Have you all realized that we have fiat on the blockchain!?

[yvv]

Fiat-UIA are necessary to have on the network to keep peg for fiat bitAssets. If we would have good volume for fiat-UIA, we would not need to rely on price feeds from external sources. Price feeds would be derived from trade on blockchain.

[Samupaha]

Well sure, but then if I deposit some EUR say to CCEDK, and I get my shiny OPEN.EUR, they're now pretty much essentially useless [edit: for anything other than a store of value; which is nice and all, but not having to trust a 3rd party company to disappear meanwhile would be even nicer] since mostly anyone who's not CCEDK and me isn't really that interested in them. Why should blocktrades take OPEN.EUR ?

It's one thing to put our trust in BitEUR, another thing to do the same with OPEN.EUR. And again, nothing at all against CCEDK, other than the nanocard fiasco I really have nothing but good things to say about them & Ronny, so that's not the point.. it's the principle behind it.

When we have not one but dozens or even hundreds of bridges/gws (a good problem to have, I suppose..), then what? Everyones' holding the many NOTMTGOX.EUR and hope for the best?


Wasn't the idea of having the SmartCoins precisely avoiding the need to trust 3rd parties excessively?

We are looking at different time scales here. In the long term, yes, smartcoins and other assets should replace fiat currencies completely. But it will take years of hard work. In the meantime, our blockchain will need users. So why not target regular people who are already trusting third parties to hold their money? As I said, after we have them using our wallet with fiat, it's easy step to get them use other assets too.

Of course getting lots of fiat-IUA users will take time too, but it might be still easier than getting lots of smartcoin users.

When there are lots of fiat-UIA users, merchants will become interested too. They do not care much about bitcoin because of the volatility. But if there are real fiat in the blockchain, it will be much easier for them. Only problem will be from blockchain to bank account transfers, but at least in the SEPA-area it's cheap and fast because CCEDK's bank is in there. So one possible business opportunity for Openledger could be payment processing, something like Bitpay and others are doing now.

[karnal]

Any plans to trade (@blocktrades) OPEN.USD into USD and OPEN.EUR into EUR? with a reasonable spread?

[dannotestein]

Why should blocktrades take OPEN.EUR ?

They never should. OPEN.EUR is a ccedk IOU. It is acknowledgement of ccedk debt to OPEN.EUR holder. If you hold them, you can exchange them for EUR at ccedk, or sell to someone else who wants to cash out through ccedk. This is the idea behind fiat IOUs.

As a practical matter,  we do already accept OPEN.USD, and we plan to add support for OPEN.EUR before too long.

[yvv]

Why should blocktrades take OPEN.EUR ?

They never should. OPEN.EUR is a ccedk IOU. It is acknowledgement of ccedk debt to OPEN.EUR holder. If you hold them, you can exchange them for EUR at ccedk, or sell to someone else who wants to cash out through ccedk. This is the idea behind fiat IOUs.

[dannotestein]

The fiat IOU assets have their place, even in a world with heavily used Bit Assets. Sometimes you need to be able to convert your bit euros into real euros. One way to do this is to exchange your bit euros for OPEN.EUR and send them to CCEDK in exchange for euros.

[karnal]

Well sure, but then if I deposit some EUR say to CCEDK, and I get my shiny OPEN.EUR, they're now pretty much essentially useless [edit: for anything other than a store of value; which is nice and all, but not having to trust a 3rd party company to disappear meanwhile would be even nicer] since mostly anyone who's not CCEDK and me isn't really that interested in them. Why should blocktrades take OPEN.EUR ?

It's one thing to put our trust in BitEUR, another thing to do the same with OPEN.EUR. And again, nothing at all against CCEDK, other than the nanocard fiasco I really have nothing but good things to say about them & Ronny, so that's not the point.. it's the principle behind it.

When we have not one but dozens or even hundreds of bridges/gws (a good problem to have, I suppose..), then what? Everyones' holding the many NOTMTGOX.EUR and hope for the best?


Wasn't the idea of having the SmartCoins precisely avoiding the need to trust 3rd parties excessively?

[Samupaha]

In digital economy everything is IOUs. When you deposit cash into your bank account, you get IOU for that sum. Bank doesn't put that cash into a box in their vault that has your name on it. So everybody is already using IOU-currencies. They are very familiar with it. That's why it's not really a big step to start using fiat-UIAs in Bitshares.

With fiat-UIAs we are not trying to get more people from cryptosphere as our customers, but totally new group of people. Those who have heard that "blockchains are the future" but don't want to actually invest in volatile cryptocurrencies or derivative instruments. They can understand with very little explanation that fiat-USD in Bitshares wallet isn't actually that much different than dollars in their Paypal account.

And when they are familiar with the wallet and see that there are also other currencies and assets, it's not very big step to acquire also some of those... they are hooked. We have succesfully got them as our customers.

I really like the concept of Fiat on a blockchain.

I was explaining this concept to a friend of mine, how secure his money would be on the blockchain and he raised a very good question which I need help answering.

