I think bitcoins will go long way to reduce poverty if they allow it achieve it's purpose. Reducing poverty in my context is not about profit but the peer to peer transaction mechanism.
I don't understand how p2p can reduce poverty. A currency can't reduce poverty because it is not everyone that will be privilege to have bitcoin,especially the poor and needy that don't have enough to eat. How will they have money to buy bitcoin. It is only the government that that reduce poverty in a country through skill acquisitions
The idea of centralized exchange is very much in place because a lot of people are yet to accept bitcoins but once it become accepted by majority, I think there will definitely be no reason to convert to fiat.
Fiat is important in our lives for our daily spending,and for purchase of very cheap items. Imagine that I want to buy a note book,I can't use bitcoin for this because of the transaction fee which might be higher than the price of the note book. Another example is the petty traders,someone selling pepper or candy,it will be impossible to use bitcoin. Bitcoin is an alternative currency that uses p2p payment method in a decentralized form. Bitcoin is limited and will not be enough for everyone to use like fiat because it can't be printed by the government.