No it is not. That is debt, absolutely no doubt about it. That is emphatically not even USD. It is contracts to pay USD to a named person at some future date th

No it is not. That is debt, absolutely no doubt about it. That is emphatically not even USD. It is contracts to pay USD to a named person at some future date that are "changing hands", not USD. There is a very big difference, especially in case of liquidity problems. But there are more huge differences : for instance, exchanging money is not free (someone's paying 2% or so). Thirdly, those transaction are legally required to be reversible (just browse some online forums), and are reversed in apparently 1-2% of cases. If bitcoin has proven anything, it's that there is a huge need for a currency that you can actually exchange over the network.