A less 'technical question type post' from me this time
, my thoughts in evolving of Bitcoin:
The way I see Bitcoin at the moment, we are working with the ingenious 'raw' system, transactions in the block, scarry (to the uninitiated) looking addresses and relatively unintuitive wallets .. to those who have taken the time to fairly deeply understand the system, it makes sense, for those that haven't (the majority) its a still a very alien system I think.
I think as Bitcoin becomes more popular, layers of trusted services are going to emerge (and some dare I say it, bank like services) that make using the system open to the masses.. the 'down with banks, up with Bitcoin speak' is all very well, but a bit naive I think (talking about high street type bank services, not central government banks) Banks use currency as their basis for business whereas Bitcoin IS the currency itself with a transaction system built in ..
examples of functions of banks/other financial orgs to people:
safe way of storing money, insured against theft (The private keys are open to theft by hacking)
instant payment guarantees (e.g. visa); when you pay for something online, the receiver is effectively guaranteed payment, the 'payment guarantee' function understands the risk that a few minimal transactions
will turn bad and accepts the risk, usually by mitigating against it.
credit providers (overdraft, loans, mortgages)
online payment processors ...
international payment processors
Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionise the last two .
But there will still be neccesity for credit giving and instant payment guarantee (it stakes an hour to really turn that transaction into stone, which is still quite quick, but lacks the instantness of current online payment systems). Credit giving businesses would 'lend' Bitcoin, in the same way as lending traditional money. And some kind of 'clearing system service' would be needed to guarantee payments for online retailers who want to instantly hand over goods or services after receiving BTC with just a single confirmation !
Also, whilst Bitcoin provides the great anonymity of payments, most law abiding businesses, who will choose to use Bitcoin, will need transparency between transactions between suppliers and its customers, for record keeping and dispute resolution, so they'll need to use some kind of register of BTC addresses, transaction codes against registered companies etc. Probably 'trusted' services will emerge to fulfill this need, as well as businesses using their own internal records. Whilst this goes against the idea that Bitcoin is anonymous, in many situations, you'll WANT to make payments transparent.
Despite these 'value added services' emerging, the great thing about Bitcoin is that you will ALWAYS be able to send and receive using the underlying wallet system itself. At the moment we are in 'raw' stage, exciting times ahead ..
interested in others' thoughts on the above.
