Wondering about Bitshares... When governments start cracking down on exchanges, decentralized exchanges will be the only ones left so the need for Bitshares will be great. I'm not aware of any other decentralized exchanges at the moment.
The only problem I've experienced with Bitshares is that the wallet frequently doesn't initialize correctly. I've tried the download executables as well as the browser plugin apps and they both have this problem. That's why I haven't invested in Bitshares yet because I want to know I can always open the wallet when there's an internet connection. I only have success about 1/3 of the time in opening the wallet so it makes me skittish about putting any money in there.
Methinks I have not experienced the abovementioned problem. Been using firefox and https://wallet.bitshares.org . Every now and then syncing would fail temporarily. But then reloading the page always helps.
There are some other DEXs but I'm not sure how well each runs. Bitshares may be the best DEX out there. Only DEX I used was Counterparty, but it was mainly for asset trading. ... I think BlockNet is another DEX, don't quote me on this.
I've been having very similar problems with the clunky BTS wallet. So I thought it was me not being Geek enough to figure it out. Presently have two wallets but it seems to default to one of them and I haven't been able to pry the other one open for maybe five or six weeks now. And there was a couple of months previous to that where I couldn't get into it. Figure that eventually it will be running on EOS type platform.
I checked out Firefox @jerzy's suggestion with Bitshares wallet and it's much more reliable.
Tried that link and it worked! Still somewhat puzzled.
DEX's are clunky yes, I haven't used one I liked. Counterparty DEX was ... okay, but transactions would take minutes since it was BTC blockchain used.