I had an idea not unlike this a few days ago that I think offers a similar, but different take on things.

Quote from: skittixch on April 30, 2011, 06:57:02 PM

Hey all. I had an idea that might be useful for merchants to start accepting bitcoins as money.

It's an api or standalone application that store owners can run to effectively turn their bitcoins into recordable cash, easily and beneficially, as well as tracking their growth.

The system would record how many bitcoins they got for what they sold vs how much the bitcoins were worth at the time of sale. That way, when someone makes a purchase online, it's the for exact same amount as it would have sold for in USD (or other currency).

Easy to read graphs show them how much money they've got available in their wallet, and how much it's growing by riding the bitcoin economy. As they make more money, some of them are going to start buying things with bitcoin, and the whole goods/services economy would experience the rapid growth it desperately needs.

Let's say you could order groceries, or electronics, and instead of paypal, you'd choose something like "bitpal", that would accept the bitcoins, alert the merchant that an order had come in, and logged the transaction at the highest bid (taking depth of bids into acct) in USD. The merchant would then have control over when they cash out. They could simply get their money from a market like mtgox (but not limited to mtgox) right then, or they can save it and see if it grows in value. It could be advertised as a method of deflationary insurance. If USD goes bottom up, at least your company has made an investment in a currency that operates with different rules. This would mean that bitcoin could potentially move into the mainstream with an economically viable purpose.

I think as long as store owners can easily track their money, they're going to be more open about using a service that offers a very positive track record in valuation. It's got to be a standalone, easy to use application. These are business owners, not computer nerds. As far as scalability goes, I think something like this used on a wide scale could make our economy even more valuable.

thoughts?

I think the main difference between your idea and mine is the fact that yours tries to smooth out and control the volatility of the market, whereas mine thrives on it. Merchants should see their investment in bitcoin for exactly what it is; a gamble. Right now, I'd say it's a good gamble, as prices have risen astronomically since it's inception. This can be used as a selling point for more merchants to try it. I think tying it into a peerfinding system like (but not limited to) MtGox to allow them to pull their money out instantly is crucial.
I'm really interested in the proliferation of this kind of technology, and I don't think I'm alone when I say the future viability of bitcoin may depend on these types of systems being in place.