I hate to say it, but this is basically Etherium that you're describing here. The problem that they'll have with their privatised instrument classes is that none of them are 'official' so will have exactly the same class of trust and adoption problems that any product/business has getting set up, on top of the existing problems that the blockchain itself has in getting established, making this path a slow burn, so to speak.

Additionally, a critical question is how well can the blockchain + network scale to multiple privatized assets, I assume popular ones will get copied.

As with creating a startup, the Bitshares DAC should maintain a laser focus on creating products that fit the customer needs.  At first glance it might appear that there is a larger market that is made up of devs and promoters but trading continues to be the largest single use for cryptocurrencies.  Big business is now invested in Bitcoin and creating siloed applications with it (Overstock, Nasdaq, etc).  Will creating a business made to sell to developers / promoters create a better value than creating a blockchain with focused features available to those not part of the mainstream offerings in this domain?  I do not know myself, and I remain skeptical of privatized assets to some extent.  A blockchain like Bitshares cannot have a failwhale moment should blockchain applications become used en mass due to popularity of a corporate offering.  A fail on a small chain could be its downfall, and event not needed when blockchain applications are being built to preserve peoples confidence in the face of other public market troubles (China, Greece).

Thanks for the info

Looking forward to it

I think 3 years is a more equitable term to decide if the business project is viable for the devs and the community.

This is the make or break term for normal businesses and I believe the cryptocoin space might be more accelerated in terms of market validation of product. 

On a tangential note, I was invited to speak at the Prague Bitcoin conference.
I declined as its a one day event and I had no plans to be in Prague or Europe for that matter.

Any Euro Bitshares members plan on attending and interested in pitching Bitshares and the index?

Reference data client for Coinmarketcap.com using Coinmarketcap + a Kimono API that updates every 15 min
https://gist.github.com/jcrubino/acb6299bc3d1a08858a3

Coingekko comming soon

Im watching a meetup with Gavin Andresen, and hes saying stuff thats making me scratch my head:

On the positive side, Mike Hearn did talk about moving away from Proof of Work.

Privatized assets still could be gamed.

I would like to know if there is a reason a large exchange could not: release an asset, buy both sides, sell as an etf on their exchange market  as a "special fund".  The exchange would not even have to market it as Bitshares, and Bitshares might receive a 1500 + 500 payout every year they do this while the Exchange keeps the both sides of the contract in balance based on their exchange data.  They would only have to come up with a spv wallet (not even bitshares related, just for for bean counting) if they were to make the fund available off the exchange and most users would not know the difference between the special fund coin and the Bitshares issued asset.

If this type of plan is successfully implemented Bitshares would be missing out on a whole lot of fees after such a fund reached a total of $1,000,000 in trades at a 0.2% fee never mind the prudent profits from front running the "smart contract".

Bytemaster uses at least ten metaphors to help explain BitShares to any unfortunate person caught in an elevator with him.

Thanks Stan, I think that summed it up well.  The metaphor must change with the floor he passing through.