If Bitcoin is an experiment,...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

~Bruno~

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[evoorhees]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

~Bruno~

All new things are experiments.

[Etlase2]

about tree fiddy

[nafai]

Unless some flaw or scandal causes people to abandon bitcoin, I think the network effect will make it succeed over other cryptocurrencies.  Ebay isn't the #1 auction site because it's a hard site to make or there aren't any competitors, it's #1 because it got there first and did the job well enough that it gained momentum and reputation.  The same thing will happen to bitcoin unless something drastic happens to prevent it.

[cunicula]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

~Bruno~

Extremely slim. Bitcoin has serious known flaws. Future competitors won't.

[Etlase2]

ebay wasn't the first auction site so you could really do to stop using that example people

[evoorhees]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

~Bruno~

Extremely slim. Bitcoin has serious known flaws a few debatable issues. Future competitors won't will also.

FTFY

[beckspace]

Extremely slim. Bitcoin has serious known flaws. Future competitors won't.

[Stephen Gornick]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?\

Satoshi's protocol when Bitcoin was first made available failed.  And so did subsequent revisions. On August 10th, 2010 [the leading implementation of the protocol] failed spectacularly even:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Incidents

But because the protocol can be modified through a certain process, the flaws are being solved (see BIP 30 as an example.).

Because the protocol started out as an experiment does not mean it hasn't or won't become a widely used and valued piece of our financial infrastructure.

[FreeMoney]

What else could he say? "Here you go. This is money, no flaws, enjoy."? Even if the protocol was perfect it would still be a monetary experiment, no one knows what 6 billion people are going to do with something before any of them have even looked at it.

[phillipsjk]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

~Bruno~

Implied in your question is the assumption (hinted at in braces) that a crytocurrency can become mainstream at this point in human history. I don't think technology that a crypto-currency will rely one will mature for at least 7 generations (150 years or so). One thing that worries me almost as much as the possibility of hardware and software back-doors is bandwidth caps. Data and storage used by bitcoin is expected to increase at least geometrically for a long time. The average person many be excluded from caching the block-chain on that alone.

However, even if current technology is "good enough" to work in practice, it will be an experiment. There is always a risk that the big mining pools will get together and implement protocol changes that are detrimental to the currency. Even "bugfix" protocol changes are experimental. How far ahead such changes should be planned is an open question, factoring in the severity of the problem and whether existing transactions can still be trusted in the future.

This is also a political experiment. Governments around the world are increasingly cracking down on "annonymous" financial transactions. For example, the Bank of Canada has removed the $1000 bill from circulation because it is too easy to move around. Businesses dealing with Money are required to record who is sending money to whom. Bitcoin is (deliberately?) ambiguous. It is not really "virtual money" because there is no central issuer backing it. It also acts a lot like a commodity, which may have tax implications in many countries.

If space travel becomes possible, bitcoin will likely become obsolete. The protocol assumes that every node has a latency of less than 10 minutes (2 minutes if TCP is used). This can be violated on Earth as well if your Internet is cut off by the govenrment (or your ISP) and data must be smuggled out on foot. For the largest "island" of processing power, this is not a big problem. However, smaller islands of processing power face having their blockchain history re-written by malicous entites on the larger processing island.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Thank you, all, for your informative posts, for I needed this info to help me better understand where Bitcoin is potentially heading. Any further discussion on this issue would be most welcomed, for myself and others who'll read this thread in the future.

~Bruno~

[Boussac]

The Euro is a large scale experiment started in the late 1990s. It's still in use in countries where it's a large scale failure.

[MaxSan]

The Euro is a large scale experiment started in the late 1990s. It's still in use in countries where it's a large scale failure.

This.

[Gavin Andresen]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

What is your definition of "truly mainstream" ?

If 1% of the world uses Bitcoin for 1% of their transactions, then I'd still consider it a huge success. I think there's a good chance that happens, but that doesn't fit my definition of 'mainstream.'

I think there is small possibility Bitcoin proper is used by a majority of people in some country somewhere in the world use it at least once a week to pay for things. I'd consider that mainstream success.

I think there's a tiny possibility Bitcoin will eventually become as popular as the dollar.

But I'm not very good at predicting the future, so you might want to consult you local fortune teller.

[hazek]

The Euro is a large scale experiment started in the late 1990s. It's still in use in countries where it's a large scale failure.

This.

Yep, this a 100times.

[bitcool]

Yes, more of a political experiment than technical

[cypherdoc]

ebay wasn't the first auction site so you could really do to stop using that example people

Encoin wasn't the first cryptocurrency but...

[Phinnaeus Gage]

If Bitcoin is an experiment, as Satoshi Nakamoto has advocated, then what are the real chances of it--Bitcoin proper (not some other crypto-currency)--truly becoming mainstream?

What is your definition of "truly mainstream" ?

If 1% of the world uses Bitcoin for 1% of their transactions, then I'd still consider it a huge success. I think there's a good chance that happens, but that doesn't fit my definition of 'mainstream.'

I think there is small possibility Bitcoin proper is used by a majority of people in some country somewhere in the world use it at least once a week to pay for things. I'd consider that mainstream success.

I think there's a tiny possibility Bitcoin will eventually become as popular as the dollar.

But I'm not very good at predicting the future, so you might want to consult you local fortune teller.

On the first draft of the OP, the modifier "truly" was not included, but opted to include for some unknown reason. I guess, at the time, I felt it read better. That said, thank you, Gavin, for your unique insight.

~Bruno~

[cunicula]

What is your definition of "truly mainstream" ?

If 1% of the world uses Bitcoin for 1% of their transactions, then I'd still consider it a huge success. I think there's a good chance that happens, but that doesn't fit my definition of 'mainstream.'

I think there is small possibility Bitcoin proper is used by a majority of people in some country somewhere in the world use it at least once a week to pay for things. I'd consider that mainstream success.

I think there's a tiny possibility Bitcoin will eventually become as popular as the dollar.

But I'm not very good at predicting the future, so you might want to consult you local fortune teller.

Let's consider what Gavin is saying here for a moment. 1% of world txns is pretty enormous. Let's say there are only two future possibilities:
1) Gavin's dream comes true (Bitcoin accounts for 1% of world txns)
2) Bitcoin fails and value decreases to 0.

The current bitcoin price indicates a guess about the probability of the two scenarios. What is this guess? Let's refer to a back-of-the-envelope calculation

Japan accounts for about 7% of world economic activity, that is 7% of world txns. The Japanese narrowly-defined money supply (M1) was about 9 trillion USD in 2009. Therefore we might expect bitcoin market cap under possibility (1) to be about 1/7 of this. That is under scenario 1, bitcoin market cap should grow to about 1.25 trillion USD. Dividing this by the 21 million bitcoins in existence, each bitcoin should be worth about 60,000 USD.

Right now bitcoin sells for about 5 USD. Let's consider the two future scenarios again.
1) Each bitcion worth US$60k each in future
2) Each bitcion worth US$0 in future.

What probability is the market putting on scenario 1? If bitcoin has a 1 in 12000 chance of growing in value to 60k and a 11999 in 12000 chance of falling in value to 0, then a price of 5 USD implies a fair gamble. Thus the implied probability is 1 in 12000.

I am not opposed to putting some money down on a 1 in 12000 chance. It is reasonable to gamble away small amounts. However, I am opposed to describing this as a "good chance." Without any further details, your audience will likely get confused about their odds.
 
Note: it's worth noting that introducing additional, intermediate scenarios will decrease the chance below 1 in 12000. We can think of 1 in 12000 as an upper bound on the market-implied probability that Gavin's dream will come to pass.