Bitcoin Forum

Nubits, Bitshares and Bitbay all try to address the volatility issue of crypto currencies. What do you think, which one is the better concept/technics/method to tackle the volatility problem and why?

is bitbay pegged to the USD?  also i heard there was something scammy going on behind it.  is this true?

I think that's David Zimbeck's plan, to peg Bitbay to the USD.

And yes, Bitbay was the biggest scam of 2014 (and we witnessed a few) as we discussing that lengthy in this thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857457.0, but David's idea of pegging the coin could be one way to address the volatility problem, though I am not sure if it possible to address it at all.

From the founder for BitShares - http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/13/NuBits-is-a-Ponzi-Scheme/

View the collateral for the various BitShares market pegged assets:
http://bitsharesblocks.com/assets/market

Also Bitshares doesn't just peg against the USD, it has Gold, Silver, Euros, Yuan to name a few.

all crap

This

pegs never work

Yeah, but Daniel "bytemaster" Larimer admitted as well that Bitshares won't be able to do anything against the "Black swan events" and it seems to me the Bitshares pegging is unable to provide stability, i.e. if the Bitshares would have fall by 67% which is quite likely scenario then the whole Bitshares pegging would collapse (if I understood correctly).

Again, I am not saying one is better than the other one, I am just trying to figure out if that pegging concept could work at all.

LoL

That's the short description what I was wondering that could be very well the case -  without understanding too much about their economics (if there is any).

Though, it would be great if the pegging could work.

The BitShares price has already fallen from a high of almost 5 cents to 1 cent, that's an 80% decrease and the peg works fine.  The price has to crash massively in in the space of day or two, and crash worse than bitcoin has ever crashed, for the market pegged assets to become under-collateralised.  You can view the deviation from the price feed here:
http://bitsharesblocks.com/charts/feeds?asset=USD

The peg will get tighter and tighter as liquidity increases and it already works well.

Thanks! That's what I needed that someone who understand the concept would give some info and then I will do more reading. Where are some white paper and tech info are available on bitshares? Their website talks about some exchange and it is hard to find there any tech info.

Are you refering to this? http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/27/BitAssets-and-Black-Swan-Events/
Here is a quote from the above link....




btw  :)
https://i.imgur.com/DvwGCbQ.jpg

And even in the case of such an improbable black swan, BitShares coverage degrades gracefully.  If the peg breaks, collateral is still divided fairly among holders.

So, as a financial instrument, BitAssets cover a whole lot of volatility.  Covering all volatility would be better, but you can't even do that if your collateral is a mortgage on a house.

The point is that an incorruptible block chain is enforcing the rules, not some crafty bankster who can get politicians to let them gamble with your money.

We are about at the maturity of the aerospace industry during the days of the Sopwith Camel.  

From the website, there's the white paper:
http://docs.bitshares.org/

https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares - code

There's the bitshares 101 book, I'd imagine you could skip a lot of it though as it includes an introduction about bitcoin.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QUIWHR0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00QUIWHR0&linkCode=as2&tag=succecounc-20&linkId=MIFK4YEQ5YUWI3Q3%22%3EBitShares

OK, that sounds good and interesting. I thought probably the BitShares concept is the most sensible and it seems from the above posts that BitShares has the most following.

Let me read and understand what BitShares is all about.

I heard bitshares was managed like crypto communism, and i do not see it pegged to anything losing 700sat in a few days, Nubits whatever people say works and has held its ground. Bitbay will work imo from what i have read. At the moment the chicken dinner is awarded to the only pegged coin Nubits

Does it work in a way that if BTS starts to crash, people holding bitUSD would be incentivized to buy BTS to prevent a margin call/liquidation event? And conversely, are there any incentives for people to dump their BTS during this time to somehow take advantage of that event? People shorting BTS only maybe? 

I can't claim too much expertise in BitShares after 10 minutes reading, but it seems to me from what I have read that you are mixing bitUSD with BitShares. bitUSD is pedged to the USD. It is pedged by shorting it against BitShares, so BitShares could be volatile, but bitUSD value remains stable - which is quite stable, it has been indeed very close to the 1 USD price.

Bytemaster covered these questions in pretty good detail here:

BitAssets and Black Swan Events (http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/27/BitAssets-and-Black-Swan-Events/?r=stan)

Bottom line:  BitShares are volatile like Bitcoin and generally follow its ups and downs.  BitAssets damp out most of this volatility, and depending on the depth of the market can track their pegs within a percent or so.  Pegs will tighten as the market grows.

