I've been a longtime lurker watching various cryptocurrencies rise and fall, and an established China-watcher. I've known about Steemit for a while, but finally decided to post after I purchased my first coins. AntShares' value and profile has significantly increased recently, but there has been very little information about Antshares itself. The community of Westerners who have invested in ANS is generally passionate and positive, but lacks a strong understanding of the fundamentals of the organization.

I'm hoping to remedy that by giving a brief overview of AntShares, and then diving into a TL;DR of the Whitepaper.

AntShares:

AntShares (the organization) is a Chinese company, while Antshares (the asset, ANS) are primarily traded on Chinese exchanges. Bittrex is the only Western exchange where it can be traded.

English-language translations of AntShares documentation have been relatively sparse, and as a result of AntShares’ low penetration of the Western market it has been largely overlooked. However, over the past week ANS has risen in price considerably (about 1000%), and for the past several days has had the largest volume of trades on Bittrex.
AntShares has an upcoming conference in Beijing at 14:00 (GMT+8) on June 21 where they are expected to make significant announcements regarding the AntShares roadmap and strategy, as well as cooperation with partners.

TL;DR

What is ANS?

First, AntShares is not a currency, and that’s actually a great thing for the future of ANS.

AntShares is a "blockchain" or ledger-based platform with two intrinsic assets: ANS (Antshares), and ANC (AntCoin). AntShares has limited the total, eventual number of ANS and ANC to 100 million each. Owning ANS provides you partial ownership of the AntShares blockchain, and ANS slowly generates ANC when stored in the AntShares wallet. Owning ANC gives you the right to use the blockchain (to write data into the ledger). Since AntShares is based off Ethereum, ANC can be viewed similarly to ‘Gas,’ (this similarity is pointed out explicitly in the whitepaper). However, not all transactions require the use of ANC.

AntShares is careful to explicitly point out that it has not developed a currency in ANS or ANC:

"A universal natural currency capable of payment and pricing does not exist in the Antshares; rather, fiat currencies like the RMB are introduced through gateways. Antshares itself is NOT a digital currency, but a blockchain protocol, eliminating currency-related legal issues and excluding it from the definition of a digital currency in the Notification on Preventing the Risks Posed by the Bitcoin published by 5 ministries of China. Antshares, by its nature, can enter into cooperation with banks and third-party payment providers."

This specific legal status places Antshares in cooperation with Chinese AML/KYC laws, and significantly reduces the risk of Chinese Government regulation shutting down or throttling the adoption of Antshares.

"Linking the Real-World with Compliance"

"The general ledger nature of the Antshares allows platforms to share the credit information on a single debtor. This is of the same principle with which crowdfunding platforms uses Antshares to control investment amounts."

Antshares allows ownership of real-world assets to be written in to the AntShares ledger, and linked with real-world identity information. These real-world assets could be property deeds, stocks, or even fiat currencies. By doing this, AntShares is developing a platform that will allow Chinese citizens to benefit from the speed and high assurance of a blockchain, while also allowing the Chinese government to accomplish its own goals in financial and credit monitoring (see Sesame Credit, designed to track purchasing behavior and assess individuals' value to civil society).

If AntShares is a success, which I believe it will be, it won't be because of some unprecedented technological breakthrough (like Bitcoin’s blockchain implementation or Ethereum’s Turing-complete smart-contracts), but will rather be due to compliance with Chinese Government desires and interests, making it a prime platform for Chinese users.

"Users should be able to authenticate with their true identity when required by the parties involved in a trade or by the laws of the jurisdiction of the trade"

Since AntShares includes the ability to track real-world ID it will be much more readily accepted by the Chinese government. Additionally, on Tuesday, June 20th, Microsoft announced a partnership with Accenture to develop a blockchain-based digital ID network. Antshares has previously announced that Microsoft Azure is a partner, and there is a low to moderate possibility that Antshares would be involved in the development of this network.

One-man bookkeeping vs. Joint Bookkeeping

The AntShares whitepaper discusses the difference between One-Man and Joint-Mode records keeping in the blockchain Most cryptocurrencies use the one-man, since it provides a high level of anonymity and decentralization. AntShares, however, supports Joint Bookkeeping, which favors the consistency and finality of blockchain transactions over anonymity. (For example, if a Bitcoin or Ethereum node is disconnected from the network while busily mining away it will almost certainly end up following a separate chain from the rest of the network). AntShares accomplishes this by requiring authentication of AntShares users.

"The Division of Labor of Nodes and their Professionalization"

"Bookkeeping nodes are at the center of the AntShares Blockchain. They are trusted by the holders of AntShares in reaching consensus and generating new blocks. Full nodes are critical participants of the AntShares network. They are run by service providers to store complete historical data and detect and relay transactions."

AntShares has a much higher degree of centralization than any of the main cryptocurrencies. This is undesirable from a crypto-purist’s standpoint, but highly desirable from a stability, simplicity, and regulatory viewpoint. Since, crypto-purists are not the norm, and unfortunately won't be in the foreseeable future. Stability and simplicity will drive adoption and benefit the investor. Regulation under the Chinese government comes with legitimate risk, but the Chinese government would always view a thriving and unregulated cryptocurrency as a risk.

Final Notes:

Investing in ANS is essentially investing in the belief that the platform will be adopted in China. Chinese consumers are accustomed to using digital or mobile payment systems like Alipay (the flagship mobile payment system developed by the ecommerce giant Alibaba, another AntShares partner), and the endemic use of WeChat and QR codes has primed the Chinese market for adoption of a system like AntShares. AntShares' care to ensure compliance with Chinese Government laws and interests significantly increases the likelihood that it will succeed.