Topic: Where are those Bitshares' Shills? - page 3. (Read 3824 times)

I'm not worried about banks collapsing, I'm worried about them brazenly stealing from people with government blessings.  Ask the Cyprus bank customers who got a 40% haircut, or more.

There are actually many places where we talk about systemic risk.  For BitShares, this risk is equivalent to where any new crypto product would be expected to be in its second year of development.  Over time, as the system matures, that risk tends to settle out to a level where more and more people feel comfortable.

The "safer than a Swiss bank" tag line is intended to emphasize that, while banks and cryptos each have their own unique array of systemic risks, blockchain-based systems can be designed to be less vulnerable to the risks of arbitrary actions from unscrupulous governments.  In particular, Swiss banks used to be famous for their privacy and safety from outside government interference.  This has been completely lost in recent years.  So in that sense, BitShares is much safer that what used to be the safest place to keep your assets - a Swiss Bank!  

Given the new Cyprus-style "bail-in" banking laws now sweeping the globe that permit banks to confiscate customer money to cover their own risky investments (e.g. MF Global), it is not hard to make the case that a mature crypto currency has much, much less systemic risk than the modern banking system.

So 'safer than a swiss bank' (and implicitly the swiss government) was a bit of an overstatement? Or do you still maintain that BTS has a lower systemic risk than a swiss bank/the swiss government?

I've only seen BTS comments relating to counterparty risk. Systemic risk not being mentioned, only allusions to BTS being equal to an insurance company or Fortune 500 company or other organisation that has significantly less risk of collapsing around you. And, presumably, hoping the reader equates the risk between the two as equal by association.

That's actually an interesting point I'd wondered about which explains how are forex brokers are able to offer 20x leverage - the volatility is low enough in those markets to make it feasible.

The bitAsset value continues to hold, enforced by an impartial block chain, all the way down from 3x collateral to, say, 2x or 1x collateral at which point a margin call is executed and you get handed the underlying collateral asset which you can immediately sell to get your full money back.

Thus, the bitAsset provides highly improved stability (within a percent or so and therefore not perfect) over a wide range of values (33% to 67% volatility, depending on the asset's parameters, and therefore not infinite).

But that is still very useful, and far better than holding assets like first generation crypto currencies that provide no such protection at all.

Most insurance policies have a max payout and some form of deductible that limits the range of what they will cover.  But that does not stop them from being useful products that people are eager to buy - because it covers a huge (but not infinite) range of risk for them.

All this is on the BitAsset side of the trade, where you buy the stabilized currency as a way to stay in crypto without exiting to the dangers of the fiat world every time you need stability.  You can switch between risk-on and risk-off as often as you like, for about a penny.  That's a huge advantage for savers and even bigger for speculators who want to lock/unlock on the peak to peak swings.

On the short side of the trade, you are happy to put up 3x collateral to gain leverage.  If the trade goes in your favor, you have more of the underlying asset appreciating for you.  The amount of collateral required is set to cover most of the volatility range expected for the underlying asset and this is a tradeoff that can vary.  For example, in currency markets where volatility is typically very low, you may only need a few percent collateral to cover that amount of risk. 

As BitShares market depth continues to grow, it will be possible to adjust these parameters to their optimum risk/reward points.

The setting of these parameters defines the financial product you are buying and different products are possible to meet different market needs.

So GBP has the centralised government of one of the worlds richest economies, with the ability to borrow billions on a whim backstopping it and BTS has..2-3 times collateral denominated in a currency that will be at the centre of any crisis/loss of confidence?

Value does disappear: Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, pets.com... etc

No, but in exactly the same way, value doesn't disappear into nothing even in the face of a crisis. If the bank of england had decided to adopt the EUR and drop GBP at that time, that would have forced everyone out. As it was, GBP still had significant value and remains one of the worlds strongest currencies today.

Are you saying BTS has a centralized authority that can enforce the continued use of BTS after a major crisis and loss of confidence, until it recovers? That seems to be the only reason people are still 'in' GBP.

It's a good job everyone got out of GBP and it was exposed for the scam it was.

This begs the question why would anyone want to pay three real US dollars for one fake US dollar.


Because the underlying asset of "bitAsset" derivatives is BTS, the volatility is going to cause unnecessary losses for "bitAsset" derivatives holders.  What happens during sharp declines of BTS?

The problem there was that the British pound was a British pound, and its value could fall in terms of other currencies it was supposed to peg to.

