Author Topic: Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it.  (Read 57258 times)

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Offline tsaishen

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I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

Yeah something like is actually incoming.  Need to wait a few days to announce on it though.  Indexing to NASDAQ or DJIA would likely violate securities laws BTW.  However there are other things that wouldn't.

Offline liondani

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I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..

 +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%

finally something gave me hope again just reading it!

PS we need CFDs like trading and the option for leverage in general ...
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 09:39:04 pm by liondani »

Offline hrossik

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I will take advantage of this thread being used for showing what people want in bs and add my opinion: Originally I came to BitShares because I was looking for a platform allowing easy trading of stocks (particulary indexes). BitUSD is a huge thing, I love it, but it needs merchant adoption to be useful. Trading stocks would be hugely beneficial alone, because the cost for an ordinary mortal to enter the stock market is quite big. If we had (pegged) stocks trading platform, we would get plenty of users AND we would have a use case for bitUSD. Also when trading bitUSD <=> bitStocks, you don't need gateways as desperately as we do now, because you only enter once, then gamble the market or hold for an extended period of time, and leave once a while after making some profit.

tldr> BitShares were supposed to be a trading platform. Trading currencies is a gamble, nobody (few) wants to do that. We need bitStocks! bitIndexes in particular..
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Offline davidpbrown

Just to note the big idea that I see in BitShares is having digital tokens that are pegged to fiat. I think we all get that but forget how powerful that idea is.

In my reply to the UK.gov's call for information I teased them with this:
Quote
Class 3 above is especially interesting, as it suggests a stable market for bitUSD and others like bitGBP might arise, and yet still not require Government intervention. Those tokens would be pegged by consensus to the USD and GBP; Governments would continue to define the value of those fiat currencies and their digital equivalents would follow. What is interesting then is the potential for those tokens not just to be bought; sold; and shorted, as they are now, but later that they could become useful as currency - that is as communication of value. That suggests potential in Class 3 to prove more useful than Bitcoin even, because of that value relating directly to those real world currencies. That such digital token equivalents exist, would not necessarily affect their real counterpart in a bad way. Indeed having bitGBP, would enhance the status of the GBP directly. There is then opportunity here for the UK.gov to enable bitGBP to become de facto digital currency.

We perhaps need to understand where we are at.. we're a long way before mainstream where a bitGBP is seen as equivalent to GBP but that could move really quick. Right now we have those assets available. In the event the UK.gov does what I expect and then some enterprise offers the chance to use a debit card for a digital currency, then BitShares is well placed to allow a digital token that people understand the value of.. that's a HUGE advantage.. if we can make the process of creating GBP simple enough to understand for those who might.

Bare in mind that the majority of those with money, are unlikely to also be those who understand BitShares or any of blockchain technology.. we need to put in the effort to bridge that gap.
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Offline jsidhu

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Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
What if instead of going for a delegate, you had a compensation for every new user you bring in? :-)

I think that's the idea behind a referral program.

I dont have a problem with that but its essentially same thing since delegate cam be voted out if its not bringing people in.. plus i need to purchase inventory to sell it so its not the same as a referral program
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Offline jsidhu

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Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.

You illustrate what i start to think might be a problem with bitshares: no one wants to do something for bitshares for free. BM mentioned being managed as a startup is an advantage, but it seems to have a cost. People want to develop and help bitshares, but the pre condition is to be a delegate.... it is a problem because enthousiasm, conviction and grass root movement could be the key to success for bitcoin's successor. Linux'devs didn't develop linux to get paid, but because they liked it! They didn't think about user acquisition, they just did their thing. And look what has come out of it!
I did add bitshares gateway for free and will Accept it and rebrand the business for free.. the delegate is used for inventory not to pay myself.. its essentially a marketing delegate because people will want to join to have a chance to win things for a fraction of retail cost.
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Offline davidpbrown

In other words the only thing that can keep this ship moving forward is additional funding and a change to the business model of the DAC that so that it can generate more revenue per user than it costs to acquire a new user.
...
In our case the cost to acquire a new user is currently well over $100, we need to find a way to fund that while lowering costs.

Surely this is wrong!? Are those really the only options?

Surely there is an option to consider more carefully how you are selling what you have? You don't necessarily need additional funding or to make a change to the business model.

In the CryptoStocks thread I challenged that the wiki is not looking as good as it might need to. See: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,15596.msg200581.html#msg200581


Imagine you knew nothing of BitShares and look at what there is with a fresh pair of eyes. Does it communicate to a new user why they want to jump at the opportunity in front of them?

