And what would be the levers of control to be used by those you hired?  You're not making sense.

Just brainstorming. I'm not satisfied with the current pace of progress.

The current elected committee would retain all power and would "hire" a business development team, including a CEO if that were agreed upon as a useful addition. I would see the elected committee functioning like a Board of Directors, every day-to-day contractor reporting to them. They already have been voting on proposals from the development side.

Keep that. But recognize that aside from Stan and a few people who help out, there is really no one working on making this a sustainable business. I think we've seriously neglected the business aspect. So create a pool of money, donated if that's the only way to raise it (or create another UIA -- same thing), from which we could offer heavily incentive-laden deals to some contractors who can help us add businesses and/or increase market cap. At present market cap (if I am not mistaken), even the development is not sustainable. We need to grow this thing if we want it to work.

Again, all would be under control of the current elected committee. And nothing would occur without voting approval.

We've seen Bitcoin 2.0, Bitcoin Dark, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin XT, etc., etc.

How about we think up another Bitcoin name and launch it ourselves, promoting it as the successor?

Name ideas welcome. Some suggestions:

Better Bitcoin, Bitcoin Shares, Bitcoin STEALTH, Bitcoin X, Bitcoin Decentralized, Bitcoin OL, Bitcoin DEX, Bitcoin Gold, etc.

Your video-making capabilities and your voice are both awesome. In addition, you have a good sense of the larger picture involved in this project. But I had a hard time following the logic leap to the Hollywood money issue. I was looking forward to seeing how it fit in, and then when the video came around to that point, I found the connection to be tenuous and its coverage a little abrupt.

If I need a video or a voiceover, I'm hiring you!

Somebody like this is probably too big to simply join the BitShares team. He would want to start his own project and have it be his idea. If you talk to him, you might want to frame it in terms of the overall potential + the areas where this ecosystem would benefit from new businesses/layers/solutions.

i thought ccedk was a bts on-ramp ??

CCEDK is great, but we still have a ways to go there before we call it a fiat on-ramp. I want people to be able to deposit USD/EUR/CNY/Any-Major-Fiat directly from a bank into the exchange, click-click-click, and then be able to take it out again the same way after trading. Until then, we are dependent on Bitcoin, all of its flaws, and all of the steps necessary to convert fiat into Bitcoin and then BTS or BitAssets, all of which will turn off the majority of potential users.

Quote from: donkeypong on January 15, 2016, 04:30:39 am

What they're saying has been true so far. But that does not mean it will continue to be true. Some smart money backed Altavista and Betamax in the beginning, too, but in time the money moved toward the better products.

so when do you expect smart money move away from a useless object called "natural diamond" ?

Ummm...When the DeBeers company can no longer hide the fact that diamonds are plentiful. Diamonds are a shiny piece of glass and it's all in the marketing, as you know. There's been some evidence that young people are moving away from gold as an object that's given artificially high value. Someday, maybe diamonds, too. Or maybe not.

When do you expect Microsoft and IBM to show that mobile devices are unneeded in today's world, when we can all have our own personal computers?

The only question is, which of these boxes does crypto-currency fit into? I would argue there is too much wrong with Bitcoin, and too many problems that are being addressed/solved by other, better currencies, for Bitcoin to succeed in the long run. But most of the Bitcoin infrastructure that smart money has supported (wallets, apps, etc.) will not be wasted, since (with minor adjustments) much of it can be used with any other crypto.

All I know is, I did two 'highest priority' Bitcoin transactions the other night. Each of them took 55 minutes to execute...for ONE confirmation.

It's a shame the world is trying to pop up Bitcoin when we have something far better here. But until we get some fiat on-ramps, we're all stuck with BTC.