BitShares is managed like a company.
Stakeholders elect 101 members of the "board of directors" (delegates) to run it.
They get one vote per share, not one vote per shareholder.


So, unless you think that your ordinary standard company form of government is communist, you can see how silly that claim is.

Apparently the individual who has been making that claim has his definitional wires crossed.  He believes you have to have one vote per shareholder not one vote per share to avoid being "communist".

Clearly that won't work for a company.  What investor is going to put in, say, $50 million to fund the company if a bunch of other people can invest 5 cents each and get a bigger say in how it's run?

Company control must be proportional to stake at risk or no investors would ever agree to participate.

Thanks for the info. I will watch the video now. Your name indicates that we have a first hand information from you about BitShares :-))

Above you mentioned the shareholders power within the BitShares organisation. What shareholders' vote is all about? Are they voting on the exchange rate or what?

There are lots of scepticism about BitShares in the digital currency community. What do you think why is that? Lack of understanding the concept or are there issues with your peging concept?

Some people deny any peg can work but I think the serious criticism is of BitShares' DPOS (delegated proof of stake).

BTS holders vote for delegates who secure the blockchain and to manage the company funds.  Rather than the new 'coins'/shares going to the miners like in bitcoin, they go to delegates who do real proof of work such as dev work and marketing.  This part is pretty uncontroversial and just a killer feature, allowing the BitShares blockchain to fund its own development. 

The controversy comes from the delegates also signing the blocks to secure the network like miners in bitcoin or forgers in NXT.  The people who get the equivalent of the 'mining reward' in BitShares are voted in and are trusted public people rather than chosen by the mathematical competition to solve (otherwise pointless) mathematical problems.  The argument in favour of DPOS goes as follows:

1.  Mining costs bitcoin hundreds of millions of dollars a year which would be better serve the network if it could be spent on development, marketing, business development etc, rather than all being spend on securing the network. 
2.  The cost of maximum decentralisation is high and unnecessary.  The network just has to be sufficiently decentralised not maximally decentralised.
3.  Mining centralises into a small handful of faceless mining pools.
4.  Bitshares has 101 delegates and each one is like a mining pool controlled by a trusted public person.  Delegates can be voted by the BTS holders if they behave maliciously.

Conclusion:
BitShares is more decentralised than bitcoin and has a means to kick out malicious delegates via vote, as well as more environmentally friendly and can fund its own development.

So the controversy is that cryptocurrency is supposed to be based on numbers, not trusted delegates.  While this is an ideal standard, it's unfortunately not the case in any cryptocurrency.  Perhaps it was in the bitcoin early days but not anymore.  BitShares developers realised this and decided to solve the problem by turning mining pools into delegates who need to be transparent and can be voted out.  The delegates are like BitShares employees.

This issue has been debated endlessly.  In the end it is all a big experiment.

Nicely stated above Matt608.  I agree.



While very idealistic in terms of what we are ultimately trying to accomplish, we take a more pragmatic view of how to implement it.  We don't need mathematical purity, we need engineered reliability.

Dan (Bytemaster) Larimer is of the view that the Key Innovation of Bitcoin (http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2015/01/12/What-is-Bitcoin-and-why-does-it-have-value/?=stan) is the transparent public ledger and there are many ways to implement that. We are out to implement an incorruptible, profitable, blockchain-based company by engineering the right mix of pragmatic features.

We think BitShares will make a good investment that will grow in value because it is designed from the ground up to be profitable and self-funding.

If you are looking for an investment, you should evaluate BitShares the way you would decide to invest in any traditional company.  Does it produce a useful product or service?  Does it have the ability to earn a profit?  Will demand for its tokens grow?  Is it backed by a strong team and supporting community?

Crypto is growing up.  It's not about creating a new fad or theoretical algorithm (not that there is anything wrong with that).  Its about leveraging the work that has been done to produce a profitable business that will then have the horsepower to change the world for the better.

I do believe that Dan generates some unnecessary opposition for several reasons:

1.  It is hard for people to separate his zeal to fix the limitations of currently deployed technology from attacks on their own life's work.
2.  Showing that mining is wasteful and unnecessary is not very popular with miners who have invested heavily in infrastructure.
3.  Dan is an alpha geek, visionary zealot and renaissance man. Sadly, he is not a diplomat.  

