I finally got to a point with trading on the bitshares exchange where I "got it". Part of the confusion revolves around its flexibility. You can literally trade so many pair combinations that I couldn't wrap my mind around the relative "values".  Couple that with lack of liquidity, and I found myself going to outside exchanges to check the going rate on various cryptos.

Leaving your trading platform to check prices is totally counter-intuitive. The first thing I decided to do was to only trade in bitUSD:SOMECRYPTO. This allowed me to fully quantify my trade order.

So, the way I invest in bitshares, while simultaneously owning other crypto is as follows:

- I bought a lot of bitshares when they were cheap (hell, they are still cheap but you know what I mean)
- I borrowed bitUSD (collateralized at 4:1 from bitshares).
- I used the bitUSD to buy crypto that I felt were undervalued.

By borrowing bitUSD with bts as collateral, you are, by definition showing faith in the underlying bts asset. You have the opportunity to benefit from both your investment in the other crypto, and any price increase that my come to bitshares.

It is important to have reserve shares in case the bts price falls so you can add to your collateral position if it gets close to 2:1. 

### One last thought:
It would make a lot of sense to display the spot price for the common cryptos on the Exchange page. This would keep me from going elsewhere to check the price. Ultimately, with enough liquidity this problem will go away.

Answers to all of your questions:

1)  A lifetime membership enables the account to save 80% of all its fees for the lifetime of the account, and allows the account to earn referral revenue from the fees of new accounts that it refers. This can represent a significant revenue stream for developers that onboard new users with their apps, like @chris4210 with blockpay. It saves a large amount of money when creating user issued assets, which cost over 7300 bts for a 5 character asset name, or 1400 with a lifetime membership. This will save back the lifetime membership cost in 3 assets. 

2) The best training resource for starting in bitshares is Chronos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSgsbBTxNfo who is a paid bitshares worker, and creates videos for the network. 
This is IMO the best explanation of the benefits of BitShares:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG_XiOdbum8

3) People can get excited about bitshares because it has the best decentralized exchange capabilities in the entire cryptocurrency space, has the fastest blocktimes in the entire cryptocurrency space, and is the only cryptocurrency to enable market pegged assets, or smartcoins, for holding stable value. It currently has a strong startup scene, with BlockPay, OpenLedger, PeerPlays, Apptrade, and many others planning to utilise its network in the future. Bitshares incorporates an entire stock market ecosystem onto the blockchain, that is easier to use for creating digital assets than ethereum tokens. 

A great way to learn about bitshares is to read the whitepaper here: http://docs.bitshares.eu/_downloads/bitshares-financial-platform.pdf

You can explore the blockchain and see just how many assets there are here:
https://cryptofresh.com/

Thanks @lukestokes and @samupaha for the post and replies.  Very informative.  I really wish BitShares would revamp the benefits they offer with the lifetime membership.  Saving on trading costs and earning referral fees are nice but will not drive viral adoption.  I'm a newbie to the platform and I find myself wanting to cheer it on but there doesn't seem to be any forward momentum.  By the way, who benefits from the exchange revenue? Has it ever been discussed if lifetime members be made the beneficiary?

I asked this question somewhere else but I hope to know more opinions so I asked again here... As I roughly understand, Ethereum and Bitshares are like two camps/ecosystems. **What do you think about their biggest differences (advantages/weaknesses)**?

I don't really have any answers for you, but I have been playing around with OpenLedger a bit this week, since Poloniex suspended accounts for people residing in the state of Washington... so basically just "marking" this to see what anyone else has to say.

Lifetime membership is actually a requirement to become a witness as well.

I think more people should try it out. When I realised what I have on my computer I simply could not grasp the consequences. It is huge. It takes some time to get under the hood of it though. As for the price of bitshares, I hope they stay where they are. I'm mining and a fair chunk of it is bitshares.

I'm a BitShares newbie too and it's definitely a mind blowing platform. I can only imagine what EOS is about to bring

I don't see Imperial Credits on your chart. An oversight I am sure.

Bitshares is great, and it's way ahead of its time.  

You ask a bunch of good questions.  Having a decentralized exchange is huge right? But the volume, yes, well.  Bitshares solves a problem that affects something like .0000001% of the world population, and that's maybe being generous.. I got lost in the decimals.

Essentially, it's hard to sell a solution to a problem that almost no one knows exists.

For crypto-geeks, Bitshares should be the Holy Grail, but the Bitcoin maximalist crowd has been too busy propping up their crypto-idol instead of championing new innovations in the space. Hey, they have their reasons and profit motives, who am I to judge.

Anyway, Bitshares isn't going anywhere, and there's still a ton of development going on around the platform as @dahaz159 mentioned.

From my point of view, *Bitshares is SO FAR ahead of its time*, that we won't see more widespread adoption ***until the crypto crowd has gone 1000-10,000x in size, along with the market cap of the relevant pioneers in the space.***

**Good news**, ***that's what Steem is here to do!***
When hordes upon hordes of people have their value stored on a blockchain, then they will need a decentralized exchange..

**Steem: Creating problems we already have solutions for! ;)**

Bitshares is less complicated than ETHEREUM

You should not buy #BitShares with the direct expectation that the price will go up but rather that the ecosystem will attaract users and that will lead to a price surge upwards. 
So do not promote BitShares as an investment but rather as a useful ecosystem.

Most problems with Bitshares are not in the technology but in the community. There have been or still are some toxic people involved. That's why the marketing sucks, that's why Dan was pretty much forced to leave the project.

Probably the best thing would be if BTS price would go really low so a group of real business people could buy a large stake and then they could control the development.

> …last month showed it can average 333 transactions a second! How are more people not really excited about this?

> 3328.33 TXS/SEC

or do i get something wrong here.? pls correct me if i'm wrong

Marketing is horrible. All this time hearing about Bitshares, even owning some, and I had no idea about the exchange until a few days ago.

good post

1. Lifetime membership entitles you to earn through the referral.
http://favs.pw/bitshares-how-to-earn-money-with-the-referral-program

2. I am using the official light client, no basic mode.
https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-core/releases/latest

3. Keep spreading the word, use BitShares as often as possible.