Seems to me if Bitcoin was going to "become a thing" (to use American parlance), it would already have done so by now. What milestone could mark success for this currency? Conversely, when shall we declare failure?
As a tradeable commodity, I'd say that an easy bar for having "made it" would be when you see a BTC exchange-traded fund on a major stock exchange. Progress seems to be happening on that, but we'll see.
As a currency, I'd say that, in the narrow case of BTC itself, failure is baked into its design. The current protocol imposes an estimated upper limit of 3-7 transactions per second on the network. That's just not acceptable for a currency (assuming it has dreams of being more useful and widely accepted than Ithaca Hours, anyway), and the suggested plans around forking are awkward at best.
There are also solutions like the Lightning network. To me, I have a hard time seeing those as efforts to make Bitcoin a currency so much as efforts to create a new currency that is backed by Bitcoin. Sort of like the gold standard of old, where different currencies were backed by commodity reserves.
Sure, but a main point of a crypto currency is realizing there's no reason to back a monetary currency with anything. It's just a shared hallucination. There's no rational reason a new currency would be "based" on btc holdings. That's just silly.
My view is that the upper end of btc viability is taking over some fraction of why people want gold. The system is way too expensive for a viable txn network (a la cash or Visa) and will never become one.
> a main point of a crypto currency is realizing there's no reason to back a monetary currency with anything
I'd argue that BTC is very much backed with something - lots and lots of thermal dissipation. The entire argument for why it should be accepted as a stable, reliable, trustworthy store of value is based on proof of work.
If BTC is challenging anything about money, it's challenging the idea that money needs to be something that exists under the auspices of a government body.
As a currency, I'd say that, in the narrow case of BTC itself, failure is baked into its design. The current protocol imposes an estimated upper limit of 3-7 transactions per second on the network. That's just not acceptable for a currency (assuming it has dreams of being more useful and widely accepted than Ithaca Hours, anyway), and the suggested plans around forking are awkward at best.
There are also solutions like the Lightning network. To me, I have a hard time seeing those as efforts to make Bitcoin a currency so much as efforts to create a new currency that is backed by Bitcoin. Sort of like the gold standard of old, where different currencies were backed by commodity reserves.