Of course. BitShares is a company! If the owning stakeholders think that will make them more profitable and grow faster, why can't a company decide to do that?
In the short term, while shares are worth pennies
Remember, BitShares is a company, not a currency. It is a unmanned, decentralized company that produces and trades interest-paying "smart currencies" as its product. So judge it by whether it is a good idea and implementation for a company, not a currency. Then you can get past all the accepted rules that (may or may not) apply to future currencies and see clearly what the investment opportunity truly is here.
As per your own words, since "Bitshares is a company, not a currency", I can only assume Bit
shares are a form of equity. This fact should be most unsettling to any Bitshares' holders who believe the Bitshares' platform is dependent on I3's continued development. It is my guess that Bitshares,
the company, is in violation of numerous US securities laws.
In fact, by the time BitShares reaches Bitcoin's market cap, each delegate will be one of 101 small businesses, selected by the stakeholders, each using a revenue stream of several million dollars apiece to grow the ecosystem. Powerful stuff to look forward to!
This seems like some type of poorly designed Communist ploy to provide subsidies to businesses paid for by the stakeholders.
I personally view BitShares as currency/company hybrid.
I want voting control, I don't want miners or anyone else to have it. BitShares gives me that. Hashers care about profits at the expense of Bitcoin holders hence why Ghash.io got over 40%. If Bitcoin holders had the voting power that wouldn't have happened.
You argue that 101 delegates is not decentralised enough but also argue that it's hard to individually vet delegates as unique. This process gets harder for the collective the more delegates you have. In a 500 delegate system it would be easier to get 251 fake delegates in place because the average shareholder simply couldn't process that many. With 101 we know who the majority are and at this stage are sometimes more happy with a high reputation, high trust individual having two positions. Over time the 101 number could change depending on what the free market deems optimal. I can't say it's immune from attack ever but it's the best decentralised system by far out there atm imo.
Your last point about it being a communist system is wrong. Whereas Bitcoin's distribution makes miners money, our distribution will be spent on developing & marketing BitShares. Imagine if the $500 million spent on miners a year was spent on developing & marketing Bitcoin. I think it's a tragedy that some of the best Bitcoin developers have to worry about making rent. Our maximum dilution is much lower than Bitcoin and I expect shareholders will keep it much, much lower in practice.
Over the last year, BitShares has made some decisions I vehemently disagreed with but there was no malicious intent. They felt they were adding value for shareholders every step of the way. Now that the funds have been spent and development is funded via the blockchain, it's up to us as a decentralised collective to
decide our future & make those decisions going forward.
The BitShares decentralised exchange & BitAssets are a technological triumph, arguably the most advanced blockchain in crypto. All accomplished in a year. Besides Daniel Larimer, the reason is because we have a lot of highly talented, well salaried developers. I'm certain BitShares will continue to pull away from the competition as it is able to innovate and develop at a much faster pace than competitors.