Demand for BitUSD: What are the low hanging fruit?

[gamey]

What are the issues with implementing the BitUSD > USD pathway?

You have 50k and plenty of time to sit down with lawyers ?

I just made 50k up, could easily be more.

Thats why BTC is required, because existing usd->btc can deal with all the regulatory bullshit.  We would wish to partner up with someone who already has this in place. 

I don't even think I can sell btsx to a stranger in my own state face to face without a 100k bond for money transmitter license.  Otherwise I'm risking a felony.

[patrickb323]

we need to facilitate creation of BitUSD accounts,  and bury all of the btsx and crypto related stuff from the user.   we need to attract a different type of user.


One segment that should be pursued is merchants.

Payment processors like Bitpay could offer 'no exposure to bitcoin volatility' to their customers.   This would serve those merchants who want to accept bitcoin but hate the risk.  We just need to find ways to have people store small values of BitUSD for short amount of time.  Most merchants don't care about how much btc they have,  just the current USD value.



It requires these pathways :

BTC > BitUSD
BitUSD > USD


What are the issues with implementing the BitUSD > USD pathway?

[gamey]

So far we've got:

Darknet markets
Remittances

How about gambling?

If people could find an easy way to go from fiat to bitUSD then gambling might be a good spot. 

Darknet markets don't necessarily need btsx or bitUSD.  Volatility is not near the problem it once was with BTC.  

The same can be said for remittance.

I do think that if we have low transaction fees and fast confirm times, we need to start going after micro-payments.  When I first started reading about BTC I was like.. finally.. but it'll never work anytime soon.   Yet BTSX, all those in-app purchases etc.  BTSX would work well.

[biophil]

The market cap of BitUSD will always be zero because the net amount of BitUSD issued is zero.
Currently there are about +490 000 BitUSD long and -490 000 BitUSD short.

Okay that makes sense. Curious, why 490k +/-?

Do you mean why 490k, or why (+/-)? It's 490k because that's the number we happen to have at the moment. The number of bitUSD is constantly fluctuating, and currently trending upwards. When someone shorts bitUSD, that bitUSD is created. When someone is subject to a margin call, their bitUSD is destroyed.

As for (+/-), that's because each bitUSD is essentially a loan; if I create bitUSD by shorting it, Im borrowing that bitUSD from the network. Now someone out there owns the bitUSD that I just shorted to them, and I owe a bitUSD debt in the same amount.

Sent from my SCH-S720C using Tapatalk 2

[xeroc]

thanks xeroc,

I do understand the concept that bit assets are pegged to their real value and no matter on which chain they are used, they have the same intrinsic value... But let's say someone owns bitusd, because he doesn't like the wild fluctuations of the shares. In the current form, they would have to exchange their bitusd for bitshares play shares, than on the gaming platform buy chips with the shares they just bought, play around, cash out in bitshares play then go back to the exchange and get bitusd back.

While having to do several steps, this person is also exposed to bitshares play value fluctuation in the process. So if there's a big drop of bitshares play value while he's trying to exchange it back to bitusd, he loses. If he could directly buy chips with bitusd, he's not exposed to the shares price fluctuation. That's the kind of assurance risk-averse people want, particularly those holding bitusd because they don't feel like being exposed to big value fluctuation.

good point ..

I'll try to contact Hackfisher and let him know about this thread!

[Chuckone]

I know that for Bitshares Play (or whatever the name of the gaming platform will be) the plan is to use the DAC shares as the general token to get chips for all the games. But I'm thinking out loud here... What if we could gamble bit assets on these games as well, or just exchange bit assets for game chips? That would be awesome, and the house edge would rake in bit assets as well as Bitshares play shares, so the "dividend" for the shareholders would be pretty much the same.

On the other hand, it would use the gaming platform to promote bit assets. That's what I call synergy!

Its a rough concept, nothing polished here, but a neat idea IMO

FYI:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2893.msg36083#msg36083

So does each chain have a different core asset? Are any of these assets expected to be pegged 1:1?
Are the BTS inside BTS X going to be devalued by the BTS on other chains? Or will all core assets have their own floating exchange rates?

All chains have their own shares... to facilitate cross-chain trading it would be nice if there was no need to worry about price-discovery and fluctuation.  Thus if two chains each had BitGLD then you can trade without having to consider price even though BitGLD on each chain is backed by a different shares.

thanks xeroc,

I do understand the concept that bit assets are pegged to their real value and no matter on which chain they are used, they have the same intrinsic value... But let's say someone owns bitusd, because he doesn't like the wild fluctuations of the shares. In the current form, they would have to exchange their bitusd for bitshares play shares, than on the gaming platform buy chips with the shares they just bought, play around, cash out in bitshares play then go back to the exchange and get bitusd back.

