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Topics - karnal

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61
General Discussion / Ethereum competition coming
« on: March 17, 2016, 08:26:31 am »

62
General Discussion / Concerned about lack of marketing/visibility
« on: March 15, 2016, 10:59:23 am »
Even though the liquidity issue is still around (rendering BitShares essentially useless for most people), progress is being made and solutions are being discussed. As insiders/investors/users we know this.

From the outside though, other than the Beyond Bitcoin (which I follow every week), which again mostly only insiders will know about, things don't look so good, apparently.


The YouTube channel is dead, last videos were months ago and plenty of outdated information.
Many of the infographics one can find online appear to contain a lot of outdated info (still mentioning BitUSD yield, for instance)
There does not appear to be any meaningful twitter activity.
There is no IRC channel.
Documentation online is scattered, incomplete, and sometimes contains typos.


With STEALTH coming and with BTC/ETH/DOGE/LTC/USD/EUR/CNY bridges already operational, even if not perfect as they rely on a 3rd party UIA right now, it seems to me that there is a very real and immediate use case for BitShares in the crypto community, which of course is preserving value (in a private way with STEALTH) when wanting to divest away from crypto speculation.

Services are already being built for the platform and likely will continue to be, until then if we can capture this part of the market, crypto users storing their loot on bitshares, that'll distinguish us from every other crypto project out there - as far as I'm aware, there is no better solution, right now or in sight, to store wealth using crypto.

It seems like a clear opportunity, BitShares is by far the best match for it. I don't think the rest of the crypto-world, for the most part, realizes that.


When STEALTH comes, we MUST have liquidity, we MUST have good documentation, we MUST have YouTube (and text) tutorials explaining how to store a stable value of wealth in the platform.

I believe in the short/medium term this is the #1 use for the platform. Do you agree? How can we organize things to entice thousands of new users to join and store their wealth on the network in the very near future?

63
Technical Support / "MY MARKETS" page: suggestions for improvement
« on: March 13, 2016, 01:22:12 pm »
So, after having customized the favorite markets over time, a usage pattern has evolved where I use the bitshares wallet as a central point to gauge prices of:

 - Gold & Silver
 - FOREX
 - Cryptocurrencies

I would like to suggest the following improvements to this display in the wallet; From (in my opinion) most important to least important:

- New column, "spread": a %pct of how far away the closest sell order is from the settlement price
- New column, "24h change": This can be seen when entering a certain market; it would be quite helpful to have it on the overview display.
- New column, "24h volume": Same reasons as above, perhaps display it in the unit of account the user has chosen

- Ability to categorize assets into categories such as Cryptocurrency, Fiat Currency, Commodities, etc, so that they can then be conveniently grouped.
- Ability to freely rearrange the list of markets in this overview page.

- Little flags for (crypto)currencies and a silver/gold bar for metals would be a simple and nice visual addition :)



What do y'all think?

64
Meta / PLEASE disable Cloudflare on the forum
« on: February 28, 2016, 11:50:46 am »
Dear forum admins,

I've brought this up before, many months ago. Cloudflares' quest to eradicate privacy and anonimity online has taken on a whole new level since.

Most users here don't realize there is a company in the middle (Cloudflare) who is scooping all you write, including private messages, since when you connect over TLS to bitsharestalk.org, it's actually to Cloudflare that you're connecting. They own the private key to the certificate and can therefore read everything you do here (including snatching your password and any and all PMs you send).

At the very least I hope that from Cloudflare to the bitshares forum webserver, the connection is TLS-secured, or all your passwords and PMs are transiting parts of the internet in cleartext.

Anyway, this is really mostly an issue for people who use Tor and VPNs, because in their infinite wisdom, Cloudflare has declared that every Tor/VPN user is a criminal or a proto criminal and therefore has to be subjected to endless harassment to be able to read content online.

As someone who browses the internet exclusively through Tor, let me tell you, it is disconcerting how many websites out there use this companys' service, possibly without realizing that they are endagering all of their users' privacy (give all your site data to a US-owned company, great idea these days!!! straight to the NSA..). The situation is becoming a bit like google analytics being ever-present, so Google has a pretty good view of what a large chunk of the internet does.

This forum is no exception;

 (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

  ga('create', 'UA-46762057-4', 'auto');
  ga('send', 'pageview');

But I digress (and it's easy to opt out of this pervasive tracking with extensions such as ghostery and/or RequestPolicy).


