[radicaldreamer]

Everyone here trades private currencies (often called credit) all the time. Those Visa bucks are not dollars- they are IOUs from Visa to the merchant accepting them. When the monetary system is functioning well, Visa bucks (or Chase dollars, Wells Fargo dollars etc.) trade at par with legal tenders (US gov. backed cash). Only in times of turmoil does the hierarchy of money reassert itself.

In this paradigm, would you rather be holding US cash or bitcoins (or something else) if there was a political or economic crisis?