If we are going to raise millions for something.. it's not going to be to buy out someone else right now.. that money is better spent in the development of our own ecosystem. I use the word 'development' in the largest sense of the word too.. from marketing to coding.
So you recommand just shrugging off what could be our once in a life time opportunity to make it big, keep doing more of the same, and hope that the world will suddenly awake one morning and realize that we exist?
How about betting on your own horse that has a running chance instead of wanting to put your money behind the one with the broken leg?
That analogy is desingenuous. Our horse may be the most pure thouroughbred the world has ever seen but it's running a race no-one cares about with little prospect of ever being noticed. BTER's horse may be a common breed, but it's been winning its share of races so far; it may have twisted its leg right now but it's still a good horse with a massive following running the league-1 races at every season. And now we get a change of buying that horse and make it run our race as well, and get all the attention we deserve. But you don't want because you know it twisted its ankle at last race.
You are vocal about how BTER is broken but I think that it's not an objetive assessment of reality. BTER's exchange business is the same money making machine it was last week, with a large and loyal user base and well positionned on a large market. They have two problems: a weak security, a 7170 BTC debt. The former can be addressed by running audits, and moving the wallet management to multisig. The second can be addressed by a bail out. Fix the two problems and BTER is back on track like if none of that ever happened. Let's also not forget that for all its technical shortcomings, BTER has been doing much better than us in terms of marketing and they are the ones sending us business, not the other way round.
Love the enthusiasm about the opportunity.. I just think it's misdirected.. our enthusiasm should be getting translated into well targeted messaging and invites to the rest of the world welcoming them to decentralization.
Messages no one will listen because they just don't care. Bitcoiners have the attention span of a 5-year old. If you don't have special effects, you suck and that's it. Look at Paycoin: a complete pile of bullshit from the start, and they managed to make it big for a while with something as lame and ridiculous as a completly unsubstanciated and unrealistic USD 20 floor claim. How they did that: they just dared, it's as simple as that. I'm not saying that we should take them as example, but it's important to realize that user base, marketing and PR is what makes or breaks a product. If you still think that market leaders are winning because they have the best product, you should ask yourself why Bitshares is still that notably unpopular after it has released the most kickass appliction of game theory since the inception of Bitcoin whereas everyone has heard of Dogecoin and its 5-min copy-pasta Bitcoin clone.