Author Topic: Emphasis should be on UIAs, not SmartCoins (at this initial stage)  (Read 4008 times)

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Offline rgcrypto

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UIA are the gateway drug. ;-) Get them hooked and then they'll discover Smartcoins in the process.

Offline xeroc

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I do agree to some extend ...
In the mean time we may need to focus on IOUs to bootstrap the system, become profitable and see liquidity ... but later on, we should emphasize that the true power of the system is the "trust-less" bitasset system that .. btw .. also simplifies interaction of different business on the same chain (read: transfers between openledger and metaexchange)

Maybe I did not make to clear enough in the OP - what I meant was that when pitching BitShares to established businesses it works much better when the emphasis is on UIAs.
Because UIAs is something they can immediately wrap their head around and quickly come up with an idea how to turn UIAs into powerful marketing tools for their existing business.

Whereas SmartCoins look to them very abstract, something that might have future potential but right now is very fragile in terms of capital backing it.
And it's hard for them to find a connection between SmartCoins and their existing business.
Now I agree completely :)
It takes ages to "understand" how bitassets work ..

jakub

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I do agree to some extend ...
In the mean time we may need to focus on IOUs to bootstrap the system, become profitable and see liquidity ... but later on, we should emphasize that the true power of the system is the "trust-less" bitasset system that .. btw .. also simplifies interaction of different business on the same chain (read: transfers between openledger and metaexchange)

Maybe I did not make to clear enough in the OP - what I meant was that when pitching BitShares to established businesses it works much better when the emphasis is on UIAs.
Because UIAs is something they can immediately wrap their head around and quickly come up with an idea how to turn UIAs into powerful marketing tools for their existing business.

Whereas SmartCoins look to them very abstract, something that might have future potential but right now is very fragile in terms of capital backing it.
And it's hard for them to find a connection between SmartCoins and their existing business.

So our internal focus should be SmartCoins (as we know how powerful they are) but don't be surprised if for the outside world UIAs seem like a much better reason to enter the BitShares ecosystem than our beloved SmartCoins.

Offline xeroc

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I do agree to some extend ...
In the mean time we may need to focus on IOUs to bootstrap the system, become profitable and see liquidity ... but later on, we should emphasize that the true power of the system is the "trust-less" bitasset system that .. btw .. also simplifies interaction of different business on the same chain (read: transfers between openledger and metaexchange)

Offline Samupaha

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Does anybody have any good ideas how to get more liquidity for the smartcoins? How to incentivise borrowing smartcoins into existence?

I haven't fully understood the concept so I haven't created them myself, only bought and sold. It seems to have been a good decision. In this bear market I would have made big losses.

Am I on the right track if I say that biggest problem is that there is not enough incentives to borrow smartcoins into existence in a long bear market? If there was a bull market, there would be no problem.

Offline btstip

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Hey rgcrypto, here are the results of your tips...
  • cube: has been credited 1 FISTBUMP
Curious about BtsTip? Visit us at http://sharebits.io and start tipping BTS on https://bitsharestalk.org/ today!
Created by hybridd

Offline rgcrypto

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UIA is great product for referral marketing and it can bring in good revenue for bts.  However, market-peg-asset is our core product and core competence.   It is the only decentralised way of providing a stable crypto value without counterparty risks.  It is a revolutionary and market-disrupting concept.  The traditional businessses (including the banks) will not get it until it hit them one day - much like why need a car when a horse is safer?  The convincing job is tough and will take a long time.  But please do not lose sight of it. 

Both products can be promoted at the same time but at two different markets.

Good point @cube
#sharebits "cube" 1 FISTBUMP

I wonder how much Gresham's law (bad money drives out good) plays into this.

Offline cube

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UIA is great product for referral marketing and it can bring in good revenue for bts.  However, market-peg-asset is our core product and core competence.   It is the only decentralised way of providing a stable crypto value without counterparty risks.  It is a revolutionary and market-disrupting concept.  The traditional businessses (including the banks) will not get it until it hit them one day - much like "Why need a car when a horse is safer?".  The convincing job is tough and will take a long time.  But please do not lose sight of it. 

