I am returning to this thread a bit late, but let me try to answer your questions: > If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't

I am returning to this thread a bit late, but let me try to answer your questions: > If money exchange is the main problem that Bitcoin solves, then why isn't the problem of money exchange attacked directly instead, i.e. through some other less volatile classical stores of value like gold or stock? "Money exchange" is a poor way of phrasing the problem that Bitcoin solves. Satoshi called it "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash", which is a better way to think of it: currently, without Bitcoin, the only way to transfer money to a peer without relying on a third party of any sort is to hand deliver a wad of cash. Bitcoin enables that transaction to happen electronically, for free. I don't see how it would be possible to enable those features (no need for third party, free international transfer) while using classical stores of value, and as far as I know neither does/has anyone else. > Why is money exchange a problem anyway and why couldn't a classical wire transfer solve the problem? This is basically asking "why is the trust thing so important?" That's a pretty heavy question, but one simple answer that comes to mind is that trust is expensive, and economically inefficient. The capital involved in mimicking the behaviour of a company like Western Union is a small fraction of what they're worth by virtue of being Western Union (ie. having people trust them) and the fact that they meet regulatory requirements everywhere they operate. That brand is only valuable and those regulations are only necessary because transferring money used to be impossible without them. Now, what Stripe is suggesting (and I happen to agree) is that there may always be trusted third parties and possibly some level of regulations involved to protect the consumer, but the level of trust and the amount of safeguards will ultimately be tempered by the enormously reduced barriers to entry (and hence vastly increased competition), potentially to the point where consumers will have almost the same variety of choice with their payment providers (ie. replacing credit card) as they currently enjoy with email. There are still a lot of technical hurdles to work out before that can become a reality, but that's the dream I'm excited about and the real value I see in Bitcoin.