and the US Dollar is not what it once was. the point i was heading towards in that post, is that the gold and silver that once backed US currency was "proof of work", but since the US has decoupled the currency from the proof of work it is no longer a stable currency. digital coins have "proof of work" built-in, and to treat them like fiat currency that everyone is familiar with, is a mistake. it is fiat currency that no longer has proof of work backing it. gold and silver will never lose their value, because they exist physically. digital coin exist as bits and bytes in a distributed global network, so even if they are "intangible", they do in a sense exist everywhere, and even if there were some kind of widespread disaster, somewhere on earth a valid copy of the various blockchains could be found, but in a disaster on a huge scale like that might make fiat currencies worthless....

on the other hand, having a "reserve bank" for devcoin would probably be a bad idea. look around the world and see what happens when central banks manipulate their nation's currency. the manipulation introduced by the use of fractional reserve banking, and manipulating interest rates, often lead to a currency collapsing. one problem i see with bitcoin, is that once there are no more bitcoins produced by mining, the miners will want to make up the difference in transaction fees, with the ultimate end result that bitcoin may become more expensive to use, than to own. i know it's simplistic to look at it that way, but the possibility does exist.

what i would rather see is an exchange that deals with "proof of work", i.e. digital coin and tangibles (gold silver, copper). this would make more sense. the transactions would be taxable, just like fiat transactions, but you would have a proof of work exchanged directly for another proof of work.... just my opinion.... fwiw