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I totally agree with your first statement, that a more useful virtual currency will spring up on top of Bitcoin for immediate transactions (I actually have a go

I totally agree with your first statement, that a more useful virtual currency will spring up on top of Bitcoin for immediate transactions (I actually have a good idea of what it will be). Yet I totally disagree with your second premise. I think Bitcoin is a fine store of wealth. Fractional reserve banking and a debt-based economy is what many of us are trying to get away from. And I can definitely see Bitcoin as a long-term store of wealth and an easy way to make deposits into other, more convenient virtual currencies that are springing up.

rdl 14y ago
Bitcoin is no better than gold as a store of wealth, and it's widely understood in economics that "cash under a mattress" or "bank deposits not loaned out" are unproductive. It's reasonable for a very conservative individual to hold a lot of unproductive assets like that, but if everyone did for all of their assets, the economy would collapse, or at least be far smaller.
gigq 14y ago
The current method for handling immediate transactions is a Green Address (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address). Basically using a third party that both people trust for sending coins so if you as a seller receive coins from this address you know they weren't double spent and can accept the coins right away.