Bottom line folks, advertising this as a stand-alone device but in reality requiring the operation of another physical node is downright retarded.
It's neither 'retarded' nor deceptive. The video advertises 'no supporting infrastructure' with a collapsing cell tower in the background. Although it's not technically true, since a usb dongle attached to the back of a POS terminal or internet router is 'supporting infrastructure', the reality is that it doesn't depend upon
commercial communications infrastructure. It
can mesh to extend it's practical communications ranges, although that's much more likely to involve privately owned dongles and the internet than not. Still, your cell phone
can't mesh at all, unless you have a rooted android phone with a running Serval client, and even then can't mesh more than 70 meters with no obstacles. (I should know, I have actually done this) If your city has a power