Author Topic: Creation of a BTER DAC and crowd funded recapitalization  (Read 9299 times)

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Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

official BitShares representative.

? Could you pls elaborate this more

Official?

Guys.. its a troll pretending to be Stan.. just ban him already. He's clearly asking for it.
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Offline cass

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« Last Edit: February 16, 2015, 09:43:58 pm by cass »
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Offline gamey

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I see no good arguments against this. If they want help from us to raise new capital and become a semi-decentralized exchange, we should obviously take the opportunity. What am I missing?

The title suggests that we're looking to loan them enough $ so they are not running on fractional reserves.  Fundind development to be a flagship decentralized exchange is different.
I speak for myself and only myself.

Offline CLains

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I see no good arguments against this. If they want help from us to raise new capital and become a semi-decentralized exchange, we should obviously take the opportunity. What am I missing?

Offline klosure

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the only value you have stated that can be harness from bter is the user base.
The "only" value(s) I have stated are the huge user base and the PR tour-de-force and avoiding the disappearance of 50% of the demand for BitAssets and BTS.

I don't know when was the last time you logged into your wallet, but it says right smack dab in the center of the screen. "The Worlds First Decentralized Exchange".
That's a nice catch phrase, but the objective reality is that at the moment BitShares is completely reliant upon centralized exchanges for bringing liquidity to the network and providing market data feeds. Let's be level headed here and refrain from getting carried away by the long term vision when the real priority is to cater to practical short term problems that could well compromise the prospects of the long term vision happening at all.

We need gateways.. and we need users.. we don't need a broken centralized exchange to put on the books.
BTER is a gateway and a massive pool of users, and it's something we actually have now, not some pipe dream come right from the Bitshares whitepapers. Wishing for other stuff is nice, but until it materializes it's just that: wishes. That won't give us back our lost market share once BTER is gone.

Some kind of reward to BTER users for joining or the like could be enough to get the 2.5% out of their userbase that moves from the old way to us. The rest are likely to just setup camp elsewhere.
Why go for 2.5% when you can have the whole user base? You don't become a market leader by being a pussy.

Just to put a practical spin on your proposal.. you are talked about crowdfunding a security..
That's one example of what can be done, there are many other approaches that can be implemented.
The crypto space is rich of variations around the theme of implementing a crowd sale within the legal system.
Let's not miss the forest for the tree by moving the debate into unecessarily premature legal hairsplitting.

You will need close to $50k to register your securities with the various bodies around the world in order to have people get involved.
BTER is a chinese company. Chinese companies are regulated by chinese regulators. There is no need to register with whatever other international authority to invest in chinese companies if they are not listed in non-chinese-based exchanges. If the limitations imposed by the SEC on US based non-accredited investors is what you are refering to, they are easily worked around by official baring US investors from participating in the sale like Ethereum did. In the end people will just do whatever they want, problem solved.

Let's stop waving that strawman at this unnecessary early stage of discussion. Solutions will be found to the question of the legal implementation of this DAC in due time exactly like legal solutions have been found for every other DAC.

After all, isn't Bitshares supposed to be the ultimate DAC launchpad? How ironic would that look if we chicken out at the first opportunity we get of DACsifying a real company?

I like the go get'em attitude
There is no got-get'em attitude. We are talking seriously about what can be done to prevent BTER's failure from damaging our business. There is no question of doing things illegally.

Offline BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode

MethodX was right.. this is not practical in the least.

The only value you have stated that can be harness from bter is the user base.

I don't know when was the last time you logged into your wallet, but it says right smack dab in the center of the screen. "The Worlds First Decentralized Exchange".

We need gateways.. and we need users.. we don't need a broken centralized exchange to put on the books.

I agree though.. from crisis comes victory. A well targeted marketing campaign focused on BTER users combined with proposals for gateways would be a swift step towards capturing the user base. Some kind of reward to BTER users for joining or the like could be enough to get the 2.5% out of their userbase that moves from the old way to us. The rest are likely to just setup camp elsewhere.

Just to put a practical spin on your proposal.. you are talked about crowdfunding a security.. something with a promise of a profit loss. You will need close to $50k to register your securities with the various bodies around the world in order to have people get involved. It is otherwise illegal to sell that sort of thing no matter where you are in the world. Screw them? Ok.. and what are you going to do when you need to wire money or have bank accounts in those respective countries that bodies like the SEC and IRS when you are on a blacklist?

