An open challenge to Bytemaster

[hpenvy2]

I would love to hear how critical bitcoin infrastructure could be come more secure like we did with the decentralized exchange article.

eg:  How could payment gateways use bitshares to make accepting bitcoin more streamlined or safer?
or How could btishares help bitcoin achieve remittance success?

I just posted this to Nullstreet.  I offer 100% support to you in this vision.  I urge this community to start adopting this mindset and give Bitmarket whatever resources he needs.  I will put the same effort forward without requesting a tip if those resources went to Bitmarket.  That's how serious I am about what he's doing here. There's already millions of investment pouring into Bitcoin, let's figure out how Bitshares helps protect that investment.

[xiahui135]

Beating Bitcoin does not mean BTS will succeed. Beating Bitcoin will not add value to BTS users.
we should consider on how to serve people who use Bit-assets and BTS to create value. This is the only long term grantee of high BTS price.
So I agree with bitmarket said.

[arhag]

I would love to hear how critical bitcoin infrastructure could be come more secure like we did with the decentralized exchange article.

eg:  How could payment gateways use bitshares to make accepting bitcoin more streamlined or safer?

I like it. My attempt:

Many people may want to hold BTC as an investment instrument. But Bitcoin is also used as a payment system. However, because of the volatility of BTC, merchants accepting BTC automatically convert most (if not all) of it into USD. They usually use a centralized service such as BitPay to do this. And although BitPay claims to charge no fees for this service, the reality is they need to make money somehow and the way this is done is by charging a hidden fee through the less-than-optimal USD/BTC exchange price they offer. (Actually, I don't know if this is true. If BitPay's exchange prices really are as good as it can get, then the fees they get from providing phone support and other additional services must be enough to subsidize all other operations. In which case the pitch can't be on simply cutting costs for the merchant but the weaker argument of appealing to decentralization.)

What if we could provide a decentralized alternative to BitPay?

Users who still want to be exposed to BTC as an investment instrument can hold BitBTC instead. This is a counterparty-free cryptoderivative that is market pegged to the price of BTC. Whenever you want to withdraw in BTC, you convert BitBTC to GateBTC on the BitShares decentralized exchange at a near 1-to-1 price, and then turn in the GateBTC to redeem an equivalent amount of BTC for a fixed low cost transaction fee.

Merchants can set up the BitShares client to accept BitBTC directly with no middlemen. They could even set their clients up to automatically convert the received BitBTC into BitUSD on the BitShares decentralized exchange. The merchant's client will automatically do what BitPay does for them. They can be sure they are getting the best price on the BitBTC/BitUSD market, and there is no middleman to front run them and take a cut to pay for their operations. (In the future we may even have something similar to Ripple's path finding algorithm to automatically convert the BitBTC into BitUSD via the exchange and pay the merchant directly in BitUSD in one atomic operation.)

BitShares and BitBTC in particular allows users to remain exposed to BTC while still being able to pay merchants with BitBTC, and merchants accepting BitBTC can lower their costs (or even if costs remain the same, the other argument can be that the merchant can rest easy knowing they received ownership control of the appropriate value in exchange for the good/service provided at the point of sale rather than relying on an IOU from BitPay that they have to wait on until the USD is eventually deposited into their bank account). As an added bonus, the 10 second block intervals of BitShares means that payments can be confirmed on an average of 5 seconds.

Actually, the decentralized payment processor pitch is a harder sell than I thought when you are still trying to appeal to BTC holders...

[Thom]

But it is all kind of heightened by a factor of ten because if you can make it pro bitcoin you will get 10 times the eyeballs.

I so get that, it's truly an excellent point. How do you help bitcoin with remittances without screwing BitShares, unless BitShares has already succeeded in that market first? I don't see how you can.

[bitmarket]

To be clear, It is cool to point out the benefits of bts.  In fact I would say it is critical.  I am just saying being tactful.

Dont say bitshares is better.  Say bitshares is better in this instance.
Say bitcoins does this great while bitshares does that great.

Its just the principles in the classic. "How to win friends and influence people."

But it is all kind of heightened by a factor of ten because if you can make it pro bitcoin you will get 10 times the eyeballs.

[Thom]

How could btishares help bitcoin achieve remittance success?

Although I like the tone, sentiment and sound logic of your message to not go out of our way to put bitcoin down, I do see Empirical1.1's perspective in terms of not holding back on the solid facts that give BitShares an advantage over it's competitors like bitcoin. Max, you make a compelling case for sure, and we should definitely temper our posts with this in mind.

However, I'm just not sure how far that should go tho, thinking about your sentence above.

On the one hand, there's plenty of room in the growing remittance market for many players to feed like pigs and nobody goes hungry. On the other hand, it is a monstrously bit advantage BitShares has over all others so why would we "give it away"?

Perhaps give it away is put too strongly, but imo we should be strong and have penetrated that market before we spend any time or effort to help our competition.

Now if the process and methodology we use to penetrate the remittance market could serve to "demonstrate how it's done", to pave the way without throwing glass on the road behind us to blow out the competitor's tires by all means that should be the approach we take.

There's a big difference between throwing glass on the road to hinder them vs. forfeiting our lead car starting position and taking one 30 cars behind the pack.

