It's Not Easy to Admit You Were Wrong

Back in 2011, I came across an article describing a weird concept of a digital currency that wasn't backed by any central government or company. It was resistant to attack and could be transferred peer-to-peer in a trust-less manner for next to nothing. Plus it would free the people from the confines of the traditional banking system. I thought to myself, this must be a scam, but something told me to get out of bed and do a little digging.

Ever since that day, I have been evangelizing to anyone who would listen, about all the amazing benefits that bitcoin had to offer. If someone was interested in learning more and decided to invest I would tell them to start with an amount they were willing to lose because there are no guarantees when it comes to cryptocoins. I knew that this technology would be perceived as a threat to the banking world and they would stop at nothing to bring it down.

Fast forward 6 years and now here I am writing an article on what I believe to be the most powerful blockchain technology provider in the world and it's NOT bitcoin. I must sound like such a hypocrite to all the people who listened to me and invested in bitcoin, but at least they made a very handsome profit.

My Number One Pick

Throughout the past 6 years, I invested in countless cryptocoins that all sounded like the next best thing. All because I was chasing the next big payday. I was constantly reading articles about promising projects that would revolutionize the world with their advanced algorithms or unique usage of blockchain technology. I didn't realize until recently that I was investing into the hype, unproven technology, or non-scalable products.

Finally, one day I was looking through coinmarketcap.com and I came across a coin that I'd never heard of before. I visited their website, read through their informational material and decided to invest. At the time, I didn't think much of it but as the months went by, my investment increased by 4000%. This caused me to do even more research which led me to discover the true power that was backing my investment.

I introduce to you... BitShares

BitShares is the most diverse ecosystems I have ever come across. It offers investors more features than a Swiss Army knife which initially can be rather daunting. When you take the time to do your homework and start using the system you realize there's a rather steep learning curve. Having a smooth user journey is not one of BitShares strong suits, but that is being addressed.

BitShares is an industrial-grade decentralized trading platform designed for high-performance financial smart contracts. It looks to extend the innovation of the blockchain to more industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether it's banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others. The digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (DACs) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts. (1)

The BitShares blockchain is by far the fastest (2) and largest (3) in the world. As of today, BitShares has been proven to support 3300 transactions per second and 16000 operations per second with the potential to handle between 100K-180K TPS. That means at 3300 TPS is can already handle the combined transaction volume of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, and Visa. You have to admit that's pretty impressive.

Is BitShares a Company?

Since BitShares is a Decentralized Autonomous Company, is it registered somewhere like a traditional company? The answer is NO, it's not registered because it's actually a software protocol just like bitcoin. As with bitcoin, there is no central leadership or single point of failure.

The mastermind that created the concept of BitShares is Daniel Larimer. A few years ago he moved on to create many other amazing projects. Today his father, Stan Larimer, acts as the unofficial spokesperson for BitShares and spearheads several efforts to ensure that people learn about the power of blockchain technology and BitShares.

When people first learn that BitShares is not a traditional company it usually causes confusion and doubt. They wonder how can something like this not be regulated or governed by a central government. Again, it's being treated in the exact same way as bitcoin. Although, BitShares offers many more features and benefits then bitcoin.

Who Supports Ongoing Development

There is a core team of developers that actively work on new features, User Interface upgrades, bug fixes, and ongoing maintenance of the network. These are people just like you and me who have the skills necessary to push the BitShares technology even further.

How do these developers get compensated for their time and effort? There's actually a reserve pool of approximately 1 billion BitShares (BTS) that are used for exactly this. This reserve pool is not a slush fund for lavish vacations or expensive toys. The reserve pool is secured by a smart contract that requires shareholder approval before any funds can be released. The shareholders are any entity that owns BitShares excluding "Non-voting Accounts and Exchanges".

This reserve pool can even be used to fund new projects that will provide an added benefit to the BitShares ecosystem.

Your BitShares Account is Your Wallet and Your Gateway to the DEX

This information is extremely important for those looking to create their first BitShares wallet and transfer their cryptocoins onto it.

