Growing Bitshares and discussing its fee structure

[jakub]

I'd like to keep bitUSD transfer fees the same.  Can we make transfer fees for bitCNY lower and keep bitEuro and BitUSD the same?  I'm sure it's hard to implement regional pricing, but doing it by currency type might be good for now.

 
That looks like a good idea.

[bitcrab]

I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.

My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.

I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.

Thanks for your understanding.
Since Chinese community showed a big support and eagerness for lowering transfer fee, I think we need to response to them at some degree. So I would suggest 30 BTS ($0.105) as the transfer fee.
It is very hard to say to you to give up 25% of income, because the number can be substantial for your business. But if we both give up some of our position, we can reconcile the both sides.

As a compensation, I think keep the LTM at $100 (30,000 BTS at this moment) can be one of the solution. So fix the transfer fee to 30 BTS but make LTM fee flexible to BTS price all the time.

China community is in shrink, I just have a long talk with yunbi people, they told me they do not plan to pay more source in BTS, because of the high fee and the low price, and less active community.

decreasing the transfer fee from 40 BTS to 30 BTS is not a satisfactory solution, but I understand that compromise is needed now, a small step at least can let the people know their voice are not ignored. and the committee infrastructure really make sense.

but recently the price of BTS rose up a little, I don't think it's reasonable to increase the LTM fee now.

[merivercap]

I'd like to keep bitUSD transfer fees the same.  Can we make transfer fees for bitCNY lower and keep bitEuro and BitUSD the same?  I'm sure it's hard to implement regional pricing, but doing it by currency type might be good for now. 

[clayop]

I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.

My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.

I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.

Thanks for your understanding.
Since Chinese community showed a big support and eagerness for lowering transfer fee, I think we need to response to them at some degree. So I would suggest 30 BTS ($0.105) as the transfer fee.
It is very hard to say to you to give up 25% of income, because the number can be substantial for your business. But if we both give up some of our position, we can reconcile the both sides.

As a compensation, I think keep the LTM at $100 (30,000 BTS at this moment) can be one of the solution. So fix the transfer fee to 30 BTS but make LTM fee flexible to BTS price all the time.

[xeroc]

.. I really like the healthy discussion about the fees ... It seems people now understand the difficulty ... It's multidimentional opimization

[jakub]

I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.

I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.

Great!
What do you think about my idea #3?

Keep trading fee 40 BTS or little decrease to 30~35 BTS, and let the fee (in terms of fiat) determined by BTS price. If marketers perform well and hence BTS price increases, they will get more referral fees in terms of fiat.

I think #3 makes sense as long as the transfer fee is above something like $0.12 - $0.15.
But I agree we need to be a bit flexible and we should not increase the transfer fees immediately after the market cap drops as it could cause a deadly downward pressure on the price.

My point is to give the referral business some kind of floor they could rely on in the long term.
Thank you @clayop for understanding.

I think we are making progress here so this is a good sign the community is able to resolve its differences.

[clayop]

I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.

I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.

Great!
What do you think about my idea #3?

Keep trading fee 40 BTS or little decrease to 30~35 BTS, and let the fee (in terms of fiat) determined by BTS price. If marketers perform well and hence BTS price increases, they will get more referral fees in terms of fiat.

[jakub]

I'm in agreement with cube's OP.
And thank you @cube for stepping in and trying to find a common ground.

I have nothing against lowering the trading fees.
IMO we should first create the environment for trading bots and only then adjust the trading fees but I do not have a strong opinion on that.
So I leave it to people who are bigger experts than me in this area.

[merivercap]

I support the comments from cube/clayop/bitscape/bitcrab above, but I have more familiarity with the payments side of the business so it would be great to get some input from CCEDK and other exchange businesses regarding trading fees.  Keep in mind an exchange business should be able to credit/refund any of the 80% referral fees it generates as a promotion or early on to gain more liquidity.   If I were to create an exchange business (and I've thought about it) that's what I would do.  Refund everything early on.  I was expecting to see a few more exchange businesses pop up sooner, but I suspect there will be more eventually. 

We should be more active with committee members and have town hall meetings with translators.  I'd be happy to be a committee member to represent the payment perspective and I'm confident I can give some good input on trading parameters as well.    I agree with everyone liquidity is paramount.

[bitcrab]

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.

In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.

If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event.  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html  I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for.  The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard.  Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say.  Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion.  Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.

