You can create wealth by making it easier for people to transact (and money is the world's best invention for doing that, barter is terribly inefficient).
True, but there is a LOT more opportunity in the unused bitcoin features. A "governing" protocol for stable and socially-desirable value can be implemented using the script and n of m features (it can theoretically replace government in addition to banks).
That sounds a lot like the alternative local currency movement-- create a local currency that somehow expresses the local community's values.
I'm probably just a too-logical, cold-hearted geek, but building community around a currency doesn't strike a chord with me. To me, community is about people, and a currency is just a tool for transactions. I guess an analogy would be a bunch of carpenters who build a community around some Extra Special brand of nails that they create and trade amongst themselves.
All communities build themselves around the currency by enacting laws to control others through penalties and subsidies in the currency. If there is to be a government, then it centers around the flow and control of the currency because currency is about control of society's resources, as guided by law.
By using bitcoin's Script and n of m features to define the value of each coin in each transaction, you could point to local laws, or a "voting" or "intelligence gathering" coin to socially define the value of the coin in the transaction. In other words, by being party to defining the value of the coin at the transaction level, society is implementing local law for overall societal good (and thereby presumably increasing the average happiness of the citizen). A free market operating under rule of law with competition benefits both parties to the transaction. But this often causes harm to parties external to the transaction like biosphere destruction. A free market with government only ensuring the transactions are fair also does not make life the average person's life easier or better because markets seek lowest price which means cheapest, most desperate labor either through overpopulation or stressful working conditions. Free trade results in desperate workers replacing happy workers because the products can cross borders but the votes (laws) and culture do not. South Koreans are very wealthy and very technological and yet most of Latin America has happier school children (South Korean Children:
http://qz.com/153380/korea-is-the-worlds-top-producer-of-unhappy-school-children/ ).
Globally, the value of the coins could be determined by a universally-agreed-upon script which should be based on a basket of commodities. This is an old and very widely supported idea (Buffett's mentor Graham wrote two books on, and I've seen Hayek and Keynes support it). It keeps price signals constant, but it also prevents economic bubbles by restricting money supply when there is a shortage of commodities (or, in the case of bitcoins, changing their value at time of transaction). But I would make the basket "per person" to improve the quality of life on Earth for each person because the poor and middle class need commodities more. The world economy gets a stimulus until there are more commodities per person, and vice versa. This is needed despite Austrian exclamations because prices and wages are sticky beyond rational price setting. By keeping the basket of commodities constant in terms of a scripted 'worldcoin' everyone up the production chain can estimate their future costs more accurately, and the massive commodity producers can invest large capital more wisely.
To clarify, prices and wages are "sticky" so it has been traditionally easier to change the quantity of money in the system if there is a bubble forming (bitcoins will need to have their transactional value changed since you can't print more coins). Of course we completely abandoned the proper use of this money restriction and stimulus about 1995 (or really 1971) in order to create a stock market and house construction bubble. I'm expressing this as an inflation and deflation of value in the currency, but it is only following a basket of commodities which is the best known measure of value so people can make plans for the future such as in contracts and investing. It is the shelf prices and wages that get out of whack with correct valuation but they are reluctant to change. The key in an efficient marketplace is stable value of the currency just as much as ease of transfer of funds.
To do better, the scripted coins would have value at transaction as dictated in a way that increases average human happiness. Commodities/person measure is only at a global level. More local communities could define the value in theirs coin to achieve more precise objectives that they estimate would result in higher average happiness. Recently there have been efforts to replace GDP thinking in governments with "GNH" (gross national happiness) to guide policy better.
Think of economies as artificial intelligence machines. Specifically it is an evolutionary algorithm of interacting agents seeking individual profit (Eric Drexler had an interest in it in his Agoric papers). The currency injected into the system is the "food" the top level programmer of the A.I. program is issuing in order for the "economy" of his AI agents to discover the optimum solution to a larger problem. The word economy is derived from "economical use of resources". In A.I. the resources that need to be used economically are the CPU and memory space. In large economics the resources are the commodities (food, energy, metals, cement, electronic parts, etc). Government guided by votes is supposed to help decide what the goals of the system are. World domination? Citizen happiness?
Bitcoins without smart scripting are just a tool for storing and transferring "value" without defining it.
I wrote a much longer post yesterday to explain all this in more detail.
Cryptocurrencies change everything for "value" in the same way the internet changed everything for "information".
Bitcoins are the logical COMPLIMENT of traditional bits due to being un-copyable.
Compare:
PUBLIC "internet bits" are FREE and have a value judged by the INDIVIDUAL reader.
PRIVATE bitcoins have COST and have a value judged by the SOCIAL exchanges.
This has deep implications that are as serious as the internet itself.
Cryptocurrencies that can allow their value to be intelligently governed is to humanity what the internet has been to computers.
