BitUSD had a different mechanism as it only allowed its own token as collateral.
The Maker protocol doesn't use MKR as collateral, instead it serves as an efficient debt engine for other liquid assets and its holders collects fees on these debt positions almost like a bank. The interest fees collected stream in real-time from those who take debt(yes, this is possible on a blockchain) and a large portion is sent to depositors who hold on to the dollar stablecoin a savings rate in real time too.
Ether is just the first asset being used to perfect the mechanisms needed for fully autonomous banking. Any real world asset can be tokenized to take advantage of this efficient lending protocol right now.
UMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it.
Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases. They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other without intermediaries through novel org structures.
You are trading computational scalability for social scalability.
https://oasisdex.com/ is a decentralized OTC exchange for Ethereum tokens that has been successfully running for a year on Ethereum(without getting hacked!) No fees for transactions other than gas costs.
I know you can do it on Bitcoin too, but has anyone done it? It took a team less than 2 months to build this OTC market on Ethereum.
Bitcoin can do one type of money with extremely rigid parameters that is volatile and not efficient for payment transfers. Ether is similar but at least has lower transaction costs, but Ethereum is well on it's way to host a hundred other types of money by the end of 2017.
The Maker protocol doesn't use MKR as collateral, instead it serves as an efficient debt engine for other liquid assets and its holders collects fees on these debt positions almost like a bank. The interest fees collected stream in real-time from those who take debt(yes, this is possible on a blockchain) and a large portion is sent to depositors who hold on to the dollar stablecoin a savings rate in real time too.
Ether is just the first asset being used to perfect the mechanisms needed for fully autonomous banking. Any real world asset can be tokenized to take advantage of this efficient lending protocol right now.