Quote from: GuinnessBIT on April 16, 2012, 04:39:43 AM

I am a fan of bitcoin also, so on another topic I believe these things need to happen for bitcoin to succeed.

1. There needs to be a lite and quick personal client. When the client has been offline for a bit, it can take way to long to catch up.

While there are ways of reducing the initial blockchain download, the client still needs to download new transactions that have been made while it was offline (how else would it know if you've received coins?), and I don't see any possible way of avoiding this. However, since bitcoin does not depend on the Internet specifically, but rather it can use any kind of network connection, it is possible that some kind of specialised high-speed network infrastructure could be developed for broadcasting bitcoin transactions, though that's a long way off, if it ever happens at all.

Quote from: GuinnessBIT on April 16, 2012, 04:39:43 AM

2. There needs to be an ability to recover from bank error. In the history of banking, banks have made many human errors and many computer coding errors. If they were bitcoin, they would fail. These errors are non-recoverable in bitcoin and this includes any faulty code that gets launched. If it is severe enough, it would result in bringing a bitcoin institution down.

Providing a way for banks to "recover" from their mistakes is a bad idea in my opinion (but it's not possible given the way bitcoin is designed), because it encourages banks to take greater risks which may eventually lead to the banks making a mistake so big they can't recover from it, causing a global economic collapse. Sound familiar? But because bitcoin transactions are irreversible, bitcoins banks will have to take great care to ensure no mistakes are made, since mistakes are costly. If, for example, a bitcoin bank gives too much money to someone, then the bank has lost that money and they can't get it back. If they give not enough money to someone, they have to make up the difference from their reserves to avoid getting sued, again losing money they'll never get back. (If the bank doesn't have enough bitcoins in reserve to pay the debt, then they (and their depositors, unfortunately) are out of business.) Ultimately, I think the fact that bitcoin banks will suffer mightily from every tiny mistake will force them to develop sufficient security that big mistakes don't happen, thus ensuring greater stability in the long run.

Quote from: GuinnessBIT on April 16, 2012, 04:39:43 AM

3. And actually, contrary to my prior post, I think bitcoin price needs to stabilize because those using bitcoins in commerce cannot keep up with exchange rates when they fluctuate wildly.

The price will stabilise as more people start using it.