First of all, I must say that BitCoin is an
extremely brilliant and well-thought out plan. I have three postulates as relates to Globalization, forces of production in Marxian theory, and technological development.
1)Globalization and Post-20th Century Economics
In a global economy with fully capitalized markets, and a freely open basket of currencies, the PPP of any given dollar will tend to be equal each other over a long enough time scale. That being said, the majority of non-Western world is underdeveloped relative to other countries, which means that the likes of Africa are probably 50 years away from the level of our current development.
here is a graphic illustrating the current inequality:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/GDP_PPP_per_capita_2009_IMF.png2)Forces of Production and the Service Economy
Traditionally, the forces of production have been utilized by the "bourgeoisie" against the proletariat, manifesting itself in wage labor tending to minimum required for subsistence of the working class. However, the traditional capitalist economy, since the end of WW2 has begun to and is still currently dissapating. We are experiencing the creation of a post-capitalist service economy. This is going to continue throughout the 21st century. However, so too will exist a parallel resource and production economy, likely by a large market of competitive labor-owned corporations (why yes, we do live in a socialist paradise)
I postulate that, in bitcoin's "lottery" sense of currency creation (and in future transaction execution), the forces of production are now driven by hardware development, moreover the currency is based on it. In a sense, the computer has now become the object of exploitation.
3) The transition will be slow
Both because of BitCoin's tendency to undermine existing global markets, and the underdevelopment of countries, the BitCoin "economy" will be slow to develop, and the global market will be slow to fade away. Existing global markets, and what is soon to be the global currency basket, are an opportunity for underdeveloped countries to attract capital, and through efficent socialist states allocate that capital to its people, moreso than BitCoin is capable of doing, even on a scope of 20 years from now.
My only concern for cryptographic "lottery" currencies such as bitcoin is the future of computing power and cryptographics, especially with the advent of quantum computing looming on the horizon.
