Bitcoin Forum

In my opinion there are many advantages to bitcoins over printed money and I feel like that sentiment is shared by many other people here on this forum. As a result, I was wondering, do you guys ever think that bitcoins will overtake printed money, or do you think that bitcoins will die out as not enough people adapt to them.

Printed money is shitty for long distance transactions.  Bitcoins are great for long distance transactions.  Bitcoins are shitty for face to face transactions, printed money is great for face to face transactions. 

In one word, never.

Perhaps not Bitcoin itself, but something that allows for the same or similar system. Now that the idea is here it's not going away, it's simply going to be reinvented until some entity gets it right.

Yes, BUT, paper and coinage change is also a hassle. And most of the face-to-face transactions are for small amounts.
*Sigh*. If only they had created a $9.95 banknote it would have made shopping so much easier.

If they did that everything would cost $9.94  making things cost just less than a note is a marketing trick.

It isn't about the note. Its the psychological factor of not appreciating the actual price. They sell things for 6.99 too, because it looks like its less than $7.

No. Fiat will reign forever. It is impossible to defeat the Bankster Cartel; they will rule for eons.

You're asking about the future? It's not as simple as one currency replacing another.

Cash is good for face-to-face but gold, silver, and copper are good too. Something like 1% of all paper USD is counterfeit. With any physical currency (aside from casascius coins which are just bitcoin privkeys on a physical object) there is a risk of counterfeit and verification will not provide 100% certainty unless you have special equipment. Some gold bars pass several industry standard tests until they fail the "drill into it until you find tungsten bars" test. Some $50 bills pass eye examination but fail the digital scan, and how many people bring a digital scanner around? Sometimes the digital scanners give false negs, and then you have the old $50s which are still kicking around, who knows how many of those are counterfeit. With face-to-face cash transactions there is always a risk.

This is my vision: A world where, just like today, there is no one world currency. Sure, Bitcoin will be used globally. We might have competing cryptocurrencies, might have some protocol similar to Ripple, as well as perhaps Grignon's Credit Coin protocol. But locally we will have precious metals. We will have Real Bill and similar systems. We will have local currencies, barter and local barter systems (i.e. IMS Barter Business etc.) localized freeconomies, and a gazillion other concepts depending on where you live and the level of development in your area. It will be a completely organic, complex yet perfectly functioning, free market smorgasbord of ways to exchange value. Some methods will be completely global, some will be completely local. Some will be more suited to in-person transactions, some will be more suited to international instant transactions. Some will be more suited to tx between trusting parties, some between untrusting parties.

The only thing I am certain of, is that fiat will be GONE. Fiat was a nice experiment in socialism and hierarchical domination systems, and it failed miserably.  But it doesn't have to be replaced by ONE thing! And Fiat + Bitcoin are not the only two options. Start thinking a little more creatively and you'll get your answers.

Nice post :)

If we look into the future Bitcoins might actually be better than printed money. Printed money takes up space, needs to be counted and so on. Bitcoin on the other hand could be sent through phones, devices, digital cards and all sorts of new technologies, I guess in a similar fashion as credit/debit cards.

Isnt the problem that these transactions that occur on phones, digital devices, etc, take forever with bitcoin? Can this be changed from minutes to milliseconds?

You see the transaction nearly instantly.  But for the first hour or so it is only as good as a check  Fine for friends and for local residents at stores.  Checks, on the other hand, can be reversed for quite some time after they are cashed, or the funds might not even be there when it is written.

People need to overtake printing of money in order to have bitcoin overtake printed money.

Not to open a can of worms or anything, but this is the issue with zero-conf that everyone is so happy to argue about. And the check analogy is almost perfect. Zero-conf transactions are like saying "the check's in the mail." Yet we have websites, on the internet, accepting zero-conf like it's perfectly fine. Ever tried to pass a personal check these days? Either they have scanners that debit your account instantly, or they take your ID.
Hopefully brick-and-mortar stores that accept zero-conf (probably very few) understand it's no better than a personal check** and that they should take ID to reduce risk of fraud. Websites that do this should think twice about how well they think they understand the protocol.

** Actually it is slightly better, because as notme pointed out, you can't reverse a bitcoin transaction once it's been properly confirmed. So the risk of fraud is smaller with a zero-conf and perhaps some folks think it's fine to accept zero-conf from an untrusted party for this reason. I don't agree (that the risk level becomes manageable for that reason), but we'll see who gets burned.

It's only an issue for physical transactions and IP based business models.  Stuff where you pay to gain access to the magic bits immediately.  Once you have them, they can't revoke them.  For that case, you need to have a few confirms, but most other models either aren't bothered by an hour or restricting withdrawals until your deposit confirms.  For physical transactions, you have restrictions like with checks.  Only accept bitcoins from local residents and/or ask for ID, etc.  Of course, you should adjust your cautiousness when transactions are larger than normal.

Zero-conf has got to be better than a check if no double-spend is detected within 5 or 10  seconds. By that time every Bitcoin node should have seen the first transaction. If a 2nd one appears then its time-stamp will be seen to be later by all nodes. So the later one is unanimously rejected.

Yes. You could pay at a restaurant, walk out clicking a buy button on a website for some shoes and have your ASIC farm churn away to produce a block with your shoe transaction invalidating the restaurant payment. But what an effort! Surely restaurants have walk-aways and shoe-shops have shoplifters far more frequently than such a double-spend scenario could happen.