Bitshares is a financial platform; its core feature is a decentralised exchange (DEX or sometimes refereed to as BAE (Bitshares Asset Exchange) ), this is a platform similar to Polo or Bittrex where you can trade assets on the open market, you can do this while retaining ownership of your assets i.e no more mt gox; everything is done on chain and with 3 second block times you won't even notice any difference.
Aside from the DEX, Bitshares has a ton of other features, such as:
The ability to issue your own assets (maybe they represent a share in your company or just as a loyalty point ect..), this is the most flexible asset issuance system i have seen which can allow for broad business cases.
Smartcoins which are pegged to the value of the asset they represent such as gold, silver, cny, usd, eur and more
Prediction markets which can be used as a binary option sort of play for what ever you like (i.e will trump win the election)
Governance features which allow share holders to vote on issue that affect the network; one of the most used cases allows developers to propose work and get paid from the network itself if they gain enough shareholder approval
There are plenty more that could go in here but i encourage you to check out the platform.
Bitshares is a financial platform; its core feature is a decentralised exchange (DEX or sometimes refereed to as BAE (Bitshares Asset Exchange) ), this is a platform similar to Polo or Bittrex where you can trade assets on the open market, you can do this while retaining ownership of your assets i.e no more mt gox; everything is done on chain and with 3 second block times you won't even notice any difference.
Aside from the DEX, Bitshares has a ton of other features, such as:
There are plenty more that could go in here but i encourage you to check out the platform.
There is a nice list of resource here: https://steemit.com/bitshares/@stan/bitshares-greatest-hits-and-spinup-links
Also recommend checking out the rest of Chronos' videos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4QVf9YbYcnjmeDEiyyrhMLwGBa5K23tN