I like the enthusiasm.. I like the go get'em attitude.. and I like your rally cry.. it just needs to be tempered with a little more practical world experience and wisdom. I'm not suggesting my way is the only way btw.. it's just the most obvious to me for the sake of answering this thread. :)

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Offline script

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What make you think bter is down for 7150 btc, this exchange move milions per month and work with banks, maybe have an insurance maybe can take a credit, maybe have a bag with his huge profits per months running.

i think keep closed to give time to police examine right everything.

imposible bankrupt for only 7k btc.

i hope you are right, i like bter.
but the idea of a DAC buying a company and turning it into a DAC does sound delicious :)

Offline infovortice2013

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What make you think bter is down for 7150 btc, this exchange move milions per month and work with banks, maybe have an insurance maybe can take a credit, maybe have a bag with his huge profits per months running.

i think keep closed to give time to police examine right everything.

imposible bankrupt for only 7k btc.
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new08/21 id 5Sjf3LMuYPSeNnjLYXmAoHj5Z6TPCmwmfXD6XwDmg27dwfQ

Offline klosure

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klosure, on what grounds exactly is based your confidence that you are right?
I have already exposed the reasons why I think acquiring BTER is the right move but let me restate the reasons since you invite me to. Basically, we should acquire BTER because it's a good business opportunity and also because failing to do so is a serious risk. Here are the detailed reasons one more time:
Opportunity
- BTER's user base = altcoiners community = our target market. Acquiring BTER would allow us to acquire our entire target market as a loyal user base, which is what Bitshares is missing the most desesperately. If you doubt about the value of a user base, look at social apps and social networks acquision prices.
- BTER's user base is captive: there aren't that many alt exchanges the size of BTER with that many assets listed so people will still be coming to BTER if the necessary steps are taken to clear worries about security (multisign cold wallet, decentralized management).
- BTER's user base is desperate and will welcome any solution that allow them not to lose their funds. There will be very low opposition to this move and Bitshares will effectively save the day.
- BTER management doesn't have much choice: either they take our offer, or they can file for bankruptcy so they won't be able to claim much more on top of what they owe to their users. Unless there are other offers, but then the problem becomes totally different.
- BTER's value as a business is liquely higher than the 2M USD they owe to their users, so by acquiring them at close to the bailout price, we are effectively acquiring a valuable business and it's the BTER founders who end up paying most the loss out of their own share of sweat equity. To convince yourself that the BTER business is worth more than the 2M USD we would pay to acquire it, the series A funding rounds of other large exchanges is one order of magnitude higher than that, and they only give away a part of their equity.
- Bitshares needs more visibility and buzz. At the moment it has a tiny mindshares. Bailing out BTER would be a huge marketing tour-de-force and yield more top quality advertizement than what 2M USD could buy.
Risk hedging
- BTER represents 50% of our user base and about that proportion of the demand for our products. Alienating 50% of our user base will have a severe impact on the demand, which will affect the price and the market cap. The 2M required for a bail out represent 10% of our market cap. Although this is not exact science, it seems reasonable that the market cap will drop by much more than 10% should our demand decreases by 50%.
- There is a level under which the price of BTS can't go without entailing a meltdown of the network. Unlike other currencies where the price is more anecdotical to the proper functionning of the network, Bitshares is using a pegging mechanism that gives a central role to BTS as collateral. Should the price drop hard enough, this will entail a blackswan that will further discredit Bitshares, further decrease demand, and make it increasingly unlikely to get listed on other exchanges. Bitshares development using paid delegates is also very senstive to price as developers working for delegate pay would see a major drop in their revenue should the price of BTS decrease. Market pegged assets are a self-fulfilling prophecy. These work only because of the majority believes in them and require a critical mass of users.

Why do you claim to have a perfect insight of what the cryptocommunity wants?
I haven't claimed to have a perfect insight of what the cruptocommunity wants. I'm making a proposal for debate. That's what forums are for. Let's discuss about this opportunity, and see what the consensus is.

