sigh.
I believe that mining would have served the purpose of enabling transactions in a reliable, proven way for Bitshares and that over time they could have moved to a Proof of Stake model if that is what is desirable. They are doing this now with PTS so it's not like I'm inventing something that would never happen.
Daniel and I spoke extensively about a post-mining world in December, I am very much a proponant of this view - but I am also a pragmatic investor who supported a concept that did in fact involve mining and more importantly that would be distribution 90% of the total tokens through non-monetary means. That is to say, people don't have to buy Bitshares to get bitshares, they just have to run their computer. Remember this was also when the Invictus refrain was that Bitshares would be the coin EVERYBODY could mine and get vested in for just some of their time.
That was a whole three months ago so most people here have forgotten. As I like to say, when you leave money on the table in an open source world you're inviting someone well suited to come along and build a business picking up that money - that 90% was important because it's the ultimate onboarding mechanism. A taste for free, if they're believers the efficient thing to do is buy a bunch.
When Angelshares rolled out, I suggested it be 10% to match the 10% of PTS but rather than take a middle step, we went 100% to the other extreme.
It should also be noted we only launched Angelshares because Invictus didn't get many Protoshares, because they wanted EVERYTHING to be as fair as possible which meant not taking any of the tokens. I suggested several times prior to launch taking 10-25% of the tokens since after all the Invictus company was the entity giving value to PTS. They didn't want to do that because they were too extreme in the other direction, so Angelshares was an unfortunate 100% shift from TOTALLY INCLUSIVE to TOTALLY MONETARY.
This was sold as "a better deal" because it increased the share from 10% to 50% for PTS holders, but it's like 50% of a much much smaller pie. My cries of "Don't change the deal" are attempts to explain this - When you make the deal better for ANY PARTY, you are making it worse for someone else. When you take money that would otherwise be left on the table, you remove the opportunity for someone to build a business picking it up. That's the Bitshares ecosystem in a nutshell, Invictus hoovered up all the money with Angelshares and now they're doing stuff we hope will work with zero accountability.
Hmm interesting, thanks for the recap. When I learned of Bitshares and I3 I think AGS was launched already (or it wasn't but was by the time I wrapped my head around what I3 was trying to do and how to invest in their plans).
Even if it feels to you like a total echo chamber on these forums at times, I hope you stick around and continue to voice your opinion on matters. Reading through this thread I had no idea who "Adam B Levine" was but your complaints are well articulated and I think can bring out healthy discussion as I've learned a bit reading these last pages that I apparently missed over the last few months.
I'm a big fan of what I3 is doing here and in response to criticisms and problems I've appreciated the attitudes taken by BM, Stan and Toast. I'm hopeful that the wait will materialize as a superior product(s) but am anxious to see something produced.
While I see the merits of Invictus pushing out a product sooner that can be forked later to a better consensus security mechanism, I also see why it would be attractive to work through the problems first to lay solid ground work for Bitshares X before releasing it to be used in the wild.
When you hear or read about "Bitcoin 2.0" technologies, Bitshares seem to rarely be mentioned in any appreciable ratio to Ethereum or Mastercoin or NXT. As an investor of Bitshares this concerns me the same way it does for you, but I am hopeful that Dan's extra time spent will allow a truly unique and solid product to be release before too long. A complete, working technology that can be marketed well without the confusion of coming future forks due it coming out half baked.
I don't think I had the same expectations you did when investing with I3, but can understand how the current state of affairs doesn't match with the original vision that was allegedly sold to you.
We will see how things turn out, I'm optimistic good things will happen soon, but I'm also diversified in my investments in case they don't.