Quote from: xtapol on June 06, 2011, 05:48:41 PM

There's an easy answer to the problem of price stability from a business perspective - futures contracts. Hedge away your risk like businesses do when dealing with any other volatile price. The lack of a good futures exchange is a major sticking point in the viability of Bitcoin for business.

There's bitoption (beta). And that can be useful to some business, but dealing with those contracts is an additional cost.
I think the reference unit would be more useful for setting prices and making contracts than as protection against volatility when holding a currency. For the later future contracts are better, that's true.