Have you at least spoken to anyone from BTER ?
Speaking to a target company about a possible acquisition is something that usually happens after the prospective buyer company has decided internally that this was a route worth investigating. That's what we are doing here now. Let's not put the cart before the horses. If it turns out that there is interest among shareholders to investigate a possible acquisition, we will have to reach out to BTER using the normal communication channels between Bitshares and BTER. Anything else would be disorderly, unprofessional and engage only the individuals who are reaching out anyway. For the moment, I think we can safely assume that BTER will be considering offers to get them out of this situation, so that should be a good enough hypothesis to justify this debate.

BTER was a nice centralized exchange, but it certainly isn't bitshares. They were BitShares friendly, but they also asked an ignominious 1% withdrawal fee. Bitshares needs a secure on/off ramp, like kraken.com, and then it must perfect its UI until my grandpa can use it.
Have you closed a deal with Kraken? Have you developed the perfect UI?
If the answer to the above is no, what you are talking about is wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking isn't going to create demand for bitAsset.

That's all we need. BTER has been hacked 2 times. Why in the world would we want to help BTER pay their debts ?
Why in the world would you want to help out your horse across the desert after it has failed you twice?

It's a blow to BitShares, but it also shows that we are right in insisting on decentralization.
Xanadu was insisting on the semantical purity of hypertext. I'm sure they were right too.

Why should we lose more than BTC here ? There is no reason to die from this, the market peg will hold and we'll just keep losing some weak hands... till, at last, some big investors will understand why BitShares is a good solution.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2015, 10:30:00 am by klosure »

Offline merlin0113

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This seems like a bad idea.  We need direct fiat gateways, not exchanges.
We need to survive first before we get fiat gateways.

To this argument, I have a question:
Can exchange remain its business mode while serve as a BTS gateways or bridge at the same time?
Reference material:
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/update/2014/12/18/Benefits-of-Being-a-BitShares-Gateway/
https://bitshares.org/resources/gateways

You will always have exchanges, because decentralized exchanges are too slow. The market is going to consolidate around two poles: highly trustable, local, fast and feature rich centralized liquidity pools, trustess and global but slow and feature poor decentralized exchanges acting as cross-currency money networks between the pools.
By becoming a Bitshares gateway, BTER will be to Bitshares like Bitstamp is to Ripple, except that being a majority stake holder, Bitshares will have much more control over what's going on at BTER.

Exactly, so this argument is not there.

Offline inarizushi

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klosure, on what grounds exactly is based your confidence that you are right ? Why do you claim to have a perfect insight of what the cryptocommunity wants ? Have you at least spoken to anyone from BTER ?

BTER was a nice centralized exchange, but it certainly isn't bitshares. They were BitShares friendly, but they also asked an ignominious 1% withdrawal fee. Bitshares needs a secure on/off ramp, like kraken.com, and then it must perfect its UI until my grandpa can use it. That's all we need. BTER has been hacked 2 times. Why in the world would we want to help BTER pay their debts ?

It's a blow to BitShares, but it also shows that we are right in insisting on decentralization. Why should we lose more than BTC here ? There is no reason to die from this, the market peg will hold and we'll just keep losing some weak hands... till, at last, some big investors will understand why BitShares is a good solution.
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chryspano

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BTS will fail because it is too conservative and doesn't dare to do anything bold.

lol

Offline klosure

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This seems like a bad idea.  We need direct fiat gateways, not exchanges.
We need to survive first before we get fiat gateways.

To this argument, I have a question:
Can exchange remain its business mode while serve as a BTS gateways or bridge at the same time?
Reference material:
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/update/2014/12/18/Benefits-of-Being-a-BitShares-Gateway/
https://bitshares.org/resources/gateways

You will always have exchanges, because decentralized exchanges are too slow. The market is going to consolidate around two poles: highly trustable, local, fast and feature rich centralized liquidity pools, trustess and global but slow and feature poor decentralized exchanges acting as cross-currency money networks between the pools.
By becoming a Bitshares gateway, BTER will be to Bitshares like Bitstamp is to Ripple, except that being a majority stake holder, Bitshares will have much more control over what's going on at BTER.

Offline merlin0113

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This seems like a bad idea.  We need direct fiat gateways, not exchanges.
We need to survive first before we get fiat gateways.

To this argument, I have a question:
Can exchange remain its business mode while serve as a BTS gateways or bridge at the same time?
Reference material:
http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/update/2014/12/18/Benefits-of-Being-a-BitShares-Gateway/
https://bitshares.org/resources/gateways