While having to do several steps, this person is also exposed to bitshares play value fluctuation in the process. So if there's a big drop of bitshares play value while he's trying to exchange it back to bitusd, he loses. If he could directly buy chips with bitusd, he's not exposed to the shares price fluctuation. That's the kind of assurance risk-averse people want, particularly those holding bitusd because they don't feel like being exposed to big value fluctuation.

[liondani]

I know that for Bitshares Play (or whatever the name of the gaming platform will be) the plan is to use the DAC shares as the general token to get chips for all the games. But I'm thinking out loud here... What if we could gamble bit assets on these games as well, or just exchange bit assets for game chips? That would be awesome, and the house edge would rake in bit assets as well as Bitshares play shares, so the "dividend" for the shareholders would be pretty much the same.

On the other hand, it would use the gaming platform to promote bit assets. That's what I call synergy!

Its a rough concept, nothing polished here, but a neat idea IMO

 

[xeroc]

I know that for Bitshares Play (or whatever the name of the gaming platform will be) the plan is to use the DAC shares as the general token to get chips for all the games. But I'm thinking out loud here... What if we could gamble bit assets on these games as well, or just exchange bit assets for game chips? That would be awesome, and the house edge would rake in bit assets as well as Bitshares play shares, so the "dividend" for the shareholders would be pretty much the same.

On the other hand, it would use the gaming platform to promote bit assets. That's what I call synergy!

Its a rough concept, nothing polished here, but a neat idea IMO

FYI:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2893.msg36083#msg36083

So does each chain have a different core asset? Are any of these assets expected to be pegged 1:1?
Are the BTS inside BTS X going to be devalued by the BTS on other chains? Or will all core assets have their own floating exchange rates?

All chains have their own shares... to facilitate cross-chain trading it would be nice if there was no need to worry about price-discovery and fluctuation.  Thus if two chains each had BitGLD then you can trade without having to consider price even though BitGLD on each chain is backed by a different shares.

[Chuckone]

I know that for Bitshares Play (or whatever the name of the gaming platform will be) the plan is to use the DAC shares as the general token to get chips for all the games. But I'm thinking out loud here... What if we could gamble bit assets on these games as well, or just exchange bit assets for game chips? That would be awesome, and the house edge would rake in bit assets as well as Bitshares play shares, so the "dividend" for the shareholders would be pretty much the same.

On the other hand, it would use the gaming platform to promote bit assets. That's what I call synergy!

Its a rough concept, nothing polished here, but a neat idea IMO

[xeroc]

The market cap of BitUSD will always be zero because the net amount of BitUSD issued is zero.
Currently there are about +490 000 BitUSD long and -490 000 BitUSD short.

Okay that makes sense. Curious, why 490k +/-?

blockchain_get_asset USD

{
  "id": 22,
  "symbol": "USD",
  "name": "United States Dollar",
  "description": "1 United States dollar",
  "public_data": "",
  "issuer_account_id": -2,
  "precision": 10000,
  "registration_date": "20140719T000000",
  "last_update": "20140719T000000",
  "current_share_supply": 4832498072,
  "maximum_share_supply": 1000000000000000,
  "collected_fees": 17779970
}

[AJ]

The market cap of BitUSD will always be zero because the net amount of BitUSD issued is zero.
Currently there are about +490 000 BitUSD long and -490 000 BitUSD short.

Okay that makes sense. Curious, why 490k +/-?

[xeroc]

I'm curious to know the plans for liquidity in bitusd and what plans that can be set in place to solve the price problem bitcoin is having? I've heard talks about pegging... Is that for bitusd or bitshares x?

Please elaborate

Pegging is for the bitassets .. like bitUSD
you can find an introduction over here:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Market_Peg

[Markus]

The market cap of BitUSD will always be zero because the net amount of BitUSD issued is zero.
Currently there are about +490 000 BitUSD long and -490 000 BitUSD short.

[AJ]

I'm curious to know the plans for liquidity in bitusd and what plans that can be set in place to solve the price problem bitcoin is having? I've heard talks about pegging... Is that for bitusd or bitshares x?

Please elaborate

[liondani]

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

Great point.

Unrelated side question: can the "market cap" of bitUSD be tracked? Perhaps bitUSD should be listed on coinmarketcap.com and presented as its own "alt coin". We should take the focus off the bitshares exchange and focus on marketing the product. I'm absolutely convinced once the crypto community understands bitUSD, they'll be all over it.

All bitUSD are backed by BTSX , so there is no separate market cap. It is included. Market cap of bitUSD is visible from the client (or bitsharesblocks.com).

So the "market cap" is 483,250 bitUSD.

I know I will make a stupid question but please answer me to make my conlusions...

Right now on http://coinmarketcap.com/ BitSharesX has a market cap of about $67 million...

can I translate it:

real marketcap= $480,000 bitUSD +$66.5 million (2M BTSX) = $67 million ?

[fuzzy]

All I can say is that I will personally give you a sensual Cam show over the net for 150USD, or 100bitUSD.  Hope this helps get things moving.
 

[xeroc]

So the "market cap" is 483,250 bitUSD.

yep

[Method-X]

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

Great point.

