Re: Multicoin, Namecoin, Goldcoin, Silvercoin, OilCoin, 1971coin, backed by bitcoin!
I agree that oil, gold, whatever markets will be valuable for the bitcoin economy. But as they introduce a single point of failure, they should be kept outside of the bitcoin protocol. What is wrong with creating trade contracts, signing them with your PGP key and establishing a web of trust between traders? This approach can be extended upon in a bottom-up manner, it can use bitcoin as a currency, but it will still not be able to damage bitcoin security.
What is wrong with contracts, PGP keys, and webs of trust? The problem with them is they are hard to explain to Grandma. It's much easier to tell Grandma, "See, you bought some bitcoins, but you can store them as USD, Euros, gold, oil, . . . "
I disagree with the recent populism targeting at artificially stabilizing the bitcoin currency. Bitcoin will stabilize itself like any other currency when we establish a prosperous bitcoin-backed economy. For this to work, the most important next step will be merchants growing up and providing services or goods for real BTC prices instead of constantly adapting their prices to the exchange rates. After that, the market will stabilize the price by itself (and probably lead to an even more stable currency than what certain national currencies currently are due to the governments becoming more and more indebted).
I hope you are right that bitcoin will eventually stabilize. However, price volatility favors speculators at the expense of people who just want to use bitcoin to engage in commerce or store value. The assertion that bitcoin will stabilize may be true, but it can't be proven. I'd rather have the protocol provide stability for the people that want it, and transfer the volatility to the speculators who want it.
Please do also note that I cannot be bribed with 0.1 BTC or whatever in order to write something that pleases someone else. I have my own plans on doing bitcoin business, and I have found that there are people in the community who agree with what I do because I received BTC donations both anonymously and by prior agreement. I am always open to new collaborations with people from the bitcoin community, but I will not engage in business which is easily recognizable as being bound to fail.
Please don't be insulted if I offer to pay you for your post
The payments are kind of a gimmick to spur conversation on a topic that I am really really interested in.