Unlike bitcoin, gold has practical application besides storing and transferring wealth.
So how do you call being able to formalise a contract without trust or third parties involved? A public ledger that anyone can use to vote where no one can lie or cheat the system?
Bitcoin can be the money of the internet and a store of wealth but it has a lots of practical applications too. If you are only seeing the currency side of Bitcoin you are missing a lot of potential.
Without trust? Are you kidding?
With bitcoin, you have to trust a bunch of anonymous people with a criminal past, to keep the unit value. Bitcoin is even more dependant of trust then fiat.
Sorry but respectfully i have to say you are talking nonsense here, at least to me.
Care to elaborate why you think a decentralised / public ledger is more dependant to trust than a ofuscated fiat system that is monopolized by a few central banks?
And what criminals are you talking about?
Mervyn has no idea what he's talking about. I know his type, he probably has a degree in something and then think they are smarter than everyone else. Bitcoin is still just a baby, it needs to grow and be fostered but Mervyn wants to kill the baby and replace it with a different one he is heavily invested in himself. It's too early to replace an emerging technology like Bitcoin, there are many altcoins out there and some try to offer something new but so far I see nothing yet that should replace Bitcoin. Maybe at some point in the future when Bitcoin has been truly tried and tested something better may emerge, but we have to keep a focus and not rush ahead of ourselves. If we scatter in a thousand directions then this whole crypto thing is doomed. Maybe that's what Mervyn wants, play the divide and conquer game and then watch it all fall apart.