Quote from: gjhiggins on September 27, 2014, 12:15:27 AM

Quote from: Nxtblg on September 26, 2014, 08:56:14 PM

As for the USP, essentially the same as the USP for going online in the first place - which I already explained.

In order to attract the kind of FMCG corporates you mention, I suspect that there'd have to be several orders of magnitude more positive consumer awareness of the real-life practical advantages of using cryptocurrency. And it will be a remarkably brave brand manager who commits the corporation to using a precious (and enormously expensive to maintain) FMCG brand identity to endorse and lend corporate legitimacy to the notion of cryptocurrency. The profit potential would have to be gigantic.

And they'd still have to surmount the profound mismatch of a centralised organisation running a decentralised cryptocurrency. Whose interests are supposed to take priority?

Well...I suppose I wasn't explicit enough. Comes from me hanging out in several echo chambers, I guess. Wink

If I'm right about mainstreamization: To Joe Average - Joe Sheeple, if you prefer - cryptocurrencies will be nothing more than a neat-o hipster-cool gadget he'd like to brag about to his friends once he's on board. That's all he'll see; that's all he'll care to see.

Obligingly, the executives of those FCMG corporates will instruct their house staff to make (say) "McDonaldsCoin" to be: a) centralized; b) tightly tied to one single exchange - run by none other than McDonald's - that's accessible in-wallet. Essentially this kind of 'cryptocurrency' would be nothing more than a digitized McDonald's gift certificate. But it would be promoted, in McDonald's inimitable way, as hipster, stylish, cool, etc. with a "real cryptocurrency taste" (so to speak.)

And Joe Mainstream will swallow it 100%. Why? because he's pegged the likes of us as nothing more than computer whizzes with a strange but somewhat endearing philosophy that he really doesn't care about. All he'll care about is that we're the early-adopter community with the cool-and-hip gizmos. Do you know any Joe-Mainstream type who gives a fig about the underlying design philosophy held by the engineers of his 72" HDTV? I don't.

Now...in order to gasp my next point, I have to ask you to consider this (real life) case in point. Imagine a stockbroker who's made his career in mining stocks, which necessarily include a lot of gold-mining and gold-mining-exploration stocks, who (when in his cups and relaxing) heaps scorn on those "gold-standard nut-cases." (Not an exact quote, but it's close enough.) Call him cynical if you will, call him hypocritical if you prefer, but the right call in this context is "businesslike." In order to put food on the table, he has to be discreet about his true political opinions from time to time in order to serve his clients. And, when he's on the job, the clients come first.

Just transfer that businesslike attitude to the executive ranks of (say) McDonald's, JPMorgan, Barclays, and whatnot. They'll peg cryptocurrencies as a hot new gizmo. Their gutting of the true cryptocurrency infrastructure will be pegged by them as sensible and businesslike, and the likes of us will be gushingly flattered by the respective PR departments. We'll get the flattery treatment, which is the standard form of condescension in America. And, if I'm right, we'll get a lot of cachet but our underlying philosophy will just be as fringey as ever.

But we will certainly come into our own, status- and even employment-wise...