[maxander]

The argument makes some intuitive sense (more people buying X over Y makes the value of X go up, which makes holding X more desirable, so more people buy X instead of Y...), but if this effect actually happened I don't see why it would happen with a cryptocurrency and not, say, gold. Nothing about the argument seems specific to cryptocurrencies- it's used here simply as a commodity whose value has historically been going up for awhile, and which people feel pretty bullish about.

There are other reasons, also, why Bitcoin or it's ilk would be particularly bad commodities to show this effect- notably, that the Bitcoin system can handle only a finite volume of transactions efficiently, and while it's capacity can be increased, the community managing it is (so far) still too disorganized to do so quickly (and without dramatic measures like forks and such.) Gold trading, as far as I know, already has none of these limitations, so cryptocurrencies have catching up to do, on that front.

[ramontayag]

Yes, you're right to bring up confirmation times and community. I didn't include that on purpose in order to focus on the good vs bad money part. My hunch is the scaling issues will (eventually) get addressed when we hit the barriers. Might not even be Bitcoin.