Much of the debate around BitAssets being bootstrapped focuses around improving liquidity. Liquidity is what gives people confidence in a price and/or value. If you cannot be guaranteed a buyer ON DEMAND then spreads increase.

To gain immediate liquidity you must compromise price. The more you lower your asking price the more likely you will find an immediate buyer for the asset you wish to sell.

So the question becomes *when* do you make the decision to compromise price for liquidity? 

1. At the time you buy the asset you lock in your liquidity price?
2. At the time you sell the asset you take what you can get?

The current BitAsset 2.0 system is superior to prior systems because the participants lock-in the price of liquidity-on-demand before entering the contract. As a buyer of a BitAsset I pay $1.10 for 1 BitUSD knowing I have locked in liquidity with a maximum downside of $0.10 if I need instant liquidity. 

As a short I am simultaneously pricing the cost of providing liquidity and the risk of dollars rising against my position.  After assessing the risks I agree to sell short at $1.10 per BitUSD.  If someone buys it from me, and then immediately demands liquidity (settlement) then I profit 10%. 

The result is that any short who gets force settled is existing at FAVORABLE price, they collect the full premium relative to the price feed.

We have constructed an asset (BitUSD) that is extremely favorable for the BitUSD holder (guaranteed price floor and liquidity).   To get these benefits, it comes at a price which is paid to the short.  Those who claim the market is "unbalanced" and favors the BitUSD holder over the short ignore the fact that the short gets to NAME THEIR PRICE.  In other words, the short gets to set the price at which BitUSD is created.

While the short gets to set the price at which BitUSD is created, they must buy back from the market to cover.  This means that BitUSD holders + future shorts get to set the price at which BitUSD can be destroyed.

This means the market can function perfectly so long as all participants trade BitUSD according to supply/demand for this asset class and the parties factor in the risks.

So if we want to increase liquidity all that is required is to trade at the proper price.   There is nothing we can do to decrease the premium (spread) because risks can be moved/reallocated but not destroyed.

Socializing the risks can take pressure off of individual traders and help bootstrap the system.  Socializing these risks means offsetting some of the costs.

The BitShares network can offer a reward to those who keep orders on the book at the best price. Namely, those who have open orders to sell BitUSD at the lowest price could be paid a bonus in BTS *IF* they are also short BitUSD.

Currently Shorts must cover the cost of liquidity, while BitShares collects the profits (market fees). If market fees for BitAssets were redirected to shorts who provide liquidity and create the supply in the first place then we would be adding a revenue source to shorts which will lower their costs and reduce the spread.

Maker - the person who has an open order on the books that is unfilled
Taker - the person who places an order that matches an open order.

If the Taker pays a market fee, and the Maker receives the market fee then we can incentivise people to keep orders on the books. In reality this simply means not charging a market fee for any order that stays on the books for a minimum length of time.

But Maker/Taker can only go so far because it does nothing to compensate for things like price feed risk, volatility risk, or the probability that BitShares will fall in value. These are risks that are global (inherent in BTS) and thus the traders in the market can only price it in.  The BTS holders are the ones betting on the system, they are the ones who profit from its success, and they are the ones that "own" the risk. In a sense they are the ones that must pay the cost of mitigating that risk and lowering the premium.

So if we want to have BTS holders reduce the premium without exposing BTS holders to outright abuse caused by providing a market maker at the price feed, then we need to subsidize those who do provide a market maker. This gives BTS holders a "Fixed Cost" that cannot be abused, while reducing the average cost to those creating BitUSD.

Suppose that open orders to sell BitUSD paid a yield in BTS that was significant. For a certain amount of yield we could find plenty of participants willing to short BitUSD and sell near the feed. All we need to do is define a budget and a payout equation that rewards those who are SHORT and have orders placed near the feed AND keep them there for a while.  An algorithm that is also efficient to implement will be required.

The result of this would be similar to paying people to take a risk that BTS falls in value.  In other words, we can arbitrarily stimulate demand to create BitUSD (ie: simulating a bull market in BTS) by guaranteeing profits to those who place orders.  In principle if we could pay interest to those who are short then that would be best, but unfortunately anyone can easily short to themselves. This means that we can only pay those who keep open orders on the books near the feed. If you attempt to "short to yourself" then you fill your open order and stop earning interest. 

With the right size reward the liquidity problem can be solved while keeping the costs to BTS holders fixed. 

 

Everyone who wants a better API, please give us detailed description of what you want the API to be.

I have been approached by a community member who has offered to cover the $45,000 to implement stealth transfers in the GUI *IF* he can get his money back through stealth transfer fees.

Stealth transfers cannot participate in the referral program. The fee for a stealth transfer can be higher (premium service) at about $0.50, with $0.10 going to the network and $0.40 going to the individual who funds this improvement to the GUI.  After the first 20 Million BTS worth of fees have been paid to this individual, the split would reverse, with $0.10 going to him and $0.40 going to the network.

The bottom line is that rather than diluting to pay for this feature, it will be entirely funded from future revenue generated by the feature itself.  As fees are set in terms of BTS, we would allow the individual who paid for this feature to set the fee until the first 20M BTS have been paid, then the committee members would take over setting this particular fee.

Without paying for this work there would be few transfers of this type. So the network doesn't lose much nor take much risk.

I have put this as a $1000 worker proposal because it requires a hard fork to add the fee splitting and it requires stakeholder approval.  $1000 is a token amount to show that the stakeholders standby this decision.

