Grondilu, I was looking for a "ballpark figure" of how likely it is that something will be adopted where it is clear to the adoptees that there are significant benefits to its adoption.
As it has been said on some other thread (I forgot which one), bitcoin doesn't really need to be mainstream to be successful. It can't be compared to esperanto for this matter, imo.
As long as there exists a community that provides convertibility of bitcoins to other currency, it won't matter if you can't buy a hamburger with bitcoins. Think about gold : I dout I could go in a McDonald's with a gram of gold and buy a menu with it. And yet, gold is of course successful (especially nowadays).
Of course, it will depend on the volume of transactions the community can provide. But such a volume won't have to be huge, imo. Actually I'd also like to compare it to collector's stamps. Those are really a niche : very few people collect stamps and are willing to pay a lot of money to acquire it. And yet, I heard that some jews during WWII were using them as storage of value (much easier to hide than gold or diamands).
I'd say that bitcoins are even easier to hide than stamps
PS. I don't say that I wouldn't like bitcoin to go mainstream, though. Of course I'd like that. But going mainstream is not a requirement for bitcoins to be considered as a success, imo.
For sure.
Buy at 6 cents ... go to 16 .... success?