When you register for an account on either bitshares.org or any one of the 3rd party gateways (i.e. openledger.io) you're in fact creating more than just an account on an exchange. You're creating your wallet that will be registered on the BitShares blockchain.

It's EXTREMELY important that you SAVE your password because if you lose your password you will lose your funds FOREVER. The only way around this is by choosing to initially create an account via the "Local Wallet" option and then save your "brain key".



Regardless of which type of account you create, make sure you save your password manually. Write it down or save it on a thumb-drive and then back it up. DO NOT USE A PASSWORD MANAGER TOOL. I've already seen cases where people used LastPass and it didn't save the password. The customers didn't realize it until it was too late.

BitShares Compared to the Top Five Cryptocoins

The top five cryptocoins (BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, XRP) don't even come close to the performance power of BitShares.

Bitcoin can now handle 6-7 TPS but maybe 12 TPS after SegWit2X

Ethereum can now handle 7 TPS but may be pushed to 20 TPS with Raiden

Litecoin can handle 28 TPS

Bitcoin Cash can handle 56 TPS

Ripple 1000+ TPS but only focused on the financial industry

All of these cryptocoins are marketed as being the best of the best. Even though when you take the time to dig a bit deeper you soon discover they are unable to support global demand. Of course, these cryptocoins are all working on new upgrades which sometimes leads to forks or increased decentralization, but the changes are mediocre at best. There's no telling how long it will take them to achieve the same performance level as BitShares. I don't know about you, but I'm not that patient.

In addition to their inadequate performance, they don't even offer the same amount of remarkable features.

Some of BitShares features are:

Market-Pegged Assets: (Think Tether, but 1 billion times better) These are actually backed by real collateral.

Examples: 1 bitUSD = 1 USD which is backed by AT LEAST 2x worth of BTS as collateral, 1 bitEUR = 1 EUR, 1 bitSILVER = 1 oz. of Silver User-Issued Assets: UIAs allow individuals and companies to create and issue their own unique tokens for anything they can imagine.

Examples: Simple event tickets deposited on the customer’s mobile phone to pass the entrance of a concert or used for crowd funding. Also ownership tracking or even to sell equity of a company in form of stock. (4) Decentralized Exchange (DEX): BitShares was the first DEX on the market. Kind of like bitcoin was the first cryptocoin on the market.

The phrase DEX was coined by the BitShares creator Daniel Larimer.

You maintain possession of your cryptocoins at all time (unless you lose your password). Therefore, there's no risk of the exchange running away with your money.

You will never have to worry about BTS being delisted from the BitShares DEX.

Network fees to execute trades is only .01213 BTS for non-Lifetime Members and .00243 BTS for Lifetime Members.

You can create your own interest-free loans through margin trades. Investors typically use as much as 4x collateral to back their loans. Below is a great video that explains how to create your own loans. Voting Rights: Each BTS that is held in a BitShares wallet is worth one vote which can be used to support the development of new features, funding of new projects, and many other things. You can select a proxy if you wish to allow that person to vote on your behalf. Delegated Proof of Stake: A new method of securing a crypto-currency’s network. DPOS attempts to solve the problems of both bitcoin’s traditional Proof of Work system, and the Proof of Stake system of Peercoin and NXT. DPOS implements a layer of technological democracy to offset the negative effects of centralization. (5) Basically, the bitcoin network requires the same about of electricity as Azerbaijan to operate. How is that sustainable? (6) BitShares doesn't require any mining and is supported by 19 witnesses/nodes which requires significantly less energy to function. (7) Referral Program: BitShares offers a generous referral program. Lifetime members qualify to receive up to 80% of all network usage fees paid by individuals who join their network. An important fact, this is not a multi-level marketing scheme because the program only applies to the 1st level of referrals. Example, I refer Tom and he refers Jane. I get a percentage from what Tom pays in network usage fees but not from Jane.

You can read up on all the financial asset features offered by BitShares here.

http://docs.bitshares.org/_downloads/bitshares-financial-platform.pdf