[hammerzeit]

You respond to the author's uncited claims and rhetorical flourishes with much of the same.

To pick at a few things: * I'm not sure about you, but I'd think that a bittorrent-like outcome is not a successful one. Bittorrent is certainly ubiquitous but its major use is still an illegal one; the analogous outcome for bitcoin would be one where its primary transactional value is on SilkRoad-like sites. Can you elaborate more on your analogy?

* You strongly imply that you have some sort of argument (and maybe evidence?) about how cryptocurrency will/could impact the unbanked in a positive way. Can you elaborate?

* Your last point seems to take it as a foregone conclusion that bitcoin is going to a high valuation and is here to stay. Do you really believe it's an inevitability at this point?

[baddox]

> Bittorrent is certainly ubiquitous but its major use is still an illegal one; the analogous outcome for bitcoin would be one where its primary transactional value is on SilkRoad-like sites.

That's not a good analogy, at least for me, because I think that copyright protection should not exist and that all drugs should be legal to buy, sell, consume, and manufacture.

[eof]

I think it is outrageous to consider bittorrent 'not successful'. Perhaps not ideal; but wide adoption, serves its purpose, clearly cannot be shutdown despite effort from some of the most powerful agencies on earth. I think bittorrent-like 'success' ('failure' if you prefer) is the worst-case scenario for bitcoin barring any flaws in the crypto.

The unbanked stand the most to gain from bitcoin. There are many, many reasons why people are unbanked, but by and large it is because they are poor and in poor economies. Sometimes it's because they owe banks money (as is the case for most unbanked in the usa). It seems to me self-evident how bitcoin impacts the unbanked.. they can now receive money where before they couldn't. There is no legal framework or local institution necessary to create a bitcoin wallet. You just do it with maths. I have personally sent bitcoin to an unbanked friend (owed money for years to a bank from an overdraft charge and enver dealt with it) who was able to get cash for it in a pinch. Western union doesn't work when one doesn't have an ID. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rjvby/why_i_really...

My last point was really meant to point out that the author isn't saying anything at all other than hand-wavy attacks. What is the authors stance? Does he think it will fail? Does he think it will succeed? He seem sto strongly imply that it is dumb, stupid, overhyped, etc etc; but stops short of actually making any type of reality-prediction.

I think cryptocurrencies are here to stay; bitcoin's likely, but im less "certain" of that. High valuation? Well.. eventually; but again that may end up being spread out across many cryptos rather than just bitcoin, but I do think it is about 100x as likely that bitcoin gets to 10k than 0. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is obvious this is all true; but if you ask what I think, then yes.. I do think it is a 'foregone' conclusion that cryptocurrency will acheive s-curve adoption. Of course these things are not prove-able; and I don't have a crystal ball.. but distributed consensus to a limited digital asset is the perfect avenue for money. It clicked for me the first moment I read about it in 2010; and it clicked for many others in the same way. Other's took more convincing. I see about a 1000-1 ratio of people who go from thinking bitcoin is trash to believing in cryptocurrencies vs the other-way around. Literally every metric I have looked at over years points to continued increased adoption; continued minds being changed in the same direction and no sign of slowing down.