Quote from: pawel7777 on August 25, 2015, 01:29:08 PM

Quote from: hdbuck on August 25, 2015, 12:53:25 PM

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what should make bitcoin attractive to new "users" (i'd rather refer to them as "investors") is that they would see in it kind of a parallel way (if not the only way!) of securing their wealth, bypassing the banksters' bails-in and their sand castle of degenerated financial vehicles.
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Let's try to stay pragmatic here. Two simple questions:

1- How would that be different than beanie babies or investing in shares of dormant company? You basically invest in hope that some other 'investor' will be happy to pay more for your 'investment' and nothing more. What would you need blockchain for then at all? If there's no practical use, why not replacing it with limited edition, hologram protected paper 'certificates of nothing'. Seems much better, as there will be no mining costs etc.

2- If you take away everything and are left with 'investment' use only, that means BTC practically don't exist outside BTC/fiat exchanges (regulated, with KYC/AML). So where's that protection from banks/governments you're talking about? If you kill all the other infrastructure (or give it away to altcoins), what will you do with your bitcoins if exchanges start/are forced to restrict your funds?

hum, you cant seriously compare bitcoin with beanie babies. Huh

as i said: the one and only incentive for serious investors to buy bitcoin, and hence 'speculating' in a healthy manner is because of considering it as a decentralized-anthropo-resilient-cryptographically-secured-safe-haven.. not because it allows coffee tipping et al. (which it will never on a global scale anyway).

but for the more common use, i am confident new layers, new on-top innovations, new companies etc, or even altcoins will emerge to catch up with the new needs as they come, and allow solutions that are more practical for the average user.

and they surely will benefit from bitcoin as well, as it wont be that same debased over printed paper that the FED is feeding the rest of the world.
bitcoin's mass and core capacity has to be rock solid and not subject to any human consideration to prevent all the abuses we are currently witnessing in the financial world.

of course there would always be scams, etc.. but this you just cant fight it.
just look at all the passed drama in bitcoin's relatively young history.