrate their value, how they will work with the team by fixing bugs or implementing new features.  He feels it would be bad to hire someone with unproven skills.

The BTS Roadmap

After the merger a BTS marketing push slated for this December with a rebranded client, everything merged in with their vesting stake a working voting application or voting booth. IN early 2015 "KeyGraph" will be an important focus (aimed at vote validation / certification). After that the long term plan is to create a scripting app to compete with Etherium. The goal is to be able to create any other DACs without the need for continual hard forks. After that the focus will become specific appliations such as auctions and others TBA.

BTS DAC Structure

A number of questions related to the company structure and accountability to shareholders were raised, and bytemaster responded by saying the future direction would be to migrate developers into elected delegate positions and have their work rewarded by that model as opposed to being paid through I3. He emphasized that AGS funds would be invested into the growth of the BTS "superDAC" and it's staff.
When asked about revealing individual staff member pay bytemaster said they have avoided doing that to protect privacy, but salaries as a group will continue to be reported for I3.  Bytemaster said that tying delegate pay to bitUSD would be very complicated.

And on top of that there's the PTS --> DPOS-DAC changes coming up by year end. Just not sure what makes sense now. I probably should have split my BTC into both PTS and BTSX rather than only BTSX?

You thoughts on this most welcome...

I just put the bulk of my funds into cold storage and I noticed the delegate voting options during the transfer.

Not yet being satisfied I am informed enough to individually select delegates (let alone 101 of them!), I went ahead and selected the "let delegates decide" option (or something like that. I still get the msg "this account is not voting with all of it's stake" tho).

In my mind there's a rather big hole in our DPOS implementation that needs to be filled and that's in setting up some basic standards or guidelines for delegates and providing a central place where that info can be published. Even basic info like hardware description, ISP, UPS and the like for each delegate would be better than nothing.

I wouldn't want to lock in a set of requirements, but having a basic checklist of guidelines each delegate could publish would give people a metric to compare delegates. Another set of criteria would be operational information and run-time stats, like svk publishes on his BitsharesBlocks.com website.

These things may have been discussed, but I haven't found such discussions if so. I'm also aware this probably isn't on the top of the priority pile, but it probably needs to be addressed before going live to general public in a big way.

It seems like every day I see web designs on the internet that look outstanding, and makes me feel like my efforts are neanderthal in comparison. But I could throw up a Joomla site with some generalized info pages about delegate voting, and a forum, guestbook or some way to for delegates to post the essentials of their "campaign platform" for the general public. Maybe even putting up polls to gauge what the BitShare community considered to be important in a delegate might provide useful input. Hell I dunno. Anyway, this may not even be worth 2 shatoshis to this community, but it's a thought that crossed my mind.

As I gain more cryptocurrency understanding and presence on the net, I have established various accounts, wallets and balances here and there. However, I wish to protect my primary holdings in cold storage, which as I understand it is having a wallet whose primary keys and access passwords are not online.

My question is, what is the best way to go about this for BTC and BTSX?

My thought is to create a new virtual machine using Parallels or Virtualbox, install brand new wallets in it, transfer whatever primary balances I want in cold storage to the new wallets leaving whatever online balance in place in my existing wallets. Once the transfer is confirmed to the new wallets I would copy or image the partition the VM was on onto a removable USB drive and then securely wipe that partition.

Anyone care to comment on this approach or suggest others?

I have installed Electrum 1.9.8 and before I buy any bitcoins I want to make sure my client and address are fully operational.

Is someone willing to send me a bare minimum amount of BTC to 1FhkptEMU23KSaNrCjpJpumY5e3izqAwyB ?

I hope to be able to repay the sender with whatever he sends plus a small tip to express my gratitude, once I can make a BTC purchase which will be in process soon.

I could find a faucet, provide my email, register etc, but prefer to avoid that hassle not to mention the spam that would likely result. I can setup a new email account on my hosting service but that too is just another hassle and takes time. I thought if someone were willing to send me a bare minimum amount of BTC it would be faster.

I haven't done any transactions with BTC, so I don't know what king of real world money we're talking about in terms of fees to send 5, 10, 20 or so satoshi to a bitcoin address. Obviously if the cost is significant I wouldn't expect anyone to answer this request without some form of compensation.

I don't want anyone to send more BTC than I can get from a faucet, just to put a limit on this. If the deal I've got in the works falls through I can always repay whoever may respond to this request from proceeds I will get from a faucet.

Thanks for your consideration.