I am still working through the details with the individual who has made the offer, but we cannot do this unilaterally.

Why, why, why? 

From time to time I find it necessary to reflect on where we have been, what we have accomplished, and where we are going. In the middle of all of the chaos it is easy to lose sight of our purpose. Everything we do we do for a reason, but if we are not careful short term 'reasons' can cause us to take actions that are not in line with our big picture reasons.

Crytpocurrency was originally created out of a desire to break-free from the slavery created by the combination of fiat money and a legal system that outlawed private solutions such as (egold and liberty dollar).  This product found a market among a small segment of the population and they have taken the concept of Bitcoin and created a speculative bubble.  This speculative bubble in turn has attracted people with *different reasons* for being interested in cryptocurrency, the short term gold rush.

BitShares was originally created out of a desire to solve a problem that Bitcoin faced (exchange with fiat) under the presumption that the governments would eventually shutdown the exchanges like they did egold and liberty dollar. With each day that passes it seems less and less likely that governments will shut down these exchanges. They are being regulated and given rules to follow that allow them to stay in business.

This means that BitShares original reason for existence (to provide the decentralized exchange) in a world where Bitcoin is being cracked down upon is less and less relevant. Instead we are put in a situation of competing head-to-head with centralized exchanges which are trusted, fast, and legal.  In the process of attempting to attract "exchange users" who are ultimately just "speculators" we have lost sight of our original customer: the person who wants freedom from the financial system.

My mission in life has been to find free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property. Systems that are so powerful and effective that they can render governments irrelevant. This is something that I am very passionate about and the reason why I believe most of your are here and loyal to BitShares. If we lose sight of this particular vision we lose our core belief, our mission, our "why".   And without a reason why we are adrift chasing profits and losing hope when they don't come quickly enough.

Clearly a system that aims to secure life, liberty, and property must be profitable and provide incentives to attract normal users who could care less about our philosophy. These profits will come eventually, but in the short term we need to ask ourselves what "features" do our core users actually need to secure their liberty? How are regular users currently vulnerable to government interference? How can we produce tools that empower the average Joe to take a stance and make a difference?

Here is how the average BitShares user is vulnerable and is still being victimized by governments:

1. Their activity is too public, easily tracked, and their profits/losses easily reported to the various taxing agencies. In this sense BitShares is contributing to enslavement.
2.  Attempting to do commerce with untrusted parties is still difficult (lack of simple escrow and dispute resolution).
3.  Lack of tools for building reputations, bonding users, etc
4.  Lack of tools to support and encourage civil disobedience and peaceful tax protests

The people interested in this particular market are few and far between (1% or less of the population), but they are passionate and desperate for tools and willing to try anything. These people are willing to pay significant money to gain their freedom.

Unfortunately, if BitShares starts to go in this particular direction it will scare away those who want "mainstream adoption NOW!".  Banks will not touch it. Merchants will think twice. Governments will crack down.

BitShares has solved many problems that put it in a unique position among all other crypto projects. It is fast, efficient, clean, and most importantly has the gift of self-governeance and self-funding. This is a very solid foundation upon which to build a larger movement. A foundation that is more robust than any other platform.

The reason why we want to gain exchange users is to accomplish a higher mission than just profit. If we focus on being a payment / exchange solution then we have 100's of competitors many of which are better suited to meet the needs of the masses. If we focus on being a platform for freedom then we have almost no competitors and can start a larger movement.

We all have needs that must be met (food, shelter, clothing for ourselves and family). These needs demand we provide value to the market each day. It is easy to lose sight of our goal in the middle these daily demands. Our objective gets short-sighted, focused on the next dollar rather than the grand vision.

I am all for helping BitShares earn a living from the exchange business, but the exchange business is just a day-job.  The exchange is not our reason, our why. 

If we lead with our Why, then people will join our movement and we will grow and never die.  If we lead with our How (Blockchain/BitShares) and our What (exchange) then we will forever struggle against competitors because users have no deeper reasons to stay with us.

I have shared this link before, but I will share it again:
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

So I ask each of you, Why are you here? Why do you support BitShares? And how does the Fee Debate, Exchange vs Payment Debate, actually support your Reason for being here?

https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/issues/452

This worker proposal is under development but may be the single most important worker proposal in terms of near-term impact.

My "gut" tells me that crypto-diehards are looking for an easy to use ANONYMOUS currency and those of us that are freedom loving actually want and need this.  Our current lack of privacy is a turnoff to many in the crypto and banking world.

If we have the best of breed privacy then it will put us well ahead of the competition.  Hopefully helping pull us up to Dash.

This work is heavy on UI development and advanced Javascript so has a lot of unknowns. 

https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/issues/445

We have set up a refined process for worker proposals using github to document them.  This is a micro proposal for a small change to the BitShares network to lower fees in the event an order is not filled.

It is small, self contained, and I believe universally desired.  I have asked Bunkerchain Labs to create the worker so voting can begin. 

The total cost is half of one of the earlier proposals because this proposal does not divided Market Trading fees among the referral program.  We will implement that as a separate / independent worker proposal.

Now that BitShares 0.9.x is defunct some people are still having trouble syncing it.

I would like simple how to instructions that work "every time" for Mac and Windows. Preferably with a downloadable chain file (1.2 GB compressed).

These instructions should be clear, step-by-step, and targeting someone who doesn't have command line experience.  Preferably with screenshots showing the steps.

This is required for some people to migrate and recover keys / balances.

Perhaps the easiest solution is to adopt a chain server.