RE: Playing in the Margins: bitUSD and BitShares on Open Ledger
One thing that I like about Bitshares - and also what makes it so hard to bootstrap - is that there is no artificial incentives or mechanisms that makes it unstable, or which favor a certain group of people . Holders get no interest on anything, there's no inflation, and the required collateral for backing the derivatives is very high. There's no mining just for the sake of mining, just extremely efficient witnesses with some skin in the game. All this makes it a little uninteresting for people used to the 40% collateral on Poloniex (2.5x leverage) and naturally bubbling coins, but at the same time it guarantees long term viability.
I'm glad you made the effort to learn Bitshares. I bet you look at the cryptoworld with different eyes now :-)
Very well said. It not only gives me a different view of the crypto world, but a larger view of humanity as well. Here's this tool to solve the problems so many people complain about with regards to issues like the 2008 financial crises and yet most people know nothing about it and have no interest in learning about it. In some ways it's like we enjoy complaining about greed and corruption in the world but if we're not directly rewarded immediately by potential alternatives, we have no incentives to change anything.
I fall into this trap as well. It's rational self-interest. That said, I love how these new systems are about aligning incentives. "Skin in the game" indeed.