Anyhow,
May I give you a very abridged version of the events over the last year or so, from a day-to-day Tor user (and there more than are a few around here):



Rather than straight loading the forum as would happen on an uncensored connection, Tor and VPN users are subjected to extra checks.

In the beginning, it was possible to solve their captchas with javascript off. It was an annoyance, to be sure, but because I'm involved with this community, I endured the pain. Most other sites, though? Can't count how many articles I haven't read because I couldn't be bothered typing yet another captcha.

Things moved on. At some point, the captchas became plain and simply plain impossible for humans to solve with javascript turned off. And Cloudflare knew that, of course. it was by design, I suspect. So now we had to turn javascript on in order to have a chance of solving the captcha, and of course, the captcha is served from google, so now we are being forced to talk to googles' servers too.

It stayed there for awhile, but I guess the endless abuse from pedophiles and terrorists continued, so they upped their game; Now it's gone up to a stage where (I'm serious) there is a matrix of squares, and solving the captcha consists of selecting "all images with pool tables", "all images with pool chairs", "all images with sweets", "all images with bodies of water" (this one is particularly funny, for some fucked up reason when you click a square with a body of water, it'll neatly disappear and reappear, at which point you have to select it again if it's another body of water, sometimes this goes on for 3-6 times in a row).

But once isn't enough, apparently the terrorists have been developing very efficient software to automatically solve the captchas, because you'll be blasted with 2, 3, 4, 5 rounds of these retarded questions, until His Cloudflarianess deems you are worthy of visiting the website (5 minutes later).

And because you might've turned into a pedophile bot since the last captcha, it'll also regularly re-prompt you to solve them as you browse the same website, in the same session.

Oh, and Javascript HAS TO be turned ON. This time they didn't even bother pretending to accomodate, no javascript = images can't be clicked = captcha can't be solved = no website for you!



I used to visit this forum several times a day during work breaks and what not. Now I'm lucky if I come once every 3 days. Sorting flowers and pool tables, I have better use for my time.


So please, one more time, disable this horrible thing from the forum, the user experience is beyond reproachable and also in terms of privacy and freedom, it's a pretty bad move to use them.

Thank you.

65
Technical Support / Two small improvements to the UI
« on: February 20, 2016, 10:05:10 am »
  • In the market, show by how much each bid/ask differs (> or <) from the settlement price, as a percentage.
  • Allow adding local descriptions to accounts in the wallet

+5% :D

66
Technical Support / The intrinsic uncertainty of hodling SmartCoins
« on: February 01, 2016, 09:32:58 pm »
Lately, as I think about the future development of the platform, something has been bothering me. Not sure if this has been brought up before, but can anyone explain why should any user ever trust the BitShares platform again if a black swan event were to occur?

It would make the newsrounds everywhere and forever taint the reputation of the platform.

When you consider the business side, it's potentially even worse.. imagine you own a business buying/selling (physical) gold and silver, and accept/receive bitGOLD/bitSILVER for the service, thus registering on the blockchain which of your customers own what... there comes the black swan, and your business is wiped off the ground, you can't tell who owns what any longer, it was all liquidated due to no fault of your own (or your customers)

Or say you run a business operating on the model of a bank.. all your (very non technical) users hold bitUSD, bitEUR, bitWhatever at your crypto-bank, until one day comes the black swan and all of it is wiped away, no warning .. the customers will come for you demanding money, though all of it was lost, again through no fault of either business owner or customer.

If all of the above is correct, then no saver or business owner in their right mind would put their wealth in SmartCoins.
UIAs are hardly any better, if the idea was decentralization and "being your own bank", "not needing third parties".

As a transient thing where the user pays with bitUSD and the merchant takes the bitUSD, it works. But if underneath there is always the lingering and very real uncertainty that due to no fault of your own all of your assets can be insta-liquidated .. then anyone who understands that won't hold any considerable sum in the system.

What did I miss?

