It's a cryptocurrency, that let's you make your own cryptocurrency!

This is where things get interesting!!

First of, it's worth mentioning that before starting Steem (and Steemit), one of our founders named @Dan Larimer, created and worked with #Bitshares. Now, he's been kicking off his new project @eosio.

Quoting @MrWang: Bitshares is like Steemits older brother!

Bitshares is one of the many cryptocurrencies out there that we are able buy and sell like the others. But as always, each project has aspects that makes it useful and drives it's value. While I don't want to get too in depth since I write these for newbies, I do at least want to highlight a few aspects that makes it interesting and stand out a bit.

Q: Is Bitshares just a currency to be traded?

While Bitshares can be bought and sold, the platform also lets you make your own coins. We've already had many Steemians make use of this feature such as:

• A more recent addition, many of you may know...Whaleshares. Each Whaleshares token you turn in gets you a 1% upvote from a whale (right now @officialfuzzy) on any post you want! Turn in more tokens, get higher percentages! While these a few of these coins can be found for sale on the BitShares exchange, most of them are won or earned! You can read more about Whaleshares HERE or even hop in their discord HERE.

• @Steem-trail's Trail-Coin that is given out to it's curators, those that get voted on by them and even for writing posts for your trail! You can find out more about @steem-trail HERE or about the Trail-coin HERE.

• @MrWang's Wangchange which lets you be eligible for share drops (i.e. giving away money) as well as Wangcents which can be earned by finding easter eggs within his content (so look carefully!) You can read more about these HERE and HERE.

• And sometimes there are coins like @virtualgrowth's Virgrow coin that hasn't quite settled in on a specific use. Yet it still holds a value a bit over $20 USD and handed out for free, along with many other coins in his Daily Coin Give Away Posts. That's right folks...just vote for the coin you want in the comments, provide your BitShares wallet address and that's it!

The BitShares platform provides a feature known as "user-issued assets" to help facilitate profitable business models for certain types of services. The term refers to a type of custom token registered on the platform, which users can hold and trade within certain restrictions. The creator of such an asset publically names, describes, and distributes its tokens, and can specify customized requirements, such as an approved whitelist of accounts permitted to hold the tokens, or the associated trading and transfer fees.
-BitShares.org

Q: What's this Bitshares exchange you keep mentioning?

First off, you've may have been hearing of the issues many people have been having with the (centralized) Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange lately with it crashing, money being held in limbo, shutting down certain currency transfers for a time and sometimes even worse. **You won't run into these problems over on the (Decentralized) BitShares exchange.

Not only can you still trade for the better known crypto's, you'll also be able to do so for these user created coins (User Issued Assets.) With it's Decentralized setup, you not only won't have issues you can find elsewhere, but you also typically have 3 second transaction times!

Throughout history, centralized exchanges have repeatedly proven unreliable and untrustworthy. Whether it is MF Global, Mt. Gox, or BitStamp, many people have been cheated because they allowed a 3rd party to hold their funds. It doesn’t matter how big they are, or how many auditors, regulators or insurers are involved, every kind of fraud, abuse, and theft can occur. In the modern financial system, these transgressions happen all too frequently within centralized banks and exchanges operating across the world.
-BitShares.org

Q: What was this all made for?

The general idea is that for most businesses to take payments outside of cash, required some sort of bank or credit card provider service. But by using the BitShares blockchain, a business won't need to use these "normal" routes of holding, handling, spending and receiving money. As time goes on, more and more people have become quite disgusted with greed of these institutions and how they are run. With the features within BitShares, people can run their business without being charged fees out the wazoo or being controlled with threats of being frozen or shut down. As with most of @Dan Larimer's projects, the core ideal is rooted in achieving Life, Liberty and Property.

BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether its banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others, a digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (or DACs) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts.
-BitShares.eu

If you would like to learn more, check out:

• The Weekly BitShares Hangout by @officialfuzzy
• or slightly more in depth information at the Weekly BitShares State of the Network Report by @steempower
  

Remember that ALL of my guide posts are eligible to be added as entries to the Steem Center Wiki or Operation Translation.

Click here to find out how these can earn you Steem!!

Feel free to ask me anything. I'm here to Help!

I've had slow response times lately, but I try to get a response to every question.

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Image Sources:
Bitshares Logo