i think Adam's goals are laudable, ie, wanting to expand the universe of assets traded for Bitcoin.
The problem I've always seen with the "gold 2.0" viewpoint is that it relies on a bad understanding of history and a worse understanding of economics.
Some people think that gold is an example of a free-market store of value that was not also a medium of exchange, but it's not true.
During the era where gold was held as a reserve asset and people started exchanging gold-backed notes instead of the gold itself, the sole reason that arrangement worked is because central banks hoarded gold, and their activities were subsidized by the taxing capability of the state.
The idea that it's possible to separate a store of value from its medium of exchange function is an illusion that can only be propped up with a substantial expenditure of institutional violence.
The last thing I want to see is Bitcoin turned into a system that can only survive under those conditions.
If that's Blockstream's plan...
I don't get how this is somehow not a problem replicated but solved by sidechains.
Why did gold-backed notes appear in the first place? Was it not because of market demand for a more liquid, transactional medium of exchange? Of course this was playing into the hands of banks but gold was not rid of its medium of exchange function so much as people found its natural properties in that regard to be inconvenient and cumbersome.
I see the same thing happening now. Replace papernotes with sidechains and central bank for the Bitcoin protocol.
In certain ways Bitcoin will function very well as a medium of exchange but the nature of its protocol also results some shortcomings with respect to its utility functions and flexibility as an asset class.
What better, more natural, way to address this than sidechains? Unlike the gold/papernotes parallel there is considerably smaller counterparty risk; the "backing" mechanism is enforced on the protocol level.
Institutional violence is replaced by maths.
Blockstreams goals are not confined to the money function of facilitating "medium of exchange" and "unit of account" as you describe here and as we agreed would be ideal for SC's way back in October, ie , utility chains for faster tx and anon. their
goal is to facilitate a trading platform whereby SC's would be used to trade all manner of speculative assets such as stocks, bonds, insurance and smart contracts. this confuses and distracts from the money function and SOV that got us here and which i suggest is Bitcoins greatest calling.
the other problem i see is that the ideal money functions that would be desirable and achievable CAN be accomplished on MC. probably not changing the 10 min block time though (many think that is a necessary interval for decentralized propagation). but certainly anon and increased block size for scaling. i don't think that risk (hard fork) is as large or gruesome as some suggest. the community has learned to communicate better and can pre-announce any major hard fork updates well in advance to minimize that outcome. but it takes a will and discipline to make it happen along with a setting aside of for-profit aspirations in the name of advancing an open source project.