67
Technical Support / SmartCoin/UIA visual indicator
« on: January 30, 2016, 09:42:56 am »
MARKET   QUOTE SUPPLY   BASE SUPPLY   VOL   PRICE   CHANGE
USD:BTS   102,701.7077 USD   2,539,781,511.00991 BTS   2,780   294.000000   1.38%
USD:BTSIPO   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSIPO   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSPAY   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSPAY   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSGPS   102,701.7077 USD   100,000 BTSGPS   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSNBA   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSNBA   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSCNY   102,701.7077 USD   1,000,000 BTSCNY   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSTABLE   102,701.7077 USD   1,000,000,000 BTSTABLE   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSHOME   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSHOME   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSKRW   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSKRW   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSXME   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSXME   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSBET   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSBET   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSAPC   102,701.7077 USD   5,000,000 BTSAPC   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSPOS   102,701.7077 USD   11,100 BTSPOS   0.00   287.417857   0.00%
USD:BTSFAIR   102,701.7077 USD   1,002,000 BTSFAIR   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSGAME.BTS   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSGAME.BTS   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSFUND   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSFUND   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSYUAN   102,701.7077 USD   1,000,000 BTSYUAN   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSGAME.USD   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSGAME.USD   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSATM   102,701.7077 USD   11,100 BTSATM   0.00   287.417857   0.00%
USD:BTSBOTS.EXCH   102,701.7077 USD   100,000 BTSBOTS.EXCH   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSFCX   102,701.7077 USD   3,000,000 BTSFCX   0.00   287.417857   0.00%
USD:BTSBOTS   102,701.7077 USD   1,299,998.75 BTSBOTS   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSBOTS.V1   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSBOTS.V1   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSSHARE   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSSHARE   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSBOTS.S1   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSBOTS.S1   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSTABLE.COM   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTSTABLE.COM   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSAPAC   102,701.7077 USD   500,000 BTSAPAC   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSAPP   102,701.7077 USD   100,000,000 BTSAPP   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTS.SHARE   102,701.7077 USD   0 BTS.SHARE   0.00   0.000000   0.00%
USD:BTSGAME.CNY   102,701.7077 USD   754.72 BTSGAME.CNY   0.00   0.000000   0.00%


Wouldn't it be nice if there was a visual indicator that the trading pair is a smartcoin or a uia, and if it's a uia, perhaps a popup could come up when hovering over it with info about issuer, website, etc?

68
General Discussion / Connecting the dots
« on: January 25, 2016, 10:15:04 am »
Here we are, early 2016.

Our marketcap has fallen behind Stellar, Factom, and MaidSafe. To say nothing of DOGE (love the doge, but it's obscene that it has >x2 our market cap).


What has gone wrong?

Even though, personally, I don't find the UI to be the prettiest thing around, it mostly works, and it's being actively developed.
Plus, bitcoin core wasn't that pretty back in the day either.

The total and complete lack of privacy, as I've stated several times, seems to me as one major obstacle right now, and it was an oversight that it wasn't addressed any earlier. Essentially everyone whom I've introduced to bitshares refuse to use the system, even create new accounts, because it will all be linked (either that, or several 1-wallet accounts..) -- to say nothing of sending large sums and exposing who your business contacts are and how much every minute transaction is worth for the whole world to see.

I'm sure a minority will be turned off by the utter lack of proxy support in the ui (correct me if I'm wrong - I just transparent-proxy the whole thing through tor, just had a quick look and couldn't find any proxy settings). Crypto-people are usually at least vaguely concerned with privacy, and it would be trivial for the openledger server to identify which accounts/balances are being queried and which IP they belong to.

The above I had to state, but don't find to be particularly relevant, really.

What else? We have a decentralized exchange, which to the best of my knowledge is still a unique feature, and a pretty cool one at that. To be able to trade without having to trust in a 3rd party, that's some serious value right there.

Unfortunately, with the ever-growing list of UIAs that attempt to fulfill the roles of the several smartcoins, for the average user the DEX is reduced to essentially nothing. Does it matter if you're trading on cryptsy or the dex if all the value from your tokens is controlled by a 3rd party?

How is that any better than using cryptsy directly?

It's like a centralized decentralized exchange. I think it loses its appeal that way.


Which leads me into the next point, the much discussed smartcoin peg, which simply isn't working right now.

I can't tell you how many times over the last months I bought some crypto, not to speculate, but to store value, and how much more sense it would make to keep these as a stable smartcoin, rather than bitcoin or doge, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

Unfortunately, with the exception of CNY:BTS, the markets are essentially illiquid and the prices asked, absurd.
As you will probably know, investing/storing wealth in CNY is a dubious proposition right now due to factors external to BitShares, and given the above statement, I was left with no choice but not injecting money into the ecosystem.

I wonder how many hundreds of people thought the same.

How turning off it must be for new users, that they download the software, have a cursory glance at the market, and find .. nothing.
I don't propose to know the solution to this, but I can tell you: it is essential that liquidity be bootstrapped somehow. Maybe that morpheus guy is on to something when he wrote the incentives are not aligned right with the current set of rules.


