Why? It is a popular crypto-currency with unchangeable supply rules.
Counter argument:
Why? Its the first real cryptocurrency and has been around the longest, nothing to do with supply rules.
To quote Come-from-Beyond:
You took Bitcoin weakness (necessity to pay money to electrical companies) and transformed it into your strength (self-funding). That was a smart engineering solution.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=940298.msg10895809#msg10895809
CfB is absolutely right. Bitcoin is vastly inefficient with high and largely wasteful inflation. BTSX offered more effective decentralisation without the need for any inflation and was even profitable. With additional funds capable of being directed to developers and marketers. That was a genius engineering solution.
However I doubt Cfb is pushing to dilute NXT even though they could certainly use more funding.
Counter argument:
Why? Its the first real cryptocurrency and has been around the longest, nothing to do with supply rules.
Do you think Bitcoin would have gained popularity if the Bitcoin foundation or early adopters got to decide on how much dilution Bitcoin should have the following year and where it should be directed? I highly doubt it.
Q. You know that really successful, widely adopted form of money that shareholders choose the supply of? (That isn't controlled by force)
A. No, me neither.
While shares in traditional companies have been used as a form of payment/exchange through history, this is not how those companies derive their value. Those companies derive their value based on their products and services. Traditional companies that can create shares exactly the way BTS does have been around for centuries, yet none have been widely adopted and gained value purely as a form of money. Bitcoin is different. Why? It has no product or service, yet it has a $3.5 Billion valuation and is used exclusively as a money. It's because unlike traditional shares, the supply of Bitcoin is pre-defined and can therefore be widely adopted purely as a form of money, very similarly to the reasons why gold and silver were adopted as a form of money.
I have gotten more done for the future of BTS in the past month than in the 3 months prior and everyone on the core team knows it.
Hey, if keeping off the forum really is allowing you to bang out development like that then that's awesome. I'll take a more-or-less quiet but busting-ass BM if it means development pace is accelerated.
And @ Empirical: I think you're really, really overestimating the impact that dilution and the merger et al had on the BTS price. Just about every crypto in general has gone through the same phases: huge hype and price blowout followed by slow bleed. If nothing had changed supply-wise with BTS but the same promises remained unfulfilled (fiat on-ramps, marketing blitz, etc) I can pretty much guarantee we'd still be in about the same position price wise as we are today. Honestly it's just kind of how the markets work. Without real adoption it's nothing more than mass speculation, regardless of dilution etc.
I personally think the self-funding method of dilution is an incredible idea, and if the devs can truly knock out some key aspects/features in the next few months to raise the market cap, the self-funding will take on a life of its own.
The BTSX share price clearly reflects a strong rise up until dilution became a serious reality after which we lost 50% of our value in less than a month. The forum posts at the time also show huge turmoil and division over dilution at the time. Going from debating when we would pass Litecoin to whether we would lose most of our value as a result of the move. It has proved to be the latter. It is hard to argue that it was not the major factor in the breaking of the strong uptrend and the cause of the huge decline in the BTSX price. Though there are many other contributing factors to speed of the decline in the months proceeding.
I agree that a self funding BitAsset machine can be successful even without being backed by something structured like a limited form of money it's just a much harder task and because the products aren't patentable a crypto-currency can copy them very cheaply if they prove to be useful.
Also in favour of your argument, BTS is still at no.5 with lots of positive development all coming through in the next few months.
I see your points there, but there is no proof of what you are saying. NXT at one point had a market cap around 100 million there was not any major change since then and they are at 10 millions right now. No proof that the inflation change created the decline. There are many factors that cause it, like "pump and dump", btc price, poor marketing, not any major business deal, bad PR, bad wallet etc. I for one thing that the self-funding model invented by Bitshares will be the used in every DAC in the future, I think it is absolutely genius. You forget also that if the market cap is big enough the dilution could practically disappear, in other word this could only be temporary on the startup phase of a DAC, the time where money are most need it and hard to come by. Even if Bitshare will not be the DAC that we all hoped it would be , they introduce so much innovation in the space that I'm pretty sure will stand the test of time.
I think there's ample proof that our specific decline was largely caused by dilution. I think NXT is a good example though in favour or your argument. I think NXT is vastly inferior though yet they are getting closer and closer to us with every passing month when dilution theory states the opposite, that we should be pulling further and further away. I think if NXT pass us in CAP that will be time to seriously re-evaluate the current model imo.
You're right that dilution could disappear once the CAP increases, this will be very positive for the share price. I'm unconvinced though that BTS will gain a large BTC comparable valuation and widespread adoption as a form of money in it's own right because there is always the spectre that someone may come up with an 'innovative' idea for diluting shareholders at a later stage.