If you have formed your opinion of Dan from that loud opposition, but still wish you could support BitShares, it would be worth your while to get to know the real Dan.  This can be accomplished by examining the following evidence:

1.  His Keynote Address (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U44MujtVj00) at Inside Bitcoin in Las Vegas shows he passionately embraces Bitcoin's vision and simply wants to give it a technology upgrade.  (The Wright Brothers are worthy of great honor but we don't use much of their technology any more.)

2.  This interview (http://bitshares.tv/4-can-blockchain-technology-take-us/?r=stan) with Max Wright highlights Dan's philosophical motives and lifetime goals.  Look him in the eye and see if you think he has a nefarious bone in his body.

3.  Attend his Live Global Teleconference (http://[url=https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=4150.msg52104#msg52104) every Friday from 10:00 AM to noon Eastern Time (UTC+5) and ask him some questions!

4.  Browse his many articles on Bytemaster's Blog (http://bytemaster.bitshares.org).  You may not agree with everything he says, but he puts it all out there for the world to critique.

People who take the time to do their own research will profit.  Those who are easily swayed by superficial opposition will continue to wonder why they can't seem to find the Next Big Thing.  

Hopefully, this little essay will help with that.  :)

  

Believe it or not, there really is a Man Will Never Fly Memorial Society (manwillneverfly.com (http://manwillneverfly.com)).


I once prepared a toast for the 1983 Wright Patterson AFB Chapter's annual awards dinner near Dayton, Ohio.  It was attended by military and civilian aerospace workers of all stripes.

My toast went like this:

There's been a plot that's run for years
  To prove the myth of flight.
Thousands of people have been employed,
  (Like those of you tonight).
If man were really meant to fly,
  They'd hire a competent crew.
The proof that man will never fly
  Is in the likes of you!

I have a way of ingratiating myself with people.  :)

Cool story bro.  Thank you for that extremely relevant post.  I'm sure if you keep talking about space flight and puppies you will be able to completely distract people from any serious discussion of Bitshares and the control structure that you have imposed on the Bitshares' blockchain which gives you total and absolute power.

@StanLarimer
@matt608

Thanks for the detailed replies, that help to understand what BitShares is. I read the blogs, whitepapers and watched the videos. I think the solution is really amazing and it could work. I will be a BitShares fanboy and cheerleader :-)))

The issue that usage and usefulness of digital currencies in general is quite limited, even Bitcoin has only 1 million active user base after 6 years. The bitUSD daily market volume is about 5K USD which is very little and that just indicates how few people use the currency. Anyway, the BitShares system and concept are really good and I think it could be a winner in the future.

Thanks.

We've been working hard on getting a variety of new wallets and exchange/gateway on-ramps/off-ramps ready before we start introducing it to the public in a big way.   Right now, you have to be a card-carrying member of the Greater Bitcoin Universe (GBU) to appreciate it.

The important take-away from that comment is that we are not still in the research mode on DPOS and Market Pegged Assets.  That was last year's push and we now consider that to be proven technology.  (I know people here still want to debate those things, but they'll catch up.)  Our community has moved on to doing all the spadework necessary to make BitAsset currency baskets usable for the ordinary consumer.  Lots of initiatives going on by independent third parties.

We are watching things like BitAsset trading volume as our metrics.  This should really pick up when our marketing funnels start signing up wallet users in the next month or so.


One killer app will be a Bitcoin wallet that supports these assets so you can move a dial-able percentage of your wealth in and out of exposure to Bitcoin volatility at the push of an "easy button".  We think Bitcoin fans are gonna love that!


Then when the public learns that those assets earn a better yield and are safer and more private than Swiss Banks used to be, we'll see things really pick up.

Like a rolling stone...

Bitcoin is safer and more private than Swiss Banks used to be as well, but that hasn't translated to a high adoption rate. However, Bitshares addresses the volatility issue and the price stability with the safe and private attributes could be a really attractive investment. It could definitely work!

I read quite a lot in the meantime about Bitshares, what I don't understand and if you could explain, what happens when a merchant sell goods for bitUSD and then obviously want to cash out the bitUSD but there is no buyer? I understand the concept assumes that there will be always people who short the asset, but what happens when at the time of the sell no one is willing to buy the pegged asset, in this theoretical scenario bitUSD? I understand the 30 days buy back obligation is there, so the buy back obligation guarantees that at some point there are buyers, but how the timing is synchronized, i.e. how can be guaranteed that at the time of the sell there is always buyer with the buy back obligation?

