First I would like to say that I'm quite new on the "Crypto" world, I got hooked couple of months ago and since then I have started to research about different coins. As most of newbies I started with the "famous" ones, BTC, ETH and LTC, mostly due to the fact that coinbase only lists these 3 coins and in a matter of days I started to be introduced to other coins after watching many youtube videos and joining Telegram groups.
So before I go ahead I would like to make it clear that I'm far from been an expert on Cryptocurrencies, I still have a very long journey to learn about the technical aspects, so this is my view as a newbie, which I think is extremely important at this point. If you think about it, the early adopters of cryptos are tech savvy people however now we are moving to new waves of "customers" who are starting to get hooked about this technology, and my perception of coins will probably reflect their perception too, so on this new run for the coins in the next months and years, the newbies are the ones who will determine which coins will have a big increase on the marketcap.
Going back to my crypto journey, after learning about different coins there was a particular one that really got my attention, Bitshares. I was really amazed with the potential of BTS and how this could be a potential game changer for many industries.
For those of you who are not very familiar with BTS I will try to explain it from a newbie perspective and why I think this particular coin is different from all others..
1- The first point is in relation of the speed in which transactions can be processed.. BTS can process 100,000 transactions per second and to give you some perspective, Bitcoin can process only 7 tps and Ether should be able to process around 26 tps.. So imagine if BTC achieve mass adoption and you would like to use it to buy a coca-cola on a regular shop, how would it work? You would have to wait minutes or hours to get your transaction processed, so it is not practicable... BTS on the other hand would be able to handle this easily, if you dont know, 100.000 per second is more than processing power of Visa and MasterCard combined.. So that says all right?
2- Fees : The transaction fees for BTS are much much lower than BTC and many other coins, the average transaction fee for BTC is over 3 USD, so if you were going to by a can of coke which costs 1 USD, the transaction fee for that transaction would be actually higher than the product itself, which does not make sense at all.. BTS in the other hand has a avg fee of 0.03USD which is much more plausible for this type of transactions and in addition if you pay the lifetime membership you get back 80% of the fees paid for your transactions..
3- This for me is the greatest differential of BTS in relation to the other coins.. The ability to transfer assets via cryptocurrencies. I will spend a little bit more time explaining this point.. The BTS itself is a share that you have of the Bitshares, is like having a stock of a public company, it will also giving you voting rights to decide the directions in which the BTS will go. Based on these shares, we can have UIA's (User Issued Assets) such BitUSD, BitGold, BitCNY, etc..
Let's take BitUSD as an example, when a BitUSD is created, it will always follow the price of 1 USD, so 1 BitUSD should be always equal to 1 USD, but how is that possible? So basically in order for you to do that, you would put the equivalent amount of 1USD in Bitshares as collateral to 1 BitUSD.. Let's see an example:
Imagine this scenario (I will use fictional prices to illustrate it):
1 BTS = 0.10USD
If you were going to have 1 BitUSD today, you would need to have 10 BTS (10x $0.10) to make the BitUSD amount equal to
1USD. If the BTS price increases to $0.50, than the necessary amount of BTS needed as collateral for the BitUSD will be 2
BTS (2 x $0.50) instead of 10.. So each BitUSD will have an amount of BTS's needed as collateral to pair the real value of
that asset.
*Actually the amount of collateral needed for each Bitasset is more than 100% to protect it against volatility, but I will not
get into details here to make it simple..
This means that with Bitshares could issue many "virtual" assets which would follow the market price for the same.. So let's imagine if we could have BitOil, BitIron, BitSteel, Bitthis and Bitthat... Today when Oil traders have to trade oil, despite the fact that they might be in different countries, they will probably trade it in USD, and for that they will always have the FX risks as the USD value could fluctuate against their local currency so they end up hedging these transaction which implicate in higher costs for them.. Now imagine if they could start trading Oil using BitOil? When they agree to buy and sell 10 barrels of Oil they would be sure that when the transaction is completed, they would receive the payment of 10 BitOils which would be equivalent value of 10 barrels of Oil at that present moment..
The potential of this is huge, not only for commodity trades but also for FX payments and any other assets transactions in the future.. (I hope you can see the big picture here!)
4- Protection against coins volatility: The same BitAssets structure that I have described above, would allow you to protect yourself against the crazy fluctuation rollercoaster that we see today in Cryptocurrencies.. One of the main fear of investing in BTC for example is the fact that last week it was quoted approx $1800 and today it is reaching $2900.. Not everyone would like to be exposed to these fluctuations, so if you want to have part of your investments in Crypto but would like to take a break and move your money to a stable currency, you could buy BitUSD for the time being..