Unrelated side question: can the "market cap" of bitUSD be tracked? Perhaps bitUSD should be listed on coinmarketcap.com and presented as its own "alt coin". We should take the focus off the bitshares exchange and focus on marketing the product. I'm absolutely convinced once the crypto community understands bitUSD, they'll be all over it.

All bitUSD are backed by BTSX , so there is no separate market cap. It is included. Market cap of bitUSD is visible from the client (or bitsharesblocks.com).

So the "market cap" is 483,250 bitUSD.

[emski]

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

Great point.

Unrelated side question: can the "market cap" of bitUSD be tracked? Perhaps bitUSD should be listed on coinmarketcap.com and presented as its own "alt coin". We should take the focus off the bitshares exchange and focus on marketing the product. I'm absolutely convinced once the crypto community understands bitUSD, they'll be all over it.

All bitUSD are backed by BTSX , so there is no separate market cap. It is included. Market cap of bitUSD is visible from the client (or bitsharesblocks.com).

[Method-X]

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

Great point.

Unrelated side question: can the "market cap" of bitUSD be tracked? Perhaps bitUSD should be listed on coinmarketcap.com and presented as its own "alt coin". We should take the focus off the bitshares exchange and focus on marketing the product. I'm absolutely convinced once the crypto community understands bitUSD, they'll be all over it.

[xeroc]

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

That's why I am asking in the other thread whether its a good idea to launch bitGLD already ..

[emski]

bitGOLD !

bitGOLD is backed by BTSX. In all practical purposes it is identical to bitUSD (except the name and the feeds). If bitUSD has low liquidity why do you think bitGOLD would ?

[liondani]

bitGOLD !

[Method-X]

[emski]

Basically any high-demand service will be sufficient.
However an already established online casino might not be interested in including bitUSD as there might be no liquidity.

[emski]

So far we've got:

Darknet markets
Remittances

How about gambling?

Gambling might be huge consumer of bitUSD if done properly.
In order to play in the virtual casino you should buy bitUSD under current market conditions.
That will create some demand and market depth. The rest should adjust by itself.

The question is who will build that virtual casino. Should an existing gambling site be contacted to include bitUSD ?

[Method-X]

So far we've got:

Darknet markets
Remittances

How about gambling?

[bitmarket]

I don't think remittance markets are a good fit for bitUSD.   volatility of btc remittance is not a challenge because people are in and out so quickly. 

But I love being wrong   

[kisa]

Possibly remittances could be an attractive segment to approach!

The main challenge here would be brokers (trusted persons network) in target countries, who can be contacted by recepients locally via Email or phone for exchanging bitUSD -> cash USD for some reasonable fee...

[Method-X]

Would anyone be interested in doing an AMA on Agora/Evolution/SR2 forums?

We need a grassroots effort to seed BitUSD on the darknet. This is where it has the most utility. If it catches on there, like with bitcoin, the initial momentum will create the necessary infrastructure to appeal to an entirely new and less sketchy demographic.

If you believe past patterns predict future patterns then darknet markets are necessary. The underground precedes (and allows for) mainstream adoption.

PM me if you're interested in doing an AMA. We'll schedule something for the near future.

[bitmarket]

I defo agree.  Just like Bitcoin started in the dark world so to will bit USD.    If the community thinks this is poor positioning and wants to avoid it, then I can understand but I dont know any other way.

That is where the customers are.   Perhaps a nice middle ground would be to partner with open bazaar.   I can see an ebay seller looking to move over might be hesitant because he does not trust Bitcoins price stability. 

I would be a fan of reaching out to the dark world, but I would not do it unless the comunity thought the positioning was worth it.

[Methodise]

Yeah, there are always other assets, but fake gold exists, and the tests are costly. Plus, these alternative assets are easily stolen, or 'seized' (if you prefer).

bitUSD is unique for its supposed combined crypto-fiat qualities.

[Method-X]

Let's have a brainstorming session!

Our product is BitUSD. If there is demand for BitUSD there will be demand for trading on the exchange. With this in mind, who does BitUSD (as things are right now) appeal to the most? Who are the low hanging fruit?

Low hanging fruit #1

Darknet markets. This will be controversial I'm sure, but it's true. Vendors on the darknet markets do NOT like the volatility of bitcoin. Especially as of late, since it's been going down for a long time. If given the choice, most would convert BTC -> USD but they don't because of KYC rules on exchanges. They desire a stable place to park their excess profit until they need it.

This is what a typical darknet market vendor wants:

BTC -> BitUSD  (hold until they need to cash out) BitUSD -> BTC -> Localbitcoins

They don't even need to spend it. They just want the stability.

Low hanging fruit #2

BitUSD on-ramps in countries like Argentina. This is less low hanging than #1 because there is currently nowhere to spend it. It would be used only as a store of value and nothing else. I don't know much about Argentina but I'd assume there are other assets they could hold their buying power in.