"1. Become a licensed money transmitter and host our own wallet.  Under this model I would be competing with OpenLedger and others."

I think you should run your own DEX that competes with openledger. You are in a prime position to do so and everyone would trust you and use it.
then you could sell shares in it once its built and well established in a year or so.

Openledger/bitshares is down for me, anyone else?

@JonnyBitcoin

we need to use the reserve pool as collateral to create a bunch of smartcoin to help liquidity.

Quote from: JonnyBitcoin on December 31, 2015, 04:20:49 pm

The dex is struggling to get going and I think we need to create maybe $50,000 BITUSD and 100 BITBTC using reserve funds as collateral and sell it in to the market at feed price with the proceeds of the sale going back into the reserve funds.

Although I would like to create bitBTC into existence myself I'm not currently confident I'll be able to buy back the bitBTC at a reasonable price in the future to close my collateral position. I've bought 5 BITBTC at a huge premium (+30%) and I'm unlikely to sell anytime soon. Meaning those who wish to exit their collateral positions will be unable to as I'm not selling and I hold 10% of total supply. 
Smartcoin creators need to be bolstered by a supply of smartcoin liquidity and this should come from the reserve pool.

does anyone know if the reserve pool has an actual account?

What is your reasoning for buying bitBTC with 30% premium?

If I buy up all the bitbtc I can and refuse to sell it back for any less than +50% premium then there's profit for me.
And some people may really want to close their collateral positions so they can sell their BTS they have tied up in collateral.
If this strategy is sucessful and their are many desperate people unable to close their collateral positions I will have proved their is a need to create some base money using the reserve pool funds.
I maybe wrong however if people are will to keep borrowing bitbtc in to existence and sell it to me.

The dex is struggling to get going and I think we need to create maybe $50,000 BITUSD and 100 BITBTC using reserve funds as collateral and sell it in to the market at feed price with the proceeds of the sale going back into the reserve funds.

Although I would like to create bitBTC into existence myself I'm not currently confident I'll be able to buy back the bitBTC at a reasonable price in the future to close my collateral position. I've bought 5 BITBTC at a huge premium (+30%) and I'm unlikely to sell anytime soon. Meaning those who wish to exit their collateral positions will be unable to as I'm not selling and I hold 10% of total supply. 
Smartcoin creators need to be bolstered by a supply of smartcoin liquidity and this should come from the reserve pool.

does anyone know if the reserve pool has an actual account?

Quote from: bytemaster on December 31, 2015, 01:41:27 am

A lot of people have expressed interest in having me/CNX focus on the DEX. 

If that is the case, I can create a worker proposal that will fund almost full time DEX development.  It will require about $30K per month to have Val, Ben, James, and I working on the DEX 75% of the time. 

Otherwise we will have to find other ways to make money.

What are your thoughts on such a proposal?  We would focus on API + Bond + Maker.

I don't think this is unfair and is just what it costs CNX to do more work at this stage.

It would be good to see estimated timelines for each feature.

Given that we can possibly get Latvian/other Devs for $12k a year, I think CNX's focus should also be on trying to create a second team of overseas devs that are outsourced whatever work it is possible for them to handle.

BTS's value would increase substantially with another team or group of developers working on improving BTS at the same time & for much less than US based devs could.

Helping get as many new devs up and running would also free you to work on MAS/personal passion and focus on the more lucrative banking/other contracts CNX has.

I like this idea. why not create a worker proposal to train up a bunch of cheaper devs from eastern europe so that company can compete against CNX.