The BitShares community is a group of individuals who are looking to change the world through innovation and cooperation. Our goal is to create a free society by systematically replacing the role of government with free market, non-violent alternatives while making everyone in the community a ton of money.
In my post titled "How to create a free society" I laid the high level roadmap. Our freedom or lack thereof is the result of millions of actions (or inactions) of millions of people. Some actions help enslave your fellow man while others help free him.
One of the easiest ways to help free your fellow man is to join our community. It's free.
Ways to Join our Community
1) Introduce yourself to our Forum
The BitShares forum is the center of our community and is where you can go to get help and meet other like-minded individuals. Many people visit our forum and never sign in nor create an account. If you are one of these people then you can help support BitShares by creating an account. You get many benefits from being logged in even if you never make a post. One such benefit is the tracking which threads have new unread content. The community benefits greatly by simply knowing you exist because it contributes to the overall network effect and the ability of the market of evaluate how much our community is worth.
2) Download BitShares and Register an Account
The next step toward joining our community is to actually open a BitShares wallet and register an account on the BitShares block chain itself. You should do this even if you have not purchased any bitshares (BTS) or other BitShares crypto assets. Your BitShares account will become the foundation of your future crypto-identity and reputation. It will eventually allow you to login to various BitShares services and serve as a secure means of communicating with fellow community members. The full value of your BitShares account will be realized over the coming years, but there is still significant value in registering today.
By registering today you get an opportunity to reserve a quality name before everyone else. Older accounts have greater respect for online reputation because they are less likely to be fake. If you register today you can prove to the world that you were an early supporter, hopefully that will carry significant street cred in a couple of years. The very act of registering helps to tell the world that the BitShares network is growing and supported by real people. The market will assimilate this information into a higher valuation for BitShares which in turn helps fund the ongoing development of our platform.
3) Buy BitShares (BTS)
When you buy BitShares you become a voting member of our community and can help contribute to the governance of our community. By owning BitShares you have put your money where your mouth is and get to share in the wealth produced by our growing community. If we can find 1,000,000 people (Just 0.3% of US population) to each buy $100 worth of BTS then we will generate $100 million dollars worth of buying demand which directly helps fund the development of the tools of freedom. The first step in this process is for you to buy $100 worth of BTS and get some skin in the game. Would you be willing to skip a couple of meals to help create a better world?
BitShares could easily become as big (or bigger) than Bitcoin. Skipping a few meals this month could buy you a car in a few years and your freedom in a few decades. Fortunately most of you can probably afford $100 without having to skip meals!
4) Buy BitUSD, BitGold, BitCNY
Perhaps you are not one willing to take a huge risk on our movement, but you really want to help support the cause. You can help by lending our community your money by buying BitUSD. Buying BitUSD will allow you to earn a steady return on your dollars without taking much risk at all because your loan is 300% collateralized. In this case you are voting with your economic power to support our cause. You can read more about how BitUSD (or BitGold) is a relatively low risk way to support our community and help secure your own freedom.
5) Follow us on social media
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. This is a great way to keep up to date and let your friends and family know that you are part of the BitShares community.
6) Add yourself to our Community Map
Add yourself to our community map to show your support! This lets people visually see where our community is and how many people near by.