How would you answer to the question: "What is Bitshares?" I want lots of different (but accurate!) answers.

There are lots of different people who could use Bitshares for different things. I want to identify as many groups as possible. This will help to market Bitshares. We don't need to push the same image of Bitshares to everybody, we can and we should differentiate the message depending on who we are communicating with.

This list is also good foundation for articles and promovideos.

Here are some of what I can think of. Please help to refine the arguments, add more target groups and of course add your own answers.

Bitshares is Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC)

* BTS is a share of a DAC that offers high quality financial services globally. Anybody can buy it without any restrictions.
* Bitshares has advanced governance model. With witnesses, committee, workers and reserve pool we have all the necessary parts in place for deciding how to use the blockchain.
* Main products of Bitshares are an exchange, market pegged assets (smartcoins) and payment network.
* Developers can use the Bitshares blockchain to build their own smartcontracts on it. With Fee Backed Assets it's easy for them to get paid for succesful smartcontract/dapp.

- For people looking for investment opportunities.
- For developers to get hired by the DAC.

Bitshares is a financial platform on a blockchain

* Bitshares blockchain is fast and versatile, intended for use of different financial products.
* Bitshares has build-in exchange that individuals and businesses can use.
* In Bitshares anybody can issue their own assets, including smartcoins. Issuers of assets can earn money when users are making transactions with their assets.

- For people looking for alternative economic systems.
- For people looking for alternatives for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- Fintech professionals.

Bitshares is a decentralized exchange

* Anybody can be a trader. No need for any permissions, just create an account and start trading. You can build and use your own trading bots.
* In Bitshares it is possible for everyone issue their own assets. They can be smartcoins, IOUs or FBAs. White-listing is optional for those who need it, for example fiat-IOU issuers.

- For traders.
- For businesses such as exchanges, gateways, bridges, etc.

Bitshares is a decentralized bank

* Smartcoins are price stable cryptocurrencies that peg their price to another currency or asset, such as USD, CNY, EUR, gold, silver or oil. With smartcoins you can be  sure that value of your assets isn't as volatile as value of bitcoin, but still have all the benefits of cryptocurrency.

- For people looking for alternative economic systems.

Bitshares is a fast and versatile payment network

* Bitshares offers a large scale of different cryptocurrencies and assets that can be used by everyone.
* Bitshares network is the fastest cryptocurrency network at the moment. It should be able to do more than 100 000 tx/s when all witnesses are updated with appropriate hardware and internet connection. It has been tested to make 1000 tx/s, which is still way more than Bitcoin's 7 tx/s.
* Anybody can issue their own assets which can be used for example as reward points, gift cards or event tickets.

- For businesses.

I've been also pondering the question "what is Bitshares?" lately, especially from a marketing perspective. We should have a one simple answer to that, like "Bitshares is a financial platform build on blockchain".

But besides that one, we can have many different answers for different people. When you are telling somebody about Bitshares, you can choose the best point of view for each individual or group.

Bitshares is Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC)
- For people looking for investment opportunities. BTS is a share of a DAC that offers high quality financial services globally. Anybody can buy it without any restrictions.

Bitshares is a financial platform on a blockchain
- For people looking for alternative economic systems.
- For people looking for alternatives for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- Fintech professionals.

Bitshares is a decentralized exchange
- For traders.

Bitshares is a decentralized bank
- For people looking for alternative economic systems.

Bitshares is a fast and versatile payment network
- For businesses.

There are no flowers by their bedside, no teddy bears and no cards with well wishes ... just complaints and negative feedback telling them how they should have done more for the rest of you while they lay on their death bed.

Sorry if my message was too negative. I just tried to give constructive criticism.

The point is that marketing of Bitshares hasn't been working so far. It's really hard to get people's attention nowadays and it's getting harder all the time. While I really appreciate the effort that you are doing, I have to say that it's not usually enough. Results are the only thing that matter here. If there are no likes, clicks and comments, content hasn't been valuable and something has to change. It is through continuous trial and error how the formula is found that gives results.

Nobody should think that they are entitled to have people's attention just because they say "bitshares". Attention has to be earned.

I think we have to go to basics first. Explain very clearly what exactly Bitshares is, how does it work, for what it can be used for and what makes it valuable. Newbies don't have any clue about these things. Many people even here on this forum have some gaps in their understanding of the system. When you can explain how beautiful this system really is, marketing is much easier. People come to look for information all by themselves, without us needing to actively reach for them. That is something we need to aim for.

Quote from: Flor on March 02, 2016, 10:02:12 am

Hello, I would like to bring some money in Open Ledger to trade regular crypto coin but something is not clear for me.

First thing is why there is 3 assets related to Bitcoin ? (BTC, OPEN.BTC and METAEX.BTC).

I also have "NO DATA" when I click to see the OPEN.BTC market and several others market, what could be the reason behind this ?

I'm a big fan of Bitshares but to be honnest this is no engaging

BTC is the market peged asset(bitBTC)
OPEN.BTC is an IOU btc from open ledger and METAEX.BTC is an IOU BTC from metaexchange, and there is also TRADE.BTC from blocktrades I think, every exchange that joins can have its own "IOU.BTC"

This is the nature of decentralized exchange. Anybody can issue their own assets, so of course there is several IOU-assets for bitcoin, and probably there will be more in the future.

I agree that it might sound confusing at first, but once you understand the reason, it should be clear.

Why is BTS no longer on Shapeshift?

It should be back soon.

Can I still trade my BTS?

Yes, of course. The exchange is better than ever. You just have to migrate to the new blockchain (2.0). There was changes that were so big that devs decided to launch a new chain instead of updating the old.

I'm not sure if newsletter is really a worth of effort. I would rather see new blog posts coming regularly than a newsletter with lots of text and then again a long silence. Also imitating a physical paper magazine seems a little bit antique at these days.

What's the big thing here? Isn't Microsoft that evil big corporation that produces unusable and annoying software and destroys projects that it "cooperates" with?

I worked for Nokia when Elop became CEO. When he announced that Nokia will start to use Windows I knew that it was the end Nokia phones. I'm still a little bit bitter about that. 

Happens to me also every now and then. Just start it again and it will work.