I'm a big fan of the DEX, but the liquidity simply isn't there. I would love to do all of my trading exclusively in the BitShares Wallet or on Open Ledger. I simply can't because there's nothing to trade into because the spreads are too wide and volume is too low. The fees on the assets eat into each trade along with the mental hurdle of having to pay for each order and to cancel each order. I get that's it only fractions of a penny, but it still registers as pain in the brain whenever we have to pay for anything. Paying to just place an order, even if it's not filled, does not encourage people to be actively trading.

I get that it's a chicken/egg problem, but I'm just not sure if promoting the DEX alone in its current state makes the most sense. Maybe there's no other option at the moment.

What if we had a default view that kept things super, super simple. Just the top 5 crypto currencies in volume and that's it as the default view. Try to incentivize people to trade on the DEX for those assets. Push the "short the USD" approach to get the anti-fiat crowd involved.

I really like the weekly contest idea. Training videos on how to run your own bots would be great also, but without the volume, it's most likely people will just lose money, especially those getting into bot trading for the first time.

I hate to just come with negatives and not provide more positives, but it really is a hard problem. Those who have lost money on exchanges due to hacks and fraud understand how amazingly important it is to have an open, provably secure and fair exchange that is fully decentralized. Unfortunately, that's a very small percentage of an already small percentage of people who actually know what cryptocurrency is and trade it regularly.

Maybe it'll also just take time.

I've been involved in crypto since 2013 and never seriously looked into BitShares until recently and that's thanks mostly to Steemit. I had friends saying protoshares was great, but I just kept watching the price go down, and it all seemed too confusing to me. It's still quite confusing related to the worker proposals, the other products built on graphene that aren't part of BitShares and the other ones that are... it's a lot to learn. I just recently read the white paper, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all.

That said, people are starting to figure it out (myself included). I had a great call with a friend today who does work in countries that really need financial services. He knows aid won't help those who are struggling there and what they really need is an economy. He's trying to wrap his brain around how cryptocurrencies could help. The more I told him about BitShares and how it could give anyone in the world access to world-class financial tools, the more excited he got. We just have to keep getting the word out, one person at a time, while also listening to criticism and improving the product. I'm excited to see this thing unfold.