All these points drove me crazy when I started to learn more about Bitshares and I became more active on Telegram groups to learn and understand better this coin.. And one question has been on my mind since then.. Why is this coin so undervalued in comparison to others? Why it is not even on the top 10 coins in terms of marketcap? As soon I started getting more involved on the Telegram groups, I started to get the answers for it (at least from my perspective).
The reason why the title of this post is "Bitshares - A Lambo parked in a Farm Barn" describes exactly my views of BTS today.. The team has created a Lambo, a great machine with a stunning design, however today it is seating on a Farm Barn and been driven on dirty sandy roads... A car like a Lambo was not designed for this type of roads, to achieve it's full potential it needs to be moved to streets like in Monaco or German Autoban's, and in my view the BTS team is falling a little bit on that, they are super focused on build the best mechanics but is forgetting to move it to city centers.. (The "Sovereign Hero" project lead by Stan Larimer and Michael will help that a lot, but I don't think BTS should be 100% depending on that.)
Why is that? I think it is because of the DPOS (Delegated proof of stake) governance model.. Bitshares is a completely decentralized system, does not have a owner or a CEO.. Each BTS holder owns the Bitshares and everything is done via a voting system, so instead of "miners" you have "witness" which is a group of people voted by BTS holders to validate the transactions.. If an improvement on the system is needed, we have a "worker" proposal which is voted by the BTS holders.. This concept is amazing as the BTS holders have complete control of the future and directions that BTS will take however there is a big problem there (in my view)..
Every boat needs someone steering the wheel otherwise there will be many winds blowing in different directions and to bring that boat to it's final destination will be a challenge.. I hear everyday many great suggestions on the Telegram group about marketing, UX improvements, Commercialization, etc however there is not a person or group of persons in charge of those areas and as the end result everyone end up waiting someone to do something about it and no results are achieved..
Most of the committee members, workers, proxys and witness are very strong tech people, but as I mentioned earlier their focus is more on building a great machine (which they are doing a great job by the way) however we also need people with different areas of expertise to look after these other areas which are essential to bring BTS to the next level..
In my view, Bitshare should create roles like Marketing Manager, Commercial Manager, CEO, etc (to be elected by the BTS holders) so they could focus their efforts and coordinate these initiatives.. Today I think BTS is missing a "face" as other coins have... EOS has Dan Larimer, ETH has Vitalik.. They have different governance models, but in my view DPOS could easily follow the governance model of many public listed companies today..
I'm still very bullish and optimistic about Bitshares futures, even if the governance model is not changed I'm sure this coin have a bright future ahead, however the most important question is how long it will take for this coin to go to the moon? A new Gov model would expedite that significantly..
In order to wrap up this article I would like to point out some key items that is needed (in my view) to make Bitshares even better, so these are my 2 cents contribution:
Create other roles for different areas in order to have someone accountable and responsible to drive and coordinate certain initiatives : Marketing, Commercial, User Experience, Public Relation, Strategy and CEO.
Improve urgently the user experience of Bitshares exchange to make it more friendly to newbies like me.. We need to understand that regular Joe's have no experience in trading or dealing with Crypto's, so we should have something very simple, clear and intuitive so they feel comfortable using it.
Create a simple app to allow users to buy and sell BTS's and BitUSD
Increase the number of BitAssets.. Today we have only few of them (BitUSD, BitCNY, BitEUR, BitGold, BitSilver, and maybe few other more). We should have a Bit asset for many more currencies and also a Bit asset for the major commodities.
List BTS on all major exchanges.. People should have easy access to buy and sell BTS to give it more liquidity.
List more coins on Bitshares Exchange.. The other way around of point 5.. If I decide to use Bitshares as my main exchange and wallet, I should be able to buy most of the coins (at least all top 20) without having to leave Bitshares platform.
Enable hard wallets like Trezor for Bitshares.. Newbies are still very scared about having their coins sitting on the web... Specially after the recent hacking incidents involving ETH..
Make partnership with commercial establishments so they can accept BTS or HERO as payment method..
Before I end this post, I would like to emphasize that I'm not criticizing Bitshares at all.. I think this is an amazing coin which will definitely go to the moon! I'm just trying to contribute with some feedback from a newbie perspective to help to expedite this process..
I also would like to congrat some of the people that I had a opportunity to meet on Telegram group during the last couple of months as they are doing a great job! Bitshares has an amazing team of passionate and incredibly knowledgeable people like Stan, Michael, Fav, Oldman, Tony and many others!!
JP