It is not my goal to sound overly negative. I still believe strongly in this project and it's not just because I have some skin in the game. I can imagine how a world with a functioning BitShares system could work, and it's a great vision. It can really push things to the next level, when compared to bitcoin-like solutions.



So here are some (not-so-)scattered ideas which I believe would help:

First off, STEALTH has to be in working order, with total transparency people won't use the system. This point is being addressed and I look forward to finally registering some accounts I've been putting off to register and start loading them with smartcoins (assuming the liquidity thing is sorted by then :]) - and tell my customers to do the same.

Next, the smartcoin liquidity needs to be sorted. I'm sorry I can't offer much more in this department, don't know how to achieve that, just that it must be achieved. But that's old news, right?

Related to the smartcoins, I do believe we should attempt to "liquify" the SGD, CHF, GOLD and SILVER markets. Perhaps CAN, GBP and AUD as well.
We're a MUCH better system than traditional brokers, who charge absurd fees. Combine being able to buy stocks in {SGD,CHF,GBP,...} and/or indexes (SP500, NASDAQ, etc) with a liquid system, and I believe with some serious grassroots marketing, we can get people to start investing using the bitshares blockchain.

I, for one (with stealth in place), would be more than happy to pave the way. This year I'd open a brokerage account in SGD, but if it can be done with bitshares, I'm willing to put my money where my beliefs are.

Stocks/indexes are one possibility. Another is FOREX. And we already have everything we need (BitEUR:BitUSD already exists). Except liquidity.


Do you see it? Instead of more crypto inbreeding, bring traders from outside the ecosystem. Give them value. Costs 20 CHF at the swiss broker to place an order, costs 10 cents (or whatever it is these days) with bitshares to do the same.

And they don't even need to know it's running on top of bitshares.

p.s: for average users, unlocking the wallet using T/TOP would be a very nice addition. Allow for saving the recovery codes a la github as well.

Which brings me to the next point...

Working gateways. And I don't mean the kind that offer UIAs in return. Why yet another layer? FIAT --> GATEWAY.FIAT --> BIT${FIAT}.

Why not simply FIAT -> BIT${FIAT} and be done with it?

Look. We get people to deposit $FIAT and as soon as the transfer (or credit card purchase, or whatever) clears be credited with Bit${FIAT}, and this thing goes to the moon.

We need the infographics guys/girls to make it easy for average joe to understand the process as well.

It is even useful for all other crypto users. Need to buy some bitcoin? Well no problem, use our fiat gateway, get bitFiat, and help yourself to some BitBTC with that. With the possibility to withdraw "real" bitcoin already a reality.


We are very close to make BitShares heaven for savers, investors, and speculators. I think we need, in no particular order:
  - To fix some small, some not so small issues, such as: finishing stealth, having liquidity
  - Build some services on top of the blockchain, such as: virtual credit cards (bitshares is a much better match for this than bitcoin), (bit)forex brokers,
    crypto-brokerage websites, p2p lending (see for instance www.btcjam.com, again, bitshares with smartcoins is a much better system to run this)
  - Have working gateways that exchange fiat to bit${fiat}, not some centralized UIA that may or may not be around tomorrow.
  - Fund the Munich group and have the PoS system working. Then spread it like wildfire.
  - Bootstrap liquidity in USD, EUR, CHF, GBP, SGD, GOLD, SILVER (CNY already works), with the caveat that it's possible that spreading ourselves too thin with so many of them might be deterimental. In that case, personally I'd go with GOLD, CHF, SGD, USD.
  - Review the infographic strategy, and perhaps create infographics targeting specific users, such as:
       - FOREX traders
       - Brokerage users
       - Savers
       - Investors
       - Speculators
  - More social media presence (totally not my thing, so shooting from the hip..), like a more active subreddit and twitter feed.


On the ground, we need the PoS system to spread, we need marketing and advertising, and we need to have an easy, intuitive simple product that average people who see the advertising can consume. Online we need an easy way for merchants to accept payments (ken/chris & their crew are doing something in that arena as well, but I think it's odoo-specific).. perhaps a bitpay.com for bitshares, say.

Discuss.

69
General Discussion / Is it me...
« on: January 21, 2016, 02:52:29 pm »
.. or the only market where sellers are even remotely close to the fair price (settlement price) is BTS:CNY ?

