Yes, but, the alternative might have to be an expensive but not restricted (by KYC, privacy invasion, AML, what you are allowed to buy, who you are allowed to buy it from, which nationalities, races or creeds you can or cannot do business with etc etc etc) form of value transfer (bitcoin with block limits that keep it reasonable to run a full node at home), and/or a whole bunch of such forms so that each individual form fits easily on home computers and maybe even some home computers can merged-mine many of the forms at once like I still do right now.
(
Imagine: Pay with: BTC (highest fee), NMC (lower fee, popular with domain speculators), IXC (lower fee, lower security)...
or
Imagine: Pay with BTC: not applicable (cart's total is too low for high-value network), NMC (highest fee network handling such low value transactions), IXC (lower fee, lower security)..
etc
Or even BTC: pay whole coin, change tendered in NMC or IXC, etc...
)
-MarkM-
Yep.
You just suggested what I predicted 4 months ago in my post
Solution to the Bitcoin Foundation.
...
What I think this means is cryptocurrencies should be used transactionally, rather than as primary stores of value. I see a cryptocurrency version of
xe.com showing all alt-coins values relative to gold (or USD to start). Exchange rates would be updated and available to merchants in real time. They could quote product prices in one, two, three or more currencies. They might prompt users with CC (as in currency choice, meaning they accept gold, fiat, crypto etc.) or CCC (crypto-currency choice) pricing signs.
Average consumers would store the majority of their wealth in which ever form of money they deemed most stable (likely gold) and keep about 2% or so of their wealth in other (crypto) currencies. Traditionally, actual physical exchange and storage of money has made it impractical and costly to trade in and out of currencies frequently, but the Internet and cryptocurrencies reduce or remove such barriers.
...