Same research is mentioned here as well:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526161/the-troubling-holes-in-mtgoxs-account-of-how-it-lost-600-million-in-bitcoins/

To repeat the OP's point, one of the important reasons is that Berkshire Hathaway is a large shareholder in many banks/financial institutions.
Reference mentioned in the OP pertains only to stocks.  Indeed, Berkshire Hathaway's exposure to financial sector is larger, as it holds significant amount of debt and debt-like instruments from that sector.

Do not trust any company with a funny name, especially one that is called Magic: The Gathering Online

And it costs 2.5 times more than average.

What about bio-powered bitcoins?

It is a good article worth reading.

Basically, it says the bank gives me no interest on my deposit, and there is a risk that it fails, so the risk-reward equation does not work.  It does not consider the ease of access etc as a reward.

By the same token, BTC also fails in risk-reward equation.  There is a risk that your bitcoins may be stolen, lost etc but the (financial) reward is zero.  You don't earn interest on bitcoins.

Money is a medium of exchange.  Without other parties to exchange, all money is worthless. 

It seems to me that for any bank or profit-driven entity that can invest significantly in Bitcoin mining, it would be better that Bitcoins appreciate as opposed to being made worthless.

Let's suppose by investing 50000 BTC (~$40M as of Jan 2014), I can get 51% of the total hashing power. This should give me 3600 BTC a day.  Sure, I would have electricity costs, but these should be a fraction, my income should be in the order of say 2000 BTC a day.

I can then recover my investment in a few months (even with accelerated complexity & cost) and the rest would be pure profit in Bitcoins.  In this case, I would prefer that Bitcoin appreciates in value and thus I get great returns with my initial investment.

Of course, it would be a different conclusion when a group (or more likely to be a group governments than corporations) decides first the Bitcoin network should be destroyed, rather than them making profit/loss decisions on the new investment.  But, in that case, we should consider that BTC network would respond to this attack in some fashion as well to protect the worth of network. 
   

She deserves heartfelt congratulations and bitcoin donations.

The world needs more people like her.  And less bigotry!

Thank you Hal.

If they owned 100% of bitcoins, bitcoins would be worth 0.

They shouldn’t stockpile them. They should trade with them. Use them as currency to buy/sell goods&services.  It is this that would increase the value of bitcoin.

It is a bad idea to take Peter Schiff seriously. Not only on bitcoins, but also on money and economics. 

He cried wolf so often that even when the wolf was to come, nobody would believe him.  According to him, we were supposed to see 5 major crisis in the last 4 years plus major hyperinflation.  He is just a media personality, serving as a Cassandra counterpoint to market’s eternal optimists.  All are opportunists.

Let’s focus on those who know what they are talking about when it comes to money and digital world.

bito

BIS is really not a bank in the conventional sense.  It is more like a think tank for central banking which also provides some minor financial services to central banks.

Having said that, if BIS says anything about crypto currencies, we can take it as the word of conventional wisdom. So far, they have said almost nothing based on a search of their website.

Any institution can create a form of cryptocurrency.  It does not have to be a large financial institution.  Amazoncoin is one example.  All of these new currencies would require trust in that institution.  These might work with their customers, but it is hard to see they would develop a universal appeal.  For example, why would you go and buy, say AliBaba's Alicoins, JP Morgan's JPcoins or Sumimoto's Sumicoins, which you can't use elsewhere? If they are backed by something like gold, it is still a claim, you would not know if they are actually backed or not.  You are still taking the counterparty risk in financial lingo.

The real threat to universal adoption of a decentralized cryptocurrency comes from the States.  Each State might develop its own currency, may rule it as fungible with their paper currency.  Such as ChinaCoin, Ruscoin, USAcoin....They have the power to enforce the use of these while ruling Bitcoin etc. illegal. 

Can BTC replace fiat currency altogether in a country, if that is what they wanted?

7 transaction limit per second means, there is a limit on the amount of economic activity BTC can support.  Based on my calculations, BTC cannot replace FIAT in G20 countries (20 countries with the largest GDP).

It cannot do so for those countries with large populations either, regardless how rich/poor they are. (It goes without saying that it wont work if the infrastructure is not there which leaves out all the poor countries).

The largest country/economy where BTC would work may be those like Norway, Sweden.

Where this would make most sense? It would be for countries like Argentine, Ecuador, Cuba where the national currency is not really trustworthy and where they have a sufficient degree of computer/network infrastructure.

I have seen the blockchain graphs.  They are for all transactions, not just for those made for commerce.

Question:

What would be the volume of transactions done in bitcoin?  preferably, in USD $ equivalent.   Is there a way to measure or guess this number?

There are some figures quoted but these include the transactions for speculating/investing purposes.   I am looking for specifically for those transactions made in bitcoin for purchasing goods or services.

As you can surmise, this figure may be a good base to measure bitcoin’s adoption rate.

Thanks DeathandTaxes.

Based on what I read on this thread, I think it is safe to say that:
 
A bitcoin transaction could be immediate...However, for it to be considered 100% legitimate, it needs to be confirmed on blockchain and this would take ~10 min.

This makes bitcoin direct transactions impractical for small transactions such as buying coffee or more importantly for micropayments.  Even if one is willing to take the risk of double spend and does not mind the fees, it may still be not enough. This is because bitcoin protocol cannot handle thousands of transactions per second.

A solution to this could be a third-party clearinghouse.  Clearinghouse can accumulate all the small transactions, net them up and reconcile everything with blockchain on a lower frequency.  However, resorting to a third party seems to be a step back from bitcoin's inherent advantages.

good plan.  Let's schedule a Hangout meeting first for next week.

Can you add me to the reserve list?  Thanks.