2.1. User Issued Assets (UIAs)

BitShares allows individuals and companies to create and issue their own tokens for anything they can imagine. The potential use cases for so called user-issued assets (UIA) are innumerable. On the one hand, UIAs can be used as simple event tickets deposited on the customers mobile phone to pass the entrance of a concert. On the other hand, they can be used for crowd funding, ownership tracking or even to sell equity of a company in form of stock.

All you need to do is click in order to create a new UIA is a few mouse clicks, define your preferred parameters for your coin, such as supply, precision, symbol, description and see your coin’s birth after only a few seconds. From that point on, you can issue some of your coins to whomever you want, sell them and see them instantly traded against any other existing coin on BitShares.

Unless you want some restriction. As the issuer, you have certain privileges over your coin, for instance, you can allow trading only in certain market pairs and define who actually is allowed to hold your coin by using white- and blacklists. Of course, an issuer can opt-out of his privileges indefinitely for the sake of trust and reputation.

As the owner of that coin, you don’t need to take care of all the technical details of blockchain technology, such as distributed consensus algorithms, blockchain development or integration. You don’t even need to run any mining equipment or servers, at all.

So what’s the drawback?

There is a drawback in this scenario, namely, a centralized issuance of new tokens. To some extend, this could be managed by a hierarchical multi-signature issuer account that prevents any single entity from issuing new coins but instead requires a consensus among an arbitrary set of people to agree on any changes to the coin.

Obviously, the regulations that apply to each kind of token vary widely and are often different in every jurisdiction. Hence, BitShares comes with tools that allow issuers to remain compliant with all applicable regulations when issuing assets assuming regulators allow such assets in the first place.

2.1.1. Use Cases

  • Reward Points
  • Fan Credits
  • Flight Miles
  • Event Tickets
  • Digital Property
  • Crowd-Funding
  • Company Shares

2.1.2. How to create a new UIA by using GUI