Quote from: uxgpf on September 08, 2015, 04:42:12 PM

Quote from: sergio on September 08, 2015, 06:10:13 AM

Bitcoin as it is works fine and it can scale globally as it is, the proper way to see things is to think that bitcoin simulates gold with the added property of being portable. you would not buy a soft drink using gold or a $100 dollar bill, for that reason alt coins like litecoin o dash have a purpose, we do not need 500 alt coins, but maybe a few are needed.

Bitcoin whitepaper describes it as "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" right in it's headline and "an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof". Wouldn't redefining it as e-gold be breaking the social contract and alienate lot of users? Only time gold is mentioned in the whitepaper is to explain mining, not usage.

When you reduce the use cases for Bitcoin you also reduce its demand. With the reduced demand its valuation will decrease, unless you get enough new e-gold bugs to join to compensate for disappearing sectors of bitcoin economy.

As bitcoin is obviously intended to work as payment system. Wouldn't it be better to create an alternate coin with a whitepaper that tells its users that it's main purpose is to work as e-gold? No one would feel cheated and everyone would be happy.

If you felt cheated it's only because of your wrong interpretation of what Satoshi meant by p2p cash. It seems you are suggesting he meant a low-cost, frictionless means-of-exchange. Surely if that was his intention one must be left to wonder why he'd decide on an expensive and inefficient POW algorithm.

Have you considered that maybe what he truly meant was a censorship-resistant bearer instrument free of third-party reliance?

That would seem to fit the design he chose and reflect what Bitcoin is truly great at.

Understand that the use cases you refer to are not what can serve as the makings of an economy. The next paypal maybe, but not the next gold standard which is what we should all hope Bitcoin becomes. Do you have any idea of what the valuation of Bitcoin would be if we attracted a majority of the existing gold bugs? Here's a little more on this:

Quote from: brg444 on September 08, 2015, 04:52:51 PM

It is also important that you reconsider this myth that capping Bitcoin's transactions is a cap on its userbase.

Bitcoin, as is, can provide a refuge for the wealth of ANY person on the planet. It can currently accommodate an infinite amount of capital.

The distinction is important because reality shows us that actual Bitcoin users are by and large not much interested in transacting or spending their coins. A great majority of the coins in existence have been and should continue to sit pretty in their cold wallets for years to come.

Why should we expect this to be different for future users? If you believe, much like I do, that the next trove of adopters is likely to be institutional investors with an interest in Bitcoin as a commodity/asset then why should we be worried so much with the system's transactions throughput? Do you expect the Winklevies to go on a shopping frenzy with their 100,000 coins? The analogy with gold is tired but it remains true: it should be expect that most bitcoins in circulation will be stored in digital vaults and shall remain untouched for a long period of time.

All of this is to say that you should stop focusing on "mainstream" users and what you assume their interest in Bitcoin will be. We should expect these to be last in line in your mass adoption scenario.