Additional protocol layers will be built on top of bitcoin which will provide stable currencies pegged to dollars, gold, oil, or anything else your heart desires. Think about how HTTP is built on top of TCP/IP. That is how we will build new, stable currencies on top of bitcoin.
I wrote a paper about it, and if you are going to the bitcoin conference in San Jose in May, you can come to the "Bitcoin in the Future" panel and hear me talk about it and ask questions.
The take-away is that buying bitcoins now is the best way to bet on the success of those "child currencies"
Huuu? Your delusional if you think mere 'protocols' by which I take it you mean software can peg an exchange rate between between a digital commodity (BTC) and a physical commodity. It dose not matter how much security you have over the digital side when you have zero control over the physical side of the peg. You would need a physical repository with physical access and physical reserves to maintain a peg.
Further more it would be doubly impossible to do this if BTC is still floating against the dollar because you would creating a triangle, lets assume you want to maintain a BTC/Gold peg you now have 3 exchange rates, BTC/Dollar, Gold/Dollar which float and BTC/Gold which is pegged. This immediately creates potential for an arbitrage if either of the floating rates shifts without a commensurate change in the other. Take the present massive rise in BTC/Dollar, Gold/Dollar hasn't shifted at all and if your BTC/Gold peg had been in balance before it is now totally out of which and a person can profit hugely by converting BTC->Dollar->Gold->BTC and they will have multiplied their wealth hugely while draining the wealth of the peg maintaining entity. This is why the original gold standard failed.