But a bitUSD isnt a federal reserve note dollar.  
A bitUSD is "This is $1 worth of Bitshares, and the blockchain promises it".  

If you want to make a bitUSD, you need to put up $3 worth of bitshares as collateral.  

Then, the blockchain constantly checks the value of your bitshares collateral.  If it gets down to $2, because BTS went down, the blockchain says: "You are getting a little bit close to not being able to fulfill your promise to give him $1 worth of Bitshares.  We cannot allow you to get into a position where you might not be able to give him his $1 worth of Bitshares.  I am now issuing you a margin call, you are now forced to give him $1 worth of Bitshares for his bitUSD".  


When the Bank of England had the problem that the British Pound was falling, they hadn't set aside a bunch of Deutchmarks or whatever as collateral, and no blockchain was forcing them to remove some of the pounds from circulation and give everyone the pegged value of marks or whatever in return.

bitshares was scam of the century together with the whole gaw miners

Yes and I've done so before.  Decentralization should be based on number of participants in the system not the percentage of blocks one user produces.  The number of allowed forgers in a system should be regulated by market forces and not capped at some arbitrary amount.  "Decentralization" means everyone should be allowed to participate without the consent of an authority.  I believe this is a better system and less prone to abuse.  By adding voting (delegation) to PoS, you are adding a "social contruct" which allows a hierarchical system to develop.  As the users of NXT increase so will the decentralization of the network.  Bitshares will always be artificially restricted to a certain number of block producers.  Dan argues one must restrict forgers because it is too expensive to run a node.  That's a preposterous argument.

Read https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10107710, https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10076698 and https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10108654.





1 - People realize that "bitAssets" do not have full convertibility and therefore, should not be valued at the same price as the physical asset.
2 - Upon internalizing this fact, they realize Bitshares is based upon the "greater fool theory".
3 - Once the market confidence erodes past a certain point, there will be a catastrophic failure causing a run to the underlying asset (BTS).

Here is an example of a peg failing.  If the Bank of England is unsuccessful in enforcing a peg, what makes you think random actors can enforce one?  All it takes is one dedicated individual with enough money or a systematic breakdown in confidence across the board.

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/13/Decentralization-of-Nxt-vs-BitShares/

-Can you refute any of the article above?

-I don't follow you on the whole (TM) company comments.  Are the dev's not the same as any other project in that they call the shots with community feedback?  The meger, from my reading, made complete sense for the whole ecosystem.

-You also state the peg's will fail, can you please explain how?  Run through an example please.

Now, I never said that.  I said I was always honest.


What "initial distribution problem"?  NEM is a Communist joke started by a bunch of greedy individuals who decided to associate themselves with a liar, cheater and thief named UtopianFuture.


I think it is unnecessary to centralize forging around a limited number of individuals.  I think implementing DPoS with "approval voting" allows for a very small minority of large stakeholders to effectively rig all the delegate elections.  Imo, this design is fundamentally opposed to everything crypto is supposed to represent.


I understand Bitshares perfectly.  Just because something isn't "highly leveraged" (which is a subjective term) doesn't mean it isn't a derivative.  All pegs work "really well" until they don't.


I doubt that.  The cap on BTS was already raised once.  What makes you so sure Bitshares(TM), the company, won't do it again?  BTS is currently falling in value and the delegates, who are supposed to be developing, aren't making enough money right now to support themselves.  For the "Bitshares(TM)'s Master Plan" to be fulfilled, either BTS is going to have to dramatically increase in value or they are going to have to increase taxation on the stakeholders.


They aren't "lies".  When Bitshares(TM), the company, violates the social contract with everyone, it's not unreasonable to assume they will do it again and increase the supply.  Even, you agree that "in theory" NXT is more decentralized.  As the NXT userbase grows so will its decentralization.  Bitshares' block producers are always going to be capped at a certain number.  As I said earlier, the peg is doomed to fail because anything that doesn't have full convertibility can't have parity.

I finally understand why you spend all your time attacking Bitshares.  It is because you do not understand it.
In the rest of finance, 'derivatives' usually means highly leveraged.  BitAssets are backed by 200-300% collateral to ensure that they have value, and margin calls are issued automatically by the blockchain to protect this.   

Bitshares has an ~8 month track record now of creating bitAssets and successfully pegging them to fiat currencies and gold.  The peg has worked really well, even though BTS value has dropped by like 80% during those 8 months, including a couple crashes like Jan 13.  If it can work in that environment it should be pretty good to survive almost anything.