Both products can be promoted at the same time but at two different markets.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2015, 05:46:47 am by cube »
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Offline donkeypong

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To get simple UIA/IOU's to really work, you need to attract a ton of people to your market. Some are capable of this, and if they can draw users for their product, that will be quite beneficial to the overall exchange. But I think if you are tracking an existing market like many smartcoins do (with price feeds), then in essence you are piggybacking off the legitimacy/participation/liquidity of that other market, which sets a baseline. And so I feel like there ought to be much less effort involved in getting a robust market going for a smartcoin than for a simple UIA/IOU. Unless your name is Kanye or you have a lot of twits following you.

Offline Empirical1.2

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NXT also have good user experiences on IOU, but there's no other crypto project have smartcoin.

Good point. NXT has 12 out of the top 20 Assets in crypto, but hasn't benefited greatly as a result.

http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/


If you want to take the island burn the boats

Offline wallace

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Smartcoin is totally different from UIA.

Smartcoin is the real money, UIA is just a IOU.

For Example, if you have a UIA named A.IOU which backed by company A. as a user I can only cash out this IOU at company A. but if you have BITCNY you can cash out at Yunbi, BTC38 or Transwiser and so on. ..

absolutely IOU is very important to Bitshares to attract users, but smartcoin is our key competitive product, NXT also have good user experiences on IOU, but there's no other crypto project have smartcoin.

give me money, I will do...

Offline tonyk

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Why use smart coins at all? Should the community be encouraging the use of UIA coins? Yield was the reason to buy and hold them in bitshares 1.0 (it didn't make sense to short them in that case, though)

Smartcoins are great invention but you have some good points here. Maybe we should try to get as much UIAs to the exchange first, and after we have more users and better overall liquidity, we'll move to emphasizing smartcoins.
Smartcoins seem to be quite difficult task when we have only few users. Or maybe the whole concept still needs some tweaking to get the incentives right?

I've just had a conversation about BitShares with a friend of mine and we arrived at exactly the same conclusion as Samupaha and maqifrnswa stated above - at this stage UIAs are the key, not SmartCoins.
It sounds like blasphemy, especially to me as I've always thought SmartCoins are the single most important product of BitShares, its raison d'ĂȘtre.

This conclusion came to me as I started to "sell" BitShares to business people. And it turns out they don't really care about bitUSD or bitEUR.
But when I tell them we could have eBay.USD or Apple.USD or your-local-brand.EUR and transfer & trade these assets on one platform - then I get their attention, they immediately start thinking how those UIAs could be used for marketing purposes for their issuers.

For them bitUSD is the same as "BitShares.USD" - an asset backed by an unknown blockchain entity with a relatively low market valuation.

That was a bit of an eye opener for me. Maybe we are currently putting emphasis on the wrong product.
We (the community) value SmartCoins because we think it is such a brilliant invention.
But for the outside world SmartCoins are nothing more than UIAs backed by something which is very strange & risky and additionally has low valuation.

I think time will come when SmartCoins can realize their full potential but this time is not now.
First we need multiple UIAs issued by some established real-life entities to prove BitShares potential as an efficient and safe exchange
And once the BitShares DAC gets a decent recognition and market valuation - then SmartCoins will be able to start playing their (well deserved) role.

So we have the perfect product (i.e. SmartCoins) but we are trying to sell it too early in our business development cycle.
First we need to build our empire as a decentralized exchange for UIAs. And once we are successful with that, SmartCoins will start to shine as the most desired assets on the BitShares platform because they are guaranteed by the platform itself.

Very interesting perspective.  Would like to hear other points of view on this.  BM, Tony etc...

Does it in agreement with the title of the thread? {I really do not have the time to read crap like this, sorry}

If it does, it is a utter nonsense.
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline GaltReport

Why use smart coins at all? Should the community be encouraging the use of UIA coins? Yield was the reason to buy and hold them in bitshares 1.0 (it didn't make sense to short them in that case, though)

Smartcoins are great invention but you have some good points here. Maybe we should try to get as much UIAs to the exchange first, and after we have more users and better overall liquidity, we'll move to emphasizing smartcoins.
Smartcoins seem to be quite difficult task when we have only few users. Or maybe the whole concept still needs some tweaking to get the incentives right?

I've just had a conversation about BitShares with a friend of mine and we arrived at exactly the same conclusion as Samupaha and maqifrnswa stated above - at this stage UIAs are the key, not SmartCoins.
It sounds like blasphemy, especially to me as I've always thought SmartCoins are the single most important product of BitShares, its raison d'ĂȘtre.