It is certainly true, that when market depth is shallow liquidity is affected.  So in the infancy of any new Market Pegged Asset variations in supply and demand are more pronounced.

This is where engineered incentives and feedback mechanisms come into play.

The only way to cover your short is to buy the corresponding BitAsset from someone who owns one.  You must make an offer that someone will accept.  This puts upward pressure on the BitAsset price. 

The only way to cash out your BitAsset is to sell it to someone who wants one.  This puts downward pressure on the BitAsset price.

The more people in the market on both sides, the tighter the spread and the closer the peg tracks.

Other engineered incentives include:

Since you know at 30 days the network is going to take the best offer and do that for you, you may want to cover yourself when the opportunity is better.

No new shorts are allowed if there are competing BitAssets for sale.

If you want to sell a short you have to offer a better interest rate than those you are competing with to make the sale.

There are others but you get the idea.  Over the past six months we have been gradually refining and tuning the market rules to achieve a balance that tightens as market depth increases.

Worst case, you may have to wait 30 days to cash out, but in practice there is always someone willing to buy them from you early, perhaps at a small discount.  Shallow markets typically have bigger spreads than deep markets, so you can expect that for new BitAsset types.

Note that even though shallow BitAssets track their pegs more loosely than deep BitAssets, they still provide a useful amount of volatility dampening compared to the underlying asset. 

Stan, I thought this might help you understand the monster you have created called Bitshares(TM).

It make sense, if there are assets for sale then no shorts allowed, and in this case won't be over supply. And since the asset (bitUSD) act as a currency instead of a value store we can assume that when the merchant want to cash out the bitUSD then there will be always buyers who want to use bitUSD to purchase goods (at least in a working economy that should happen).

You guys are doing a great job at BitShares which is a very interesting and innovative solution, it would be great for crypto in general if your project could work out.

The web wallet's going live in hours/days. https://plus.google.com/+MoonstoneIoWallet/posts/8PtQCZFjaLy (https://plus.google.com/+MoonstoneIoWallet/posts/8PtQCZFjaLy)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4a9o0FYd4fg/VOikGI9MR1I/AAAAAAAAAJg/h5UPEeaV0kw/w664-h510-no/features_Moonstone.png

why are people buying nubits, whats the next big thing and what do you people think of counterparty?

Your not the Wright brothers. They made a real thing fly. All the meanwhile shilling yourself with lots of fake BTT acvounts spouting every time your revolutionary.

You make fake USD and fake gold. And don't even make the fake stuff good as it flops around and flounders while their is no liquidity.

You've made a great recipe for bag holders to buy fake USD when they could have much easier and with far less risk bought real USD. 


Your so proud that Bitshates is a company. But it really is a company that can crack and fall apart.  When Larimer (your CEO) leaves because he got enough fiat from the scam and then Bitshares falls apart.

People should just go for a real company like bitreserve that has 100% reserves and therefor isn't getting wrecked by liquidity and not effected by black swan events (which are quite common in crypto). Ah right and bitreserve assets are backed by 100% real assets not buggy code and wishful thinking that backs Bitshates.

I like your Wright Brothers analogy.  We are probably about at the same place they were in the formation of a brand new industry.  So any current performance metrics (market depth, code maturity, etc.) might reasonably be compared to the performance of early Wright Fliers vs today's technology. From that you appear to argue that BitShares will never revolutionize exchanges just like man will never fly.  :)

You claim that, unlike BitShares, the Wright Brothers actually made something fly.  For what that's worth, in my 36 years in the aerospace industry I actually helped make 17 real things fly.  And BitShares has been flying quite nicely for over six months, holding its asset pegs despite the current crypto recession and variations in BitShares price ranging over 500%.  

Nevertheless, I agree there is certainly a big place in this world for traditional companies.  They certainly aren't going away.

As long as they don't hit speed bumps like Lehman Brothers, MF Global, Enron, Gox, BitStamp, BTER, et. al. and aren't coerced by corrupt governments into betraying their customers, there is a strong case for centralized solutions.


For those who see the potential of dealing with incorruptible Decentralized Autonomous Companies, I recommend the following independent assessments from Max Wright.  He explains the "Why BitShares?" question far better in his bestselling book and videos than I can do in a mere forum post.