I don't think there are [m]any here that are the type to use "glass on the road" strategies, and if there are they are doing so contrary to the Golden Principle; it is inconsistent to BitShares philosophy, hypocritical and should cease.

Maybe my aversion to such aggression biases me against seeing it, but I don't see it, and I really don't think we should give our advantages away.

[btswildpig]

I can already think of several subjects suitable for this bet :

1. Bitshares Gateway can let people easily trade Bitcoin in a decentralized manner .
2. BitUSD can let Bitcoin user store value in a USD form without going through banks .
3. Bitcoin Mining pools can use BitUSD as salary for the miners , suitable for even small payment transactions , and faster . Those miners who are afraid the Bitcoin price would drop when they finally got enough salary for a minimum payout can at ease now .

[mike623317]

In our case.
1. Our next wave of users, developers, eveangelists, marketers, and investors are most likely to come from the bitcoin space.
2. Every bitcoin enthusiast has been told by the majority of their friends that they were crazy for buying bitcoin and that they would lose money. There is tremendous ego involved to see bitcoin succeed for that reason, not just financial. Telling their friends they were right about crypto but wrong about bitcoin will not cut it at the next BBQ.
3. It costs a lot of money which we do not have to get the attention of many eyeballs and educate them on our brand new industry. Bitcoin enthusiasts are fanatical and will happily read any article that speaks highly of bitcoin posted on reddit. That means lots of free eyeballs that are the right eyeballs.

In my opinion it is strategically foolish to not take advantage of 3, by not acknowledging 2 and thus missing out on 1.

Btw, how many people have you successfully sold the concept of bitshares too?  Have you had much success with "we are better than bitcoin?" (Genuine question, not cheeky at all.)

I think you are making a very compelling argument 

[bitmarket]

I would love to hear how critical bitcoin infrastructure could be come more secure like we did with the decentralized exchange article.

eg:  How could payment gateways use bitshares to make accepting bitcoin more streamlined or safer?
or How could btishares help bitcoin achieve remittance success?

[bitmarket]

make it a check box that is ticked by default.

Would you like to receive free updates?

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/11/Introducing-SafeBot/

Check out the last sentence

Thank you very much.
Its a great start.

The topic doesn't exactly blow my skirt up, but I like the direction.

Lets see how it goes.

[bytemaster]

make it a check box that is ticked by default.

Would you like to receive free updates?

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/11/Introducing-SafeBot/

Check out the last sentence

[bitmarket]

make it a check box that is ticked by default.

Would you like to receive free updates?

[Riverhead]

Good idea.   We are capturing emails of everyone who signs up to BitShares via the faucet.   I will work with Valintine to capture the email address of users and tie it into our overall system.

This is not good. These users do not specifically want emails from you. If you collect leads on your blog from people who want emails from you, they will be much more responsive and you will be able to engage them.

If I got an email from you after signing up with the faucet, I will think that I fell for a trap for you to get my email so you can spam me.

This caught me by surprise too. It specifically states it's only using the information to validate you. I am perfectly fine with it collecting my email address and sending me security updates but it should be stated somewhere on there. Perhaps a small blurb: What data we collect and how it will be used type of thing.

It's a small matter but I am always a bit creeped out when I get an email related to something I did online and did not specifically give them my email address.

[gamey]

I think your personal approach is good, but I don't think we should confuse PR with marketing & advertising though.

Products are sold on their competitive strengths vs. their competitors. Bitcoin is the leading competitor. These are our advantages over Bitcoin in this area, try us. This is where we can be complimentary to Bitcoin, try us. Etc. 

The people you mentioned are both heavily positioned in Bitcoin so presumably would see anybody else as a threat. Are either of them very supportive & involved with any other options like XRP/NXT/PPC/STR? If not there's probably little benefit to pandering to your small sample of Bitcoin royalty if they historically haven't been directly involved with and supportive of a non Bitcoin linked options.

I also expect those invested in BTC but not heavily positioned in BTC related projects will be able to make more rational investment decisions than 'I am not reading it. The guys at BitShares hate Bitcoin

Edit: Given that you have a personal relationship and friendship with these guys, I can see why you personally wouldn't want to be seen as being involved with a direct Bitcoin competitor. It's possible though that this dynamic could cloud your objectivity with regards to how BitShares should approach marketing.

Though I agree working better on PR, communication & being polite and respectful of Bitcoin are important.

There are a lot of people who were or are being fed by the Bitcoin bandwagon.  Most of them are going to be like this, there will always be some excuse they project outwards.

We want people to consider the idea of divesting from BTC into BitShares.

So in this regard when I post for bitshares I do try to soften my approach somewhat.  There definitely is something to be said about avoiding things that have people tune out.  So in this regard I have definitely become more cognizant of how I post things and avoid my  natural self.  Usually it is easier to not post

As far as "Beyond Bitcoin" - I didn't see it being used in this thread.  It is the name of a show that was targeting technology that was beyond bitcoin.  Things have changed but the name hasn't.

[bitmarket]

I just don't think I can write 6 articles by the 17th that end that way.

That was just a rule for the bet.   The challenge just wants 6 in what ever time frame you can manage