Aren't most Fiat currencies inflationary DPoS currencies as well? Citizens vote for "representatives" who than delegate officials to set monetary policy on an inflationary currency that isn't tied to anything like electricity or hashing power.


Transaction volume actually increases when a deflationary bubble occurs in Bitcoin as proven by bitpay. Why do we need to change our economic framework when we can allow inflationary and deflationary currencies to coexist and compete in the marketplace?



Within Bitcoin development is done by:
1) Volunteers (The open source ecosystem is large enough for a critical mass of developers to be interested in working on it for free)
2) For profit Companies paying for development. some of which is for their own products and some of which is given away to support the ecosystem.
3) Donations to non-profits that pay for donors

With Bitshares almost all of the development is done by a group of developers being paid by an initial IPO, and now this further dilution.

Both Bitshares and Bitcoin are also funding development by the vested interests of early stakeholders supporting the ecosystem to further increase the value of their investments. Within Bitcoin there never was an IPO or change in the protocol for capital infusion. This is a critical difference as the rewards for development with Bitcoin are only tied directly to the success of the ecosystem and a failure in the development or ecosystem penalizes all their work. With Bitshares Invictus wins if bitshares fails, more if it succeeds, and even more it it succeeds and they can convince the investors to pay by  decreasing their stake along the way.

BitShares investors (anyone who holds BTSX) might want BitShares to issue new shares to attract new users, either by giving away these new shares for free or giving it to someone who can promote or develop something to make BitShares more popular. At the moment, investors are hesitant to issue new shares because it dilutes their stake, and they have the mentality, like most crypto currency people, that this is a bad thing. Eventually I think people will realize that BitShares is not a currency, but a business on a blockchain (DAC) that needs capital to grow in the early days (and this is how businesses do it, they issue new shares in return for capital). In any case, if investors will do so or not is decided by vote. The way BitShares works is that there are tons and tons of Delegates to vote for (anyone can become a Delegate) and the top 101 get paid according to their publicly set pay-rate. If investors vote for Delegates that have a low pay-rate, then BitShares will be deflationary, and no new shares will be issued, if they vote for Delegates that have a high pay-rate, then BitShares will be inflationary, and new shares will be issued. Again, anyone who holds BTSX can vote. In each case, investors will not vote for a high-pay Delegate unless they are convinced, via an announcement in the forum or a website or whitepaper, that this particular Delegate will bring more value than they spend creating it.

can you read

no but you are.

BitShares isn't a currency, it's a company.

You better ask Stan for clarification but I'm pretty sure it's a company.

That's not what Stan said.

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.