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General Discussion / Re: How committed is the community to bitsharesX as opposed to the next "DAC"?
« on: September 25, 2014, 08:07:25 pm »http://107.170.163.35/index.php/Distributed_Autonomous_Companieshttp://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/What_is_BitShares%3F
and all the links from there...
Yup. Read those. I don't see answers to my questions there.
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/The_History_of_BitShares
These are links in the article aren't they?
Also read this:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2425270
It is from independent (not connected to Bitshares) author. You might learn something that you clearly do not get, judging by your questions....
I'll have to give the ssrn paper a read later.
On the wiki, I think you're referring to this:
Quote
The concept of BitShares is based on the notion that the units issued by Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrency systems more intuitively resemble shares in startups with small capitalizations than legal tender of sovereign nations. Carrying the company analogy a bit further, the goal of maximizing the 'equity-value-per-share' ratio replaces the goal of maintaining a constant 'purchasing-power-per-unit' ratio in a currency system. With a currency, the general tendency is to strive for a stable price-per-stuff ratio. Shares, on the other hand, are expected to pay profits in shares, appreciate in value, or both. When we think of a DAC as a company, rather than as a mint, the idea of units that increase in value comes more naturally. In this way, the cryptocurrency acts as a medium of exchange and store of value, but not as a unit of account or measure of value... just like transferable shares in an investment portfolio... rather like buying goods and services with shares from one's investment portfolio.
I get that it's a useful analogy to think if a cryptocurrency as an equity rather than as currency, especially in the early stages where it has tremendous growth potential and tremendous risk and thus its value fluctuates wildly. But that doesn't mean that it isn't actually currency. Especially in the long run, if it is very successful, it's value might even stabilize more than USD stability, in which case it may be used almost entirely as a currency, and only as an equity to a very limited degree. (At that point it's value would be more characteristic of a bond than of an equity, providing a very consistent modest return. Or no return at all. Stake holders might prefer a network with the lowest possible transaction fees necessary to support the network and no dividends.)