I'd put 4K EUR in CHF, GOLD, SILVER or SGD, maybe even BTC, if the markets were liquid ..

70
Technical Support / Help compiling on Solaris
« on: January 17, 2016, 12:38:33 pm »
Got it so far after accounting for solaris not having byteswap.h (changes made below):
~/graphene/libraries/fc]$ git diff src/byteswap.hpp
diff --git a/src/byteswap.hpp b/src/byteswap.hpp
index 1a0e534..c51f549 100644
--- a/src/byteswap.hpp
+++ b/src/byteswap.hpp
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@
 #elif defined(__APPLE__)
 # include <libkern/OSByteOrder.h>
 # define bswap_64(x) OSSwapInt64(x)
+#elif defined(__sun) || defined(sun)
+#include <sys/byteorder.h>
+#define bswap_32(x) BSWAP_32(x)
+#define bswap_64(x) BSWAP_64(x)
 #else
 # include <byteswap.h>
 #endif

However, can't get past here .. out of ideas:

[  6%] Performing build step for 'project_secp256k1'
[  7%] Performing install step for 'project_secp256k1'
[  7%] Completed 'project_secp256k1'
[  7%] Built target project_secp256k1
[  8%] Building CXX object libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/src/uint128.cpp.o
In file included from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/reflect/reflect.hpp:18:0,
                 from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/time.hpp:138,
                 from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/log/logger.hpp:3,
                 from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/exception/exception.hpp:6,
                 from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/uint128.hpp:6,
                 from /home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/src/uint128.cpp:1:
/home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/reflect/typename.hpp:30:21: error: redefinition of 'struct fc::get_typename<char>'
   template<> struct get_typename<char>     { static const char* name()  { return "char";     } };
                     ^
/home/bitshares/graphene/libraries/fc/include/fc/reflect/typename.hpp:22:21: error: previous definition of 'struct fc::get_typename<char>'
   template<> struct get_typename<int8_t>   { static const char* name()  { return "int8_t";   } };
                     ^
libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/build.make:62: recipe for target 'libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/src/uint128.cpp.o' failed
make[2]: *** [libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/src/uint128.cpp.o] Error 1
CMakeFiles/Makefile2:399: recipe for target 'libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/all' failed
make[1]: *** [libraries/fc/CMakeFiles/fc.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:127: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2


... any ideas?

71
General Discussion / BTS UIA infographic?
« on: January 05, 2016, 02:36:58 pm »
I'm trying to convince a startup to leverage the BitShares network in their implementation. It fits like a glove.

However I'm having trouble finding good info / howtos / use cases for UIAs, for someone who's not too deep into all this stuff.

Does anyone know if such material is available, and where?

72
Technical Support / What happened to BitNASDAQ, BitNYSE, etc?
« on: October 21, 2015, 01:20:22 pm »
Where are the index-tracking bitassets?

73
Technical Support / Sending BTS to unclaimed 0.9.x blockchain account ?
« on: October 14, 2015, 11:18:22 am »
If someone wants to send BTS to an account that was already registered in the 0.9.x blockchain (send BTS on the 2.0 chain), will it automagically work, or is it necessary to 'claim' the account on 2.0 by importing the keys first?

74
Technical Support / 0.9.3 asks to unlock wallet, no password set
« on: October 05, 2015, 06:12:18 pm »
So this is something that must've changed in either 0.9.2 or 0.9.3.

I keep several wallets around, and change between them by symlinking wallets/default to wallets/$target before starting the gui.

Presently I tried to create a new wallet, so mkdir wallets/newwallet and then ln -s newwallet default


Starting up with the symlink in place leads to the initial lock screen (it's a new wallet, it has no password). This was not an issue previously, as I followed the same procedure in the past to create the wallets I already have.

Moving config.json out of the way does not improve the situation.


Any ideas?

75
Good people,

In previous threads the consensus was that indeed, privacy measures are necessary in 2.0. Unfortunately all threads related to the topic seem to have died down by now.

This one serves as a reminder that the issue is not dead.


IIRC, BM said that CN would require about $8000 to bake the necessary code. This comes down to $200 each assuming 40 stakeholders chip in.
We have more than 40 active users here.

The only thing I would add to this is that BM said they'd implement the necessary bits at the protocol level only, and leave the gui integration for 3rd parties. I disagree, and say that for the $8000, gui integration should be baked in as well.

Let this thread be a point of discussion around this important topic. Thank you.

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