The question is: Let's say I put my savings on the bts blockchain in BitUSD, who or what can assure me that bitshares would be around in the next 5 to 10 years? What if people loose interest and the price of bts goes down to 400 sats, would I still have access to my savings? (I guess he means like a black swan event).

How can I answer these questions? Sorry I am just a novice.

There are lots of different risks. Keeping your money on the bank has also risks, so you have to compare everything and then decide what is suitable for you and your risk profile.

Value of cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets can go to zero if there is some fatal flaw in the blockchain. But longer the blockchain exists, less there is risk because it will be made better all the time. Longer it survives, stronger it gets. Also it's important to understand economic incentives behind the blockchain. These can make operating the blockchain very expensive (or impossible) in the long run. Incentives of Bitshares are the best that I know, so I personally have lot of confidence in our blockchain.

BitUSD is derivative instrument, so it has also some additional risk. But so far it looks strong. Of course there might be some problems and current smartcoins will be abandoned and people start to use other smartcoins with better parameters. That's why it's not necessarily very wise to put lots of value in savings as BitUSD. If you wait for a while, we all know better how well current smartcoin scheme actually works and we can better understand is it going to be used for a long time or not. If it's bad, we will probably see a better alternative in the near future.

[karnal]

Problem like yvv said is that what we have now is actually an IOU.

It's much, much better than nothing, but for the future it would be nice to see a gateway in Asia offering SGD/CNY/HKD, another in the US for USD, in Dubai for AED, etc..

And preferably with smartcoins/bitassets, so that there's no counterparty risk ..

That would be amazing.

[Shentist]

I really like the concept of Fiat on a blockchain.

I was explaining this concept to a friend of mine, how secure his money would be on the blockchain and he raised a very good question which I need help answering.

The question is: Let's say I put my savings on the bts blockchain in BitUSD, who or what can assure me that bitshares would be around in the next 5 to 10 years? What if people loose interest and the price of bts goes down to 400 sats, would I still have access to my savings? (I guess he means like a black swan event).

How can I answer these questions? Sorry I am just a novice.

i would answer your friend

"this is the reason why you buy a bitAsset in your case USD. This backed asset will be always 1 USD worth. His value doesn't relay on the underlying Bitshares. If bitshares price falls and he converts back, he gets more bitshares. the only problem would be that no one want to buy his bitshares back. but for this reason he should not put everything on the bitshares blockchain, but something"

[yvv]

This is great for all traders who have made huge profits in the DEX and want to take out them as fiat.

Yes, this is great, but if you are in US you will need to pay something like $50 fee for international wire transfer.

Yes, and it is great example why fiat in a blockchain is so much better than fiat in a bank.

You actually don't have fiat on blockchain, you have fiat IOU, which exposes you to counter-party risk. Nevertheless, more fiat gateways would be very useful.

[Louis]

I really like the concept of Fiat on a blockchain.

I was explaining this concept to a friend of mine, how secure his money would be on the blockchain and he raised a very good question which I need help answering.

The question is: Let's say I put my savings on the bts blockchain in BitUSD, who or what can assure me that bitshares would be around in the next 5 to 10 years? What if people loose interest and the price of bts goes down to 400 sats, would I still have access to my savings? (I guess he means like a black swan event).

How can I answer these questions? Sorry I am just a novice.

[Samupaha]

This is great for all traders who have made huge profits in the DEX and want to take out them as fiat.

Yes, this is great, but if you are in US you will need to pay something like $50 fee for international wire transfer.

Yes, and it is great example why fiat in a blockchain is so much better than fiat in a bank.

[yvv]

This is great for all traders who have made huge profits in the DEX and want to take out them as fiat.

Yes, this is great, but if you are in US you will need to pay something like $50 fee for international wire transfer.

[Samupaha]

Openledger's fiat-gateway is way too undervalued. Seriously, it's freakin' awesome that we have real fiat on the blockchain.

One way of describing Bitshares has been "be your own bank". Now you have possibility to use real dollars, euros and yuans in your Bitshares wallet.

This is great for all newbies who are interested in blockchain tech, but are really suspicious about financial derivatives like smartcoins. I can understand that not everybody is willing to believe there can be such thing as derivative on a blockchain that reliably tracks the value of fiat-currency.

This is great for all merchants who don't want to use cryptocurrencies but want the benefits of blockchain. Now they can send and recieve fiat in seconds, anywhere in the world. OpenBazaar, hello!

This is great for all traders who have made huge profits in the DEX and want to take out them as fiat.

Please people, show some love for fiat-UIA markets. BitEUR/OPEN.EUR has some liquidity and tight spread but BitUSD/OPEN.USD and BitCNY/OPEN.CNY are still nonexistent. It's easy to trade even without bot because relative price doesn't change.

Last month there were news about Barbados dollars on Bitcoin blockchain. Well, our blockchain is faster and better, and who cares about BBD? We have USD, EUR and CNY. It's also easy for anybody to implement their own gateway thanks to tools for handling KYC/AML regulations.