[Sir_Substance]

>Hopefully the same way that Bitcoin established value.

Bitcoins value fluctuates so fast that no one really knows how much something real costs in bitcoin on any given day.

As a result, even though Bitcoins are surprisingly valuable, as a currency it has very low velocity. Bitcoin is closer to gold, real estate or shares than it is to dollars. It makes an ok place[1] to park your value in the hopes that it'll beat inflation, but much like gold and houses it's extremely difficult to directly buy something with it.

You need to find a way to make your project a high velocity currency. I don't know how to do that though. Good luck :)

[1] Your mileage may vary. I personally wouldn't invest in bitcoin because it's too volatile for me to be bothered tracking it, but some have done so with success.

[rlpb]

> Bitcoins value fluctuates so fast that no one really knows how much something real costs in bitcoin on any given day.

True.

> ...even though Bitcoins are surprisingly valuable, as a currency it has very low velocity.

Is this part really true any more? Trades of something other than Bitcoin aren't denominated in Bitcoin. But the exchange rate, though variable, is available in realtime and companies like Coinbase take the short term fluctuation risk for traders. It's easy enough now for a seller to say "I will accept $X worth of Bitcoin" and a buyer to say "Sure, here's $X worth of Bitcoin" and for both sides to be happy. Bitcoin clients have UIs that work this way now too.

[zaguios]

Yea, you are correct in stating that Bitcoin is much more similar to gold than it is an actual currency. That's one thing that I'm attempting to solve with Swift Demand, since coins are constantly being added to the economy you can't really use them as a long term investment and hope the price will increase. This will ideally lead to the currency having a stable value. As for making the currency move at a high velocity this is definitely one of my primary goals for making Swift Demand successful. My current plan is to implement an easy to use API and then get some online services on board to start accepting the currency to get the economy moving at a healthy speed.

[Sir_Substance]

>This will ideally lead to the currency having a stable value.

That's not guaranteed. If I can't spend it on anything, it's monopoly money: regularly printed, but not actually currency.

Monopoly money is a stable state item, too. We've no reason, barring outside influence, to believe that anyone will ever start accepting monopoly money as a currency. The first person that did would be taking tremendous risk; there's an awful lot of monopoly money sitting in peoples cupboards. If they break ranks and no one follows, they'll be left with piles of worthless paper.

If too many of your coins enter circulation before someone starts accepting them as a currency, you could be left in the awkward situation where in order for a merchant to mitigate the risk of accepting your coins, they have to set the price of a loaf of bread so high that no single user of your service actually has enough coins to purchase a loaf.