This is utterly false, and BTS has an inflation schedule similar to, and lower than, bitcoin.  It has a hard cap at ~3.7 billion BTS, but it will probably end up at a number much lower than that.

Every 4 years the payout is halved like in bitcoin.  There is a fixed maximum supply.
BTS is therefore just as good a digital store of value as Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.  Its value depends on its network effect.



A half dozen Bitshares mining pools can manipulate Bitcoin just as much or more.  Its true that DPoS is not as decentralized as bitcoin was when it was run on thousands of individual CPUs, but this is a tradeoff.  I think NXT is more decentralized, at least in theory if the supply were more evenly distributed, because it has more than 100 block producers, but the 100 block producers of Bitshares is more than we see in Bitcoin right now.



Your entire premise is based on three different lies about Bitshares.  You claim that it is infinitely inflationary, centralized, and that the bitAsset peg does not work.  None of those three things are true!  The only one that is maybe a little true is centralization, but that was a tradeoff made by the developers to have only 100 block producers instead of more, for cost reasons. 

BitShares dilutes along the same reduction curve as BitCoin, toward a hard limit that it will never reach because profits keep burning down supply growth and only about one third of the delegates get full pay (thus, the current dilution rate is 1/3 of the max authorized rate and just ~2% compared to Bitcoin's ~10%).  And instead of fueling global warming, BitShares is getting a lot of useful work done for those funds , as the March Newsletter makes beautifully clear.  You might call this newsletter "Proof of Useful Work" (POuW).


There's a track record.  There's a market price.  There are pegs that have held through the Long Bitcoin Winter.  They grow stronger as market depth grows.


New businesses are cropping up everywhere to build out every service imaginable.  (A flare-lit tip-off for investors seeking opportunity.)  This wouldn't be happening if DE's nose-erecting fibrications had anything to them.

If you don't believe me, read what all the independent businesses in the completely decentralized BitShares Ecosystem have going this month:

If you took away the "BitAseets," not the user issued assets, what is your opinion of the underlying DPOS system?

Right.... there are no liars and no dishonest people in this world we live, especially in the crypto forums...



Please inform/educate him!



Noone gives a %@$& about NXT, it was created to quick make rich 73 people, period. Wasn't NEM created to solve this initial distribution problem?




I'm still waiting for the first coin that will be a fork of Bitshares and will "solve" any of those "problems" you mention above, but I can see that there are no coin forks so far because as it seems everything in Bitshares works OK and in a way that you can't compete with it, as a sidenote wallet is in 0.6.2 version and there is still room for improvement.

Put your money where your mouth is and please fork Bitshares and offer "solutions" to the "problems" you think you see like NEM did with NXT.

I usually don't differentiate between "imo" and "imho" because I'm truthful all of the time.


Obviously, Keiser doesn't know the WHOLE STORY.


BTC was initially designed as a decentralized PoW "store of value".  People use it as such because it has scarcity, only 21 million (This value was never changed), and it was resistant to external actors influencing depositors money.

NXT was designed as a decentralized PoS "transactional currency".  A "transactional currency" is a "store of value" and a "transactional token".  It is a "store of value" because it has scarcity, only 1 billion NXT (This value was never changed), and it is resistant to external actors influencing depositors money.  It also derives part of its value because it has utility.  All transaction fees on the NXT platform must be paid in NXT.

Bitshares supposedly gets its value proposition from the fact that you need Bitshares to trade or hold "bitAssets" which are supposed to be "Safer than a Swiss Bank Account".  The problem here is that "bitAssets" are not really assets.  They are derivatives and derivatives are not "Safer than a Swiss Bank Account".  This means Bitshares has ZERO utility value in the context of creating crypto assets.  If the entire asset class does not have full convertibility, there can never be parity and therefore, the peg is doomed to fail.  Bitshares also cannot seriously be taken as simply a digital "store of value" when it has "Dilution Without Limit" (aka inflation) and the amount of outstanding Bitshares is constantly being adjusted by Bitshares(TM), the company, which according to Stan doesn't exist.  It is also not decentralized when a very small number of large stakeholders can manipulate the delegate elections to their favor via approval voting.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=298677.140

Remember that fun time when an economics professor, cunicula, showed us quite a bit of evidence that bitshares was a long con ponzi scheme.