Quote from: rpietila on April 15, 2014, 07:18:50 PM

Quote from: Mervyn_Pumpkinhead on April 15, 2014, 06:47:30 PM

Try to grasp that, dude.

Everything that you say can, from investor standpoint, be quantified. They are very real things, and they carry a certain probability, and have a certain effect. Bitcoin has suffered quite a lot during its existence, and the outcome is 100,000 times value increase since the end of 2009. It has not been easy during this time, and the growth has happened nevertheless. Assuming that with overwhelming (>>99%) probability Bitcoin is destroyed in an instant with no trace of recoverable value left, still does not make it a -EV proposition for the following 5 years!! Shocked

(if the positive case is that it replaces fiat)

To rationally decide to not buy a lot of bitcoins, you have to explain why it is impossible for Bitcoin to replace fiat (as a store of value, at least). Because I think it is almost inevitable, just like all the other new technologies that just were better than the previous way of doing things.

Difficulties like what? There has never been anything as important to bitcoin before then to step over the threshhold to get the legal framework and instututional funding. Everything before this has been just fun and games.

You are kind of losing me here when you are telling me that you actually believe that Bitcoin could replace fiat. When you want explanations for that, then I give you several.

1. No country with a right mind will replace fiat for a currency that is controlled and owned by anonymous individuals, who have no responsibility over that currency. And who are also in high probability former criminals, when you consider the history of bitcoin.
2. There are no mechanics in bitcoin that enable it to offer price stability. And please don't try to insult my intelligence by telling that wider adoptation will create the stability. As long as bitcoin is very attractive to speculative play, then there will always be strong volatility.
3. If an country would use BTC as legal tender, that is both attractive to speculative play and distributed by an unregulated market system, then it would be extremely easy to cordinate economic attacks by hostile countries.

Fiat isn't just a piece of paper that is printed. The main difficulty for sustaining a quality currency is keeping price stability, and it isn't something that is created by itself. It is created by taking into account the available resources or foreign currencies and by regulating the flow of money according to that information. When the regulation is done right, then prices keep stable and it is possible to make plans with the support of that currency. Bitcoin has fixed supply and therefor it's not able to regulate it's flow to offer price stability. It's all about attracting investors with it's high possibility of deflation.

When you want to talk about BTC replacing fiat, then open your own business and start to use BTC with converting it to fiat only quarterly and try to earn profit with this instability. You can only start dreaming of BTC replacing fiat after services like BitPay would become useless, but I can't how that could happen with fixed supply.
Right now, when someone is asking me "Why couldn't we just use BTC as fiat", then it sounds the same to me as some kid would ask me on why couldn't he just pay with his monopoly money. There are complexities involved that bitcoin is just not able to handle.