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Notes -
Is crypto-skepticism contrarian now? I guess here it might be!
This is, while unlikely (after all, bitcoin is an attempted "fork" from fiat, and it's been remarkably successful so far), is maybe a good thing, it means that if a change is considered good by a consensus of nodes then it can be implemented, less subject to the whims of a single government than fiat, more amenable to change than gold.
The end game is that a significant amount of transactions are ultimately settled in BTC, and I guess also that a significant amount of reserves held are also denominated in BTC. You can argue that bitcoin is not good for day to day transactions between individuals, but it's way faster and cheaper (though the latter might be a matter of just not having a big regulatory structure above it) than the big movements that happen in the background.
Which I guess speaks to @faceh's objection: For all this to be "real", bitcoin's price needs to be a lot more stable. The simplest model of the value of bitcoin is something like p(it happens) * (total value of eventual transactions settled in bitcoin + all bitcoin eventually held in reserves), the idea being that, as p approaches 1, the price should start to settle. The thing is that the second factor is not constant either: Is BTC going to be used by developing countries? Is it going to replace the USD as the dominant currency? Is it going to just take over the world? The notion that further success begets more appreciation makes it hard for it to bootstrap its way into being a medium of exchange.
I'm not a turbo-optimist to begin with, but I guess you guys have managed to move me slightly to the more skeptical side.
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