After a much awaited wait, BitsharesX has finally launched. A Chinese firm, DACSunlimited has launched the first version of the Bitshares code, and also honored the Protoshares/Angelshares distribution at 50%/50%. This is big news for the Protoshares community, and will be the first real-life version of the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS).

The version released doesn’t have all the features of Bitshares as envisioned in the original product. However, it does allow one to send BitsharesX to ‘names’ instead of random strings, so it makes it far easier to transfer value among participants – the same idea as Keyhotee (but not the same). It doesn’t yet have the conversions between Bitshares and BitAssets, so you cannot yet create BitUSD or BitBTC but they promise that feature will be coming soon.

The launch has been viewed favorably by the market. Bter, one of the early adopters of Protoshares and the only exchange that promised to honor BitsharesX, has already started trading, and is BTSX/BTC remains one of the highest volume trading pairs on Bter right now (in fact, as of the time of this writing, it is THE most popular trading pair by volume on Bter). It isn’t surprising that Bter and BTC38, both Chinese exchanges, have been the first cryptocurrency exchanges to list BitsharesX but don’t be surprised if other exchanges jump on the bandwagon soon enough.

The launch will also be the first real-life run of the DPOS system. Invictus has publicly denounced Bitcoin’s Proof of Work as wasteful and thinks Proof of Stake is superior. After Transactions as Proof of Stake (TaPOS), Invictus settled on DPOS for BitsharesX and will probably use DPOS for all future chains as well (assuming of course no vulnerabilities are found).

The launch of BitsharesX has been delayed dozens of times in the past, as Invictus had missed multiple deadline set for themselves. The launch of a chain of BitsharesX should come as a respite for many holders of Protoshares and Angelshares, who get the initial distribution of BitsharesX depending on their percentage holdings on February 28th 2014 snapshot.

At the time of this writing, BitsharesX has already overtaken Dogecoin in terms of overall market cap, and Coinmarketcap rates BitsharesX on number 7 position right now, below only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, NXT, Peercoin and Darkcoin. If the full feature set of the original Bitshares idea is implemented, to create a fully decentralized prediction marketplace that tracks assets outside the blockchain, its value is bound to go up significantly. Time will tell how successful the whole idea will turn out to be, but the future definitely seems exciting.

The Bitshares X wallet can be downloaded here.