So I took it once more to look at shorting in Bitshares today.

I must say I'm slightly confused 

Let's take NZD as an example.

Feed price: 138.082 BTS/bitNZD
Margin Call Price: 151.8902 BTS/bitNZD

Ok. So, from the beginning, we have to lock up some BTS as collateral (>= 1.95x) in case the BTS loses value against NZD.

The higher the collateral ratio, the higher the margin call price.


So far so good.

I then tried to sell my newly minted smartcoins to another account of mine, naively thinking that would settle the original debt (by getting rid of the smartcoins, I wondered if some automatic action would be taken).

It didn't - which, if I understand correctly, means that someone, somewhere, must be perpetually in debt in order for any smartcoin to be in circulation?


Fine, I then tried to close the position: no luck, I needed the 10 smartcoins I'd just sold to the other account.

Transferred them back, clicked "Close position", the smartcoins disappeared, I got all of my BTS back.

The total supply of CHF and NZD (where I ran the tests) shrinked back to what it was originally.



So even if I wanted to offer some limited liquidity, that would always mean making a bet that BTS would appreciate against the smartcoin, perpetually.

And here's the mind-boggling part: let's say I shorted 1000 NZD into existence, and by the grace of .. doge, BTS did move favorably against NZD.

I now have (let's say) 200 NZD in my pocket! Wow! So I close position and that's that, I have 200 NZD in my wallet, debt-free.


.... why not simply hold the BTS, avoid locking up 1.95x the amount, go into debt, and change the BTS for BTC or something less volatile ?


ELI5 please.

Lately I have been thinking about whether Smartcoins should return to .. returning yield for hodling or not.

Wrote a little something over at steemit, http://steem.link/OlG2g

I still think the forum is a better place to discuss any such topics longterm, hence this post.

Hoping it will generate discussion both here and on steemit. Very interested in your opinion!

Recent news of free markets adopting XMR due to superior privacy/anonymity features when compared to the better-known cousin Bitcoin have spurred insane price spikes in XMR/BTC and, correspondingly, XMR/fiat.

With the impending addition of STEALTH transactions to bitshares, there appears to be a clear opportunity to benefit from the publicity XMR is receiving at this moment, and forge a synergy between two projects that so far, to the best of my knowledge, have not collaborated much with each other.

I therefore propose that Bitshares witnesses add XMR to the price feeds, creating the bitXMR smartcoin.

Once this is done, we can begin reaching out to the Monero community.

Upvote on steemit: http://steem.link/OQQMn

Dear everyone,

Last week I published a survey (here: https://bitshares.typeform.com/to/JvqCsc) aimed at bitshares shareholders, to better understand where we as a community are, and what as a group we believe the path forward might be.

So far, less than 60 shareholders have completed it.

There are already some interesting patterns showing, and I would like to share this information here in the forum, a month or two from now -- but 60 is not a very significant number at all.


I'm convinced that by polling opinion like this, we can all get a clearer vision of where to focus our limited time and energies next.

For that reason, I'd like to once again ask for 10 minutes of your time.

Upvote on steemit if you want to (I made $2 from the initial announcement -- YOOHOO!!!!), but really, what I am asking here is your data point in the survey.



If concerns about privacy are in your mind, read the introduction text .. I suggest how to mitigate that -- I understand, having answered the survey myself in a private manner.


Thank you!

https://forum.bitsquare.io/t/target-tor-users-and-torproject-itself-bash-cloudflare-btc-sites/473

This is something that I have raised around here repeatedly. For those of you that are not aware, the forum itself runs behind cloudflare (which for me and other tor users, means solving endless captchas / training some google artificial intelligence to better recognize me).

Well worth a read, if you don't really understand what's happening behind the scenes when visiting a cloudflare-"protected" site.

p.s: Cloudflare is an American company

http://steem.link/FfXhG

The next chapter will touch on using smartcoins instead of sending funds to a bank account.

Unfortunately I think I will have to limit the scope of that chapter to bitUSD and bitCNY, because of the price feed issue currently present in bitsquare for other smartcoins (see https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23011.msg297740.html#msg297740)

Anyhow, don't expect the next chapter until a week from now (at least), I'll see if we can get the bitsquare feed thing sorted out first, because I would really like to appeal to people's national currencies instead of generic USD (why bitUSD when you have SteemUSD, steemians will ask) and CNY (I suspect all/most the chinese over at steemit already know about bitCNY .. )

As people slowly begin to realize that money in the bank is not safe money, I couldn't help but write a small article promoting influx of capitals to the crypto ecosystem, namely bitshares.

Have a look: http://steem.link/GqiuA

https://steemit.com/bitsquare/@karnal/bitshares-smartcoins-added-to-bitsquare