Very good testz, you pass the test!
Here's exactly "what Stan said" the last few times he's had this conversation with DE:The business about whether BitShares is a company or currency is a pedagogical metaphor selection issue which was asked and answered multiple places in this forum, for example,
The best answer to this question was given by Bytemaster himself in his article
What is BitShares? where he used TEN different nested metaphors to describe it. It is eye-opening in its scope.
We've had lots of fun with metaphors over at bitsharestalk.org and bitshares.org. Two of the classics, written by Dr. Charles Evans, are linked here:
http://bitshares.org/decentralized-autonomous-jedi-mind-tricks/http://letstalkbitcoin.com/a-bitrose-by-any-other-name/Bottom line is that metaphors are helpful in explaining certain concepts until the light bulb comes on for people. There is a duality to BitShares that allows you to view it as a currency or a company. Both are true, depending upon the context.
My favorite way to look at it is that BitShares are shares in a company just like Bitcoin are shares in a company. (Just because I called Bitcoin a
company in the classic article that introduced the concept of a Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC) --
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-robotics/ doesn't suddenly make Bitcoin subject to securities laws.)
Both Bitcoin and BitShares are volatile crypto-currencies on their faces. But, BitShares
viewed as a company (a blockchain like Bitcoin) does much more. It runs a full-up unmanned crypto-exchange providing decentralized trading services and the ability for users to create currency and commodity derivatives backed by BitShares collateral. That's what we call BitAssets (BitUSD, BitGLD, BitBTC, etc.) These are the
real currencies we are aiming for. Products of BitShares "the company". These are what give you stability (pegging to real world assets) and pay you interest. So, inside a single Bitcoin 2.0 currency you have a whole new financial system on a blockchain. Speculators can use the built-in exchange and trade BitShares tokens thinking of them either as shares or coins or fuel tokens, or whatever metaphor makes sense to them. Consumers just deal with the BitAsset products - the "smart coins".
So simultaneously you can find BitShares in the top 5 on coinmarketcap.com and BitUSD at around #35 as a non-volatile "smart coin" that tracks the value of the US dollar.
So we shouldn't get wrapped around the axle about the implications of a particular metaphor someone is using to explain a particular concept about BitShares. I personally jump between metaphors a lot when explaining things to people. My intent is to show that the design decisions are reasonable when viewed in the right perspective. It helps people escape from preconceived mindsets and appreciate what we have here.
In reality, BitShares is a Whole New Animal. We can only describe it like the classic story of blind men describing an elephant while touching its many dissimilar individual parts. Hope this helps.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn2.hubspot.net%2Fhub%2F134568%2Ffile-1208368053-jpg%2F6-blind-men-hans.jpg&t=665&c=tJBdKAssxOGldQ)