If you can get new funding, that's great but communication matters too. Make the description of BitShares plain English.

Watch the Jon Oliver & Edward Snowden interview again. Sell the idea in terms that people will relate to - what's wrong with what they have and how is BitShares the answer? The marketing of BitShares is in places a turnoff, it needs to grab at people whereever they encounter it.. it's not appealing to ordinary investors level of understanding.. and in places it's not ambitious enough about the prospects of real financial investment companies making BitShares their principal platform. The narrative atm is good in places but talking more at the level of cryptocurrency nerds and those with enough vision to see the potential for themselves.


One approach to consider might be to resolve who are the potential investors and users of BitShares and think as they do. Appeal to each individual group of those users. Write directly for them and have the website filter those..

- Are you new to crypto currency?
- Are you a Government researcher?
- Are you a developer?
- Are you an entrepreneur looking for the next big thing?
- Are you a broker with a $hit tonne of money to invest and a button to push?
- etc etc
Here's what BitShares is and what it will mean.. to you. Reasons to invest ABC. and in that emphasis the strengths of the idea; the dev team; the community; the associated DAC projects; etc.


Perpetually changing the business model is not good and acquiring a new user should not cost $100 when new users are moving into crypto space. I've suggested before, perhaps pitch at MSM and get volume.. go on the Keiser Report etc and don't pull punches when articulating the vision of everything BitShares could achieve.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 08:52:37 pm by davidpbrown »
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Offline liondani

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Offline tsaishen

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ByteMaster - First off, let me state unequivocally that you have my full support.  Before making the decision to go full bitshares I dug deep and read everything I could find by you, dating all the way back to original plans for protoshares.  You are highly intelligent and know how to pull things off that have never existed before.

 
As an outsider looking in though, I think BitShares has a number of problems that are keeping new users away.  I want to bring these to your attention because if they get fixed, I think user adoption would skyrocket.

There are several steps to problem solving, especially a problem of this nature...


You are taking the first step, which is identifying the problem. 
Step 2 is identifying solutions, which is also something you're asking for. 
So that's good!

You state that the problem is "Taking Off", but that's really a few different problems isn't it?
The first problem is user adoption.  "Why don't more people use bitshares?"  The other problem is "Why is the price so unstable?"
Note that I said "unstable", if the price is rising or falling dramatically and unpredictably, that is a problem.  Low prices that just stay in a narrow range are actually no problem at all.  High prices in a narrow range are also not a problem. 

Therefore the question of "Why is the price not achieving stability"
The final part of the "taking off" question is actually "what compelling reasons would a person who might need bitshares, elect to use something else?"

As an outsider looking in.  When I want to know about a new crypto or altcoin, the first thing I do is google it.
When I do a google search on bitshares, these are two of the first things that pop up...

http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/

http://www.coindesk.com/bitshares-decentralized-exchange-crypto-2-0/

The issue with the first URL is obvious, this guy is tearing your product apart.  I know you can look at that and say "yeah, umm it doesn't work that way anymore".  One of the reasons we selected BitShares rather than discounting it and moving to something else, is that I discovered that he has a competing crypto platform in development.  I find that sneaky and it has made me very suspicious of his motives.  I had to dig deep to find that out though.

I consider my efforts to be exceptional, meaning I highly doubt a potential user is going to dig that deep.
The fact remains, his rant is so high up on the google search rankings that in your case, it is directly costing you business.
 
The problem with the second URL is a bit more insidious.  The subtext here is that you had a damaged brand but instead of fixing something fundamental, you decided to "rebrand".  This type of thing makes a potential investor nervous and probably caused a lot of potential new users to rabbit.  Reading the article I realize what you are really doing is "brand consolidation", but the click bait headline there doesn't make it sound that way and if you're new to bitshares it just confuses the heck out of things.

Speaking as someone considering ownership for the first time.  My initial impression was, "We don't want a re-brand, we want the original thing!" 
A rebrand is confusing.  I think what happened here is that you managed to turn the BitShares brand into the "New Coke" of the crypto world. 

If you were really going to "rebrand", I think maybe you should have done a darkcoin and completely renamed the product.  Oddly enough I sold all my dark/dash as soon as my wallet changed names, I actually liked the darkcoin name, more than the product ;)
 
For the love of god, please don't change it again!  There is nothing you can do about the branding right now other than to spread the new brand as far and wide as you can.  If you choose an SEO buzzmonkey to go around and spam the planet with it, people will get sick of it really quickly though and then brand burnout will set in rather than brand burn in.