Just my 40 BTS on the matter.

edit:  to both cube and clayop above

agree, we need to make the committee infrastructure effective to decide change problem.

if the businesses that benefit from referral program and high fees are so important, please select a representative(maybe Ronny Boesing?) to become an active committee member,   and then the topic can be discussed and finally voted under the committee infrastructure. it can be a real town hall.

surely we need committee members that represent different parties, we need the final decision made by committee make a good balance and be accepted by all.

[lovejoy]

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.

In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.

If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event.  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html  I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for.  The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard.  Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say.  Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion.  Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.

Just my 40 bts on the matter.

Not every person in this community is English speaking one. So there is a silent voice, which only represented in voting.

True.

A fact which is not lost on me, and it is good for everyone to be reminded of.

Also a reason why sooner or later this community needs to employ translator / communicators to facilitate a more in depth conversation across all languages, between all shareholders.  We need some sort of UN like format where all speakers are translated live to the native language of all those in attendance.  This is a tangent though.. We can revisit this in a new thread perhaps.

[clayop]

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.

In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.

If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event.  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html  I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for.  The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard.  Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say.  Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion.  Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.

Just my 40 bts on the matter.

Not every person in this community is English speaking one. So there is a silent voice, which only represented in voting.

[lovejoy]

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but that it's premature to be deciding on changes to the fee structure until a more robust conversation develops among those stakeholders who would be affected one way or another.

In a sense, that conversation will only be possible once a relative majority of committee members are actively representing community and business interests.

If the 30 people who voted yes in this poll want to show up and have a town-hall style discussion on the matter, I think that would be a pretty enlightening event.  https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,19948.0.html  I imagine it's precisely the sort of thing a town hall is for.  The community chooses topics for discussion and debate, and every party has a chance for his or her voice to be heard.  Each merchant, developer, trader, marketer, and so on, that wants to speak at the town hall event, can have their say.  Those who wish to submit written statements can have it read by the moderator... If we want there could be a poll before and after the town hall to see which way opinion went after the discussion.  Otherwise, of course ultimately voting itself will decide.

Just my 40 BTS on the matter.

edit:  to both cube and clayop above

[clayop]

Well said Agreed with cube.

1. I think we should lower the "order creation fee" as low as possible. (I support 1 BTS + percentage fee)

2. I don't want to divide the community into two. It's very important to make a consensus.

3. For transfer fee, I would like to say keep the transfer fee at 40 BTS or slightly decrease it to 30 BTS and keep it. If marketers perform greatly, and as a result our market cap grows up, they can get more fees in terms of fiat. Do not increase the fee when BTS price decreases.

4. If BTS price goes up and the fee exceeds $0.2, than we can discuss about lowering transfer fee.

5. I thank to the Chinese community for supporting us. I will try my best to have reasonable level of fees. Please give trust for us.

[cube]

I am in support of all business strategies that can promote the growth of Bitshares and our community. 

A main Bitshares product is a stable crypto-currency called bitUSD (together with bitCNY, bitEur etc).  Unfortunately, it is not working now because of low liquidity.  Some people have attributed the low liquidity to the lack of trading bots which could be because of the lack of API, while others said the traders are being driven away due to high trading and order fees.  I believe both are contributing factors.  I think lowering trading and order fees is a good start to build up liquidity. And if our traders, who are our existing customers, are suffering from the high fees, we need to work on relieving their pain area. We not only want to keep our existing customers (traders) happy but to grow the pie.  Our trading and order fees have to be competitively priced against the well established centralised exchanges.  And until such time that our liquidity overtakes them, we need to keep this competitive pricing.

With regards to transfer fees, it is a more complicated matter to consider.  Bitshares is a late comer to the industry as compared with Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a competitor of ours in term of the merchant/payment market.  It is wider known and it has a large user base while Bitshares is almost 'non-existence' comparatively.  However, Bitshares has a new business model which is beyond what Bitcoin can offer.  It created a well-defined referrer system to attract and reward marketers and referrers.  The referrer programme is our competitive advantage.

At this early stage of establishing a foothold, Bitshares needs and is building a group of marketers and referrers to reach out to the untapped markets.  We have a few referrers now, with fav and jakub better known but I believe there are many others building up their referrer plans and executing them behind the scene. These referrers have already put in lots of effort and time to build up their referrer businesses.  In time to come, they will bring in new users and transactions to the bts2 network.  There is a potential that this strategy can bring in much more businesses than our competitors.  So for now, I like to see the transfer fee stay - as a way to pay for our marketers' and referrers' time and effort, and to incentivise them to bootstrap a user-base that we need desperately.

Please share your thoughts and comments.