Theory 1. A centralized company can benefit from Sign-up/Deposit bonuses but a DAC/Alt-Coin usually can't, especially in the short term.
2. A DAC/Alt-Coin can benefit in the short and medium term from delayed bonuses such as subsidizing yield but a centralized exchange usually can't.
1. Sign-up/Deposit Bonuses or in Crypto, 'Sharedrops' Centralized Companies: When a company decides to give away free money. Say the historic PayPal bootstrapping example or Coinbase offering lets say $20 to each new customer. Coinbase/PayPal will either have money set aside or they will have borrowed at very low interest.
Say they attract 10 000 people to that promotion, that will cost them $200 000. Provided say 1000 of those people become regular customers and they generate $201 in trading fees from them over the next 1-3 years, then that could be a positive EV investment and could also help bootstrap their exchange.
DACs/Alt-Coins: When a DAC decides to give away free money. Say the DEX decides to offer $20 to each new customer. We do not have funds set aside and we will be paying for that out of BTS shares.
BTS clearly cannot easily support $200 000 of new sell pressure so that initiative would decrease the value of BTS by much more than that, possibly many millions of dolllars of value will be lost from BTS during that promotion.
(This is why you see nearly every DAC that attempts a Sharedrop/New User bonus loses most of it's value, often 90%+ and fails to bootstrap it's product and often even recover at all.)Caveat: It's OK to sharedrop in the very beginning as a distribution method because your DAC has no value yet.
Conclusion: A DAC/DEX cannot attract users the way Coinbase/PayPal can (Because the cost of acquisition is often many multiples higher.) 2. Subsidizing Yield and Exchange liquidity Centralized Companies: If Coinbase offered their customers a bit of yield on their balance & subsidized liquidity that promotion would represent a massive loss to them for an extended period of time with no near term benefit. (For example if they had obligations of 3% on exchange balances annually they would be losing $300 000 a year per $10 million on their exchange with no income coming in.) The more successful that promotion was, the more money would be flowing out of their business every month over the next 1-3 years. This would not be a good way for them to bootstrap their exchange.
DACs/Alt-Coins: If a DAC/Alt offered their customers a bit of yield on their balance & subsidized liquidity that promotion would need to be funded via BTS sales which would represent a loss in value (Due to BTS being sold to fund it) unless those sales were offset by equal/greater BTS demand as the result of the same promotion.
Example:Lets say the obligations amounted to 3% per year. For every $30 000 of BTS put up for sale to fund the obligation over the next 12 months ($2500 a month) there would have been $1 000 000 in new BTS demand (To purchase the BitUSD to be entitled to that obligation) So rather than the short term valuation loss experienced with Sharedrops/Bonuses, BTS would experience very large BTS demand growth & so the promotion would rapidly increase the value of BTS in the near term.
In fact until such time as annual new BTS demand attracted by that specific promotion was less than 3% of BitAssets currently in circulation it would be a net gain to BTS.
So during the bootstrapping phase of the DEX's product life-cycle you can actually offer yield and some conservative liquidity subsidies which a centralized exchange never could.
As the product matures you decrease and ultimately remove the incentives (yield and liquidity subsidies) so your monthly obligation goes down to zero.
Again, while the promotion is attracting new BTS demand there is no value loss to the DAC and once new demand is not sufficient to offset the cost of that promotion it is curtailed and the monthly obligation of BTS goes down to zero while having experienced all that net new BTS demand. (& hopefully have bootstrapped the DEX to the point that those promotions are no longer needed.)
(Not to be confused with a ponzi. In a ponzi when there is not enough new money coming in to offset obligations to previous investors it collapses because members can't be re-imbursed. In BTS, all the BitUSD previously created would still be there and be fully collateralized but the promotion which offered yield and perhaps some liquidity would be phased out. Though if you suddenly stopped a very large promotion, such as suddenly removing very high yield or lots of liquidity, some people might force settle their BitAssets and sell BTS creating downward pressure on the price. )
Conclusion: A DAC/Alt-Coin can experience a rapid short and medium term valuation increase by subsidizing yield and possibly liquidity while also bootstrapping it's product long term at the same time. Up until now, most DACs/Alt-Coins have been attempting to bootstrap using option 1 and have experienced large losses and little bootstrapping as a result. Option 2 is the way to bootstrap a DAC imo as it increases share value & helps bootstrap the product in a way that centralized companies/exchanges can't because their shares aren't the product.
Topic: Sharedrop Theory & BitUSD Yield - Increasing BTS value now and bootstrapping DEX (Read 7187 times)
