I think this is great. For Bitcoin to really be a useful currency, it needs 1) full faith and credit of something; 2) mostly not proof-of-work; 3) sub-chains.

I think this is great. For Bitcoin to really be a useful currency, it needs 1) full faith and credit of something; 2) mostly not proof-of-work; 3) sub-chains. Right now it is what I might call an "ur-currency". Paying for everything with the equivalent of a wheelbarrow of pennies. Right now Bitcoin only has the backing of Bitcoin enthusiasts, which is a terrible way to start a currency. No sane person would invest their money in something that could become worthless if people decide that instead of Dogecoin, they want Kittycoin. Until there is some way beyond "it's Bitcoin" to know that Bitcoin will stay valuable (and "9 banks say it will have value" IS a bona fide reason here), I don't think it will ever have mass appeal. Also, right now any actual economic value Bitcoin creates will be burned by mining CPUs. I think it's obvious that the steady state is that Bitcoin miners make zero economic profit, and all the transaction fees and blockchain rewards are simply turned into electricity bills (and thus, more indirectly, turned into needlessly lighting coal on fire). Finally, from a more technical point of view, all this talk about "the size of the blockchain" is absurd. There's no reason that there needs to be a limit on the transactions. But when every transaction needs to be in a single chain, that's the only way. If we have some smart way of doing sub-chains, this becomes less of a problem. (I know some altcoins use this now, but the popular concept of Bitcoin is of a single definitive chain).