If it were my baby I would hurry up and add an affiliate system to the webwallet (would also be helpful if the official webwallet had functioning trades BTW).  Also in the webwallet advertise the forum here as the "help and resources" section.  That would add a lot of community traffic, and your existing community (possible exception of newminer) would gladly help you on board them.

I would also do what CEX.io did, create an attractive interactive banner that your community can launch.  Preferably something that ties in some stat from their own web-wallets, such as current interest rates on pegged assets.  (note I have no idea how you would actually go about pulling that off).  It would be great if you could add a sweetener to the deal such as "Get 10% bonus BTS when someone clicks your banner and opens a new account." 

Let your community do the advertising for you.  Heck if you did something innovative in this space, you would probably own the entire crypto market!   You have a fantastic product and you have a solid community now!

Your existing users are mostly die-hards who have been here since the beginning.  There are people here who have already taken $10k - $20k hits just because you have their respect.  Give these guys a proper affiliate system and you'll need to look at server upgrades within a week or two just to handle the traffic.

Furthermore, most of the resources like the wiki are out of date.  Speaking as someone who is actually trying to build something on top of your product, it is horribly off-puting when I go to read up on how things work only to see a big red "This information is out of date and no longer accurate" at the top.  Ok it's inaccurate.  Where can I go get the current scoop?  I dunno.  I ended up having to read the source code to figure things out.  Most project managers considering your platform are abandoning you at this stage.  It's something you can do, should be easy to do, please fix it right away.



You have created a "money" product, we would all appreciate it if this product worked correctly every time, little things like having to manually subtract the fee from a trade in the wallet, really detract from the usability of one click trading.  If there is a fee, just charge it.  I've put in all my money on the trade.  If there are insufficient funds to execute that trade, then just have UI calculate the max trade, because that's kind of the assumption.  Back to the order screen, if there isn't enough depth to support my order, it would be great if there were way to just buy the entire market out right there without having a huge chunk left sitting over in "unfilled" orders.

Also the tiny "confirm" button pops up under sales.  Give me a GREAT BIG DIALOG that says "Hey MORON, you are about to trade all your BTS for the price of a single grain of rice, are you sure this is a real thing you want to do?"   


Operationally there is more that can be done as well. 

Instead of focusing on marketing you are relying primarily on a subset of your user base called delegates.

These guys are supposed to be doing the marketing because it's supposedly in their best interests. 
But in reality it's not in THEIR best interests, it's in the best interests of the community at large.

The part you missed is that there is no way to tie a delegate's marketing efforts to a delegate's income.  Yet the only way to mine BTS is to become one of the "blessed".  That method is off putting to libertarian crypto-anarchists who view it as a "mini-fed", and it's unattractive to the small time miner who might otherwise like to put their efforts towards securing the network, since you need so many resources + network effects just to get into the blessed "delegate" category.  This has the effect of encouraging delegates to only do the minimum to become one, and will probably end badly.

My opinion is that the current delegate functions should be broken up into several separate functions that can all be sub-delegated, then compensated for independently.  Also again, income should be tied to the users they bring in, not the number of blocks that they sign, if they are also going to be tasked with bringing in new users.

I've looked at the code though and it would probably be a huge effort to retool just to break delegates into categories like that.

So if you're going to have delegates doing everything they currently do, then doing everything should be enforced at the software level, not through user voting. 

"Oh so you're a delegate who isn't publishing a price feed?"


Sure let users vote them in, but when they start to suck, the network itself should give them the boot.

The place where all of this is falling down is the delegate process itself.
Once a delegate is in place, they have no further incentive to continue to advertise outside the community itself.  No company wants to step into anything and advertise "for the good of everyone".  Especially when they can be voted out at a moment's notice and thus loose all future income. 

Your final problem is that the price of BTS has been on a downward trajectory since inception. 

The price is falling because you are printing WAY too much money for the market to absorb right now. 
This new money is effectively devaluing the BTS of every person or company that takes a chance and decides to hold any.

You need to find a way to slow production right now, and mop it up so that the price ceases to fall, or even your diehards are going to walk away to something else.  People don't want to buy an asset in continual decline.  I personally hold some 50,000 BTS, but I hold it exclusively in bitUSD right now.  If the price continues to decline, I'm going to end up with a whole lot more BTS, which is a great thing for my business from a liquid assets standpoint, since we are selling BTS to our customers at a fixed price, but makes it a real hard sell to convince my customers to buy a bunch.

Stop printing so much money, cut the block rewards to next to nothing.

It will force out delegates that are doing this out of direct self interest.
It will attract those willing to do it as a community effort and also those for whom running a delegate is a loss leader. 

For instance, our business plan requires us to run at least one delegate node anyways, and I can envision half a dozen other commercial interests that would run one as a loss leader as well.

Even without it being a loss leader. delegates can make money a lot of ways including trading fees and UIA creation fees.

I assert that terminating the block reward so new money is not printed every few seconds, would cause the value of existing currency to rebound and stabilize.

Finally, you need to work to mop up all the current excess. 
You need this...


We are building one of these...


We hope it will help, and we're pretty confident that it will.  However we don't expect to be the only players in this space. 


In summation...

If you want BTS to take off you need to make it attractive and easy to use. 

Pricing and community are huge components of that attractiveness. 
Liquidity is a direct component of pricing.
Get more gateways and other commercial interests on board and dump the delegates not actually contributing.

Finally, ease of use and exposure are key to community building. 

Fix those and your problems are gone.

Just my 2 BTS.

Offline jcrubino

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I question the premise of the OP.

BitShares cannot "take off" while bitcoin and the rest of crypto are in a bear market.


But BitShares the platform can.

What the blockchain technology space needs are savers.  Every blockchain wants people to hold on to the native tokens to help appreciate the value of the token.  But users en mass want to know what the value of their stored currency will be tomorrow and even next month.  If people can not store value in the blockchain ecosystem then most will just speculate.

If moonstone puts out a wallet that allows people to:
    1. convert Bitcoin to BitUSD / BitCNY
    2. set savings goals

I think you have the basics for a killer app, add an index fund where people can put in no more than a dollar a day to buy blockchain tokens and assets weighted by marketcaps and some sanity rules and you can onboard outside the normal enthusiast circles.  Killer apps make peoples lives simpler, not more complex by having to grok all sorts of complexities that will need further calculations.


Another channel for on boarding is education:
     Create programs to teach / present blockchain technologies and finance in a DAC agnostic way.
     This works well in many industries.



« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 08:08:39 pm by jcrubino »

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Focus on BitUSD and other currencies/assets. I want it to be easier to put my money in BitUSD or BitGLD and just hold. What I want is a iPhone wallet, where I can send my Bitcoins and inside of the wallet, trade my Bitcoins for BitUSD with two options, automatically with METAEXCHANGE, or with people online or nearby. That way you are creating your own on-ramps. Say I'm in USA and I need USD, I search for users nearby, then I contact one asking to trade them in BitUSD or Bitcoin or whatever asset they want. I get my USD and they get their Bitasset. IS THAT TOO HARD? All you need is to make a iPhone and Android wallet app with this capability. I've going to  +5% my own post. :)

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Offline rb2

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Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.

You illustrate what i start to think might be a problem with bitshares: no one wants to do something for bitshares for free. BM mentioned being managed as a startup is an advantage, but it seems to have a cost. People want to develop and help bitshares, but the pre condition is to be a delegate.... it is a problem because enthousiasm, conviction and grass root movement could be the key to success for bitcoin's successor. Linux'devs didn't develop linux to get paid, but because they liked it! They didn't think about user acquisition, they just did their thing. And look what has come out of it!

Offline rgcrypto

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Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
What if instead of going for a delegate, you had a compensation for every new user you bring in? :-)

I think that's the idea behind a referral program.

Offline liondani

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"Why BitShares isn't Taking off and What we are doing about it."

since dogecoin has now a bigger market-cap than us, it is a perfect time to consider if we can do what
they have done with a simple bitcoin-clone & zero innovation "backing it"...

maybe it is time for a bitshares meme birth... and a big marketing push  :P 


Offline jsidhu

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Im willing to convert my site to use bitshares payment gateway to accept bitassets and auction off real goods.. if i had a delegate i cam create non reserve auctions which will almost gaurantee new users coming in .. current site is http://devcoinauctions.com... ive already added bitshares payment gateway to it to buy bids or sell bids.. its uses websockets to update order status
so can handle many more users with the same server than conpetitors.

The cost? 1 delegate.. the payoff? new users every month! i cam track new users which must buy into bitshares to use it so we can see weekly trends on how successful it is.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 06:17:28 pm by jsidhu »
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