This conclusion came to me as I started to "sell" BitShares to business people. And it turns out they don't really care about bitUSD or bitEUR.
But when I tell them we could have eBay.USD or Apple.USD or your-local-brand.EUR and transfer & trade these assets on one platform - then I get their attention, they immediately start thinking how those UIAs could be used for marketing purposes for their issuers.

For them bitUSD is the same as "BitShares.USD" - an asset backed by an unknown blockchain entity with a relatively low market valuation.

That was a bit of an eye opener for me. Maybe we are currently putting emphasis on the wrong product.
We (the community) value SmartCoins because we think it is such a brilliant invention.
But for the outside world SmartCoins are nothing more than UIAs backed by something which is very strange & risky and additionally has low valuation.

I think time will come when SmartCoins can realize their full potential but this time is not now.
First we need multiple UIAs issued by some established real-life entities to prove BitShares potential as an efficient and safe exchange
And once the BitShares DAC gets a decent recognition and market valuation - then SmartCoins will be able to start playing their (well deserved) role.

So we have the perfect product (i.e. SmartCoins) but we are trying to sell it too early in our business development cycle.
First we need to build our empire as a decentralized exchange for UIAs. And once we are successful with that, SmartCoins will start to shine as the most desired assets on the BitShares platform because they are guaranteed by the platform itself.

Very interesting perspective.  Would like to hear other points of view on this.  BM, Tony etc...

Offline lovejoy

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 +5%

I think the collective awareness is dawning.
https://hbr.org/2013/07/the-coming-branded-currency-re/

Quote
(3) Leaders: A few brands will set the pace by creating an integrated approach to using Branded Currency as a vehicle for customer engagement. They will aggregate deals, offers, payments, and loyalty; unify online and offline; and put mobile at the center. They will work with other third-party platforms and wallets, but not be beholden to them. As a result, they will use their data to create value for their customers and bring a unique brand experience to every touchpoint. They will enjoy increased frequency and spend, forge stickier relationships, and greater and more sustainable profitability.

Points / rewards programs are in a realm beyond the burdens of currency controls as well.  Be the best platform for helping merchants, online or otherwise, offer compelling rewards programs, and we're moving in a potent direction... not to mention the social 'currencies' dimension.

We need to finish the tools and begin forming alliances with partners who can use these services to their advantage.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2015, 09:42:44 pm by lovejoy »

Offline Empirical1.2

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BitSapphire came to a similar conclusion...


While we agree with everything on your list, we think bitAssets are not ready for usage yet. As pointed out in earlier discussions, at Bitsapphire we believe that the initial beachhead market for BitShares is not bitAssets, but rather the decentralized exchange and order book for UIA and gateway assets such as stocks and bonds. While bitAssets have a chicken and egg problem (you need liquidity to get liquidity), UIAs and Gateway IOUs don;t have that problem. The only thing needed to kickcstart the liquidity of the UIA/IOU market on BitShares is in our opinion the ID certification mechanism for gateway KYC purposes. Creating sufficient liquidity on UIAS/IOUs should naturally lead people to using bitUSD or similar bitAssets as a liquid and instant open position against all other UIAs/IOUs on the chain. We think this is the right approach to create liquidity on BitShares.

However I think there's a huge market for smartcoins that give you currency/precious metal exposure without having to exit back to a traditional bank account but yes, getting the initial liquidity on BTS is the hard part.

While NuBits has a limited future, their volumes and demand for their product shows there is a big market for crypto with dollar stability.
Their shareholders have received a dividend of over 25% in the last year and thanks to continuing NSR buybacks, they may even pass BTS CAP in the near future.

Quote
$409,811 have been distributed as dividends2 over the last year, most of which was as BlockShares. Given the current NuShare market cap of $1,628,335, that is a stunning 25.17% dividend yield.

https://discuss.nubits.com/t/how-many-dividend-distributions-has-nushares-had-will-there-be-any-more/2739/3

Uphold (Formerly BitReserve) have also done very well with their centralized BitAssets this last year, 'supposedly' passing over $500 million in transaction volume.

Quote
In under 11 short months, we reached over $500 million (USD equivalent) in transaction volume, making us the fastest growing money platform in the world!

Thanks to all our members for making this happen and for being apart of this incredible journey!


https://uphold.com/en/blog/posts/uphold/another-huge-milestone
« Last Edit: November 21, 2015, 09:09:27 pm by Empirical1.2 »
If you want to take the island burn the boats