+> I don't trust Bitcoin as a reserve currency for...
Several reasons:
1) I do not consider Bitcoin to be reliable under what most people consider 'success'. I do not trust that the infrastructure needed to support the solution under heavy usage worldwide will be maintainable under coordinated attack.
2) A beauty (in my opinion) of Bitcoin is that it operates at the pleasure of the user base....but user bases can be fickle.
This is where I think merged mining could be more important than some consider. The hashing capacity of an attack on the Bitcoin network
may also provide the power necessary to maintain alternate blockchains, so unless there is sufficient power to overwhelm multiple blockchains at once, it would be possible for assets in one chain to move to another that is not under attack; lateral movement, like
Whack-A-Mole.
I think it was you who was potentially interested in my 'bakcoin' idea some months ago. I hacked out some material around that time, but have been off on other completely unrelated interests since and have not touched it. I'd have to do (much) more work before presenting it as an alternate crypto-currency or whatever, but here's what I've got for those who might be interested: