Quote from: eins78 on March 20, 2013, 03:56:54 PM

Quote from: gendal on March 20, 2013, 01:45:22 PM

False.

Ask yourself: do you expect non-technical retail users to interact directly with the core bitcoin network if/when this takes off big-time? Where transaction charges for every payment will become the norm? With complete transaction finality (and hence none of the consumer "protections" they have, rightly or wrongly, come to expect)? With the risk that a single computer virus could wipe out their entire net worth?

I would argue no. I would not expect non-technical retail users to interact directly with such a system.

By that logic, your conclusion does not make sense. In the case of email, most end-users don't interact directly with the system (i.e. having their own mail server). If Mail/E-Mail = Money/Bitcoins, then Gmail = Instawallet, isn't it?

Yes - exactly! The analogy isn't perfect but, as you imply, the vast majority of email users access their service through an intermediary (GMail, Yahoo, their employer, maybe their ISP, etc). Vanishingly few run their own server.

My claim is that the same will be true for Bitcoin: should it take off big-time, most people will interact with the Bitcoin network indirectly; their primary relationship will be with an organisation that looks indistinguishable to a bank. My prediction is that, in time, they won't just be indistinguishable to banks, they will *be* banks. Most likely, some major banks will start offering Bitcoin accounts and others will buy their way into the market by acquiring services such as Instawallet and the like.

Going further, my suspicion is that deflationary effects and the rise of transaction fees will be such that, even for those who are sufficiently tech-savvy, it will be advantageous for most, if not all, people to access the network in this way. Just as nobody would transfer $10 over Fedwire or the UK's CHAPS, nobody will use the core Bitcoin network to transfer a couple of satoshis.