Quote from: trebronics on August 22, 2010, 03:55:53 PM

You will have a hard time spending your gold bullion. I wouldn't make the mistake of then assuming you don't want any gold bullion.

Exactly my point. USD is much more useful as money than gold bullion is.

Quote from: trebronics on August 22, 2010, 03:55:53 PM

This is an important point that people are missing. The success of bitcoin will depend heavily on how easily you can convert between bitcoins and the US dollar. The number of retailers that accept bitcoins is not nearly as important. We need 3 or 4 competing exchanges. Once you have that, market forces will do the rest.

I think this statement is off base. The success of PayPal depends on how easily it converts to the US Dollar (et al). Bitcoin will be a success when you don't have to convert them to anything. That is the point of the exercise. Creating electronic proxies for Dollars has been done to death. It's easy by comparison.

Fresno, bitcoin is designed to be currency-like for use in a currency-like fashion. That's the point if the exercise. Merchants treat and use bitcoins as money. Markets for trading different currencies are secondary to the concept.

Digital accounting and limited edition digital commodities are trivial and uninteresting by comparison.