[bazzlexposition]

99% of people have never used bitcoin for a single meaningful transaction, have never purchased groceries, or clothing, or anything for that matter with bitcoin. I am supposed to believe people are going to abandon cash in the next 10 years?

What benefits does bitcoin provide to a normal person just trying to buy groceries or fill up their gas tank, zero.

[FroshKiller]

Over half the world's wealth is held by 1% of the world's population. You must adjust your definition of "meaningful." It doesn't matter whether anyone buys groceries with Bitcoin. It hardly matters today whether anyone uses cash. If a handful of entities decide to handle their transactions with Bitcoin in lieu of traditional currencies, the majority of the world's wealth will change hands in the form of Bitcoin regardless of what most people ever do at the gas tank.

[bazzlexposition]

Wealthy people have been using different stores of value to trade for many years, whether it is stocks, commodities, real estate, or bitcoin. Regulation will come, the transaction costs are going to rise. In the end it may just be a vehicle for wealthy people to trade, because for small transactions it is a hindrance, not a help.

What tangible benefit does bitcoin provide over normal currency?

[liberte82]

It provides a complete unanonymous way for the government (or whatever power that be) to track every purchase you've ever made, under the guise of anonymity and transparency.

[27182818284]

I agree, Jack's in-sentence clarification seems much more possible:

"...the internet will have a single currency."

That seems a tad more reasonable. Alice needs money from Bob, they are in different countries, Alice gets bitcoin and trades it for her countries historically used money. Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous for those types of transactions.

[untog]

But that's already possible without bitcoin ever getting involved. Not to mention that (I'd wager) 95% of transactions online are single-currency.

I guess I'm just not seeing the benefit to the end user here. Bitcoin is cool and all, but so far it hasn't actually solved anyone's problems (and isn't it incredibly slow to process a transaction these days?)

[bazzlexposition]

10 minutes on average to process a transaction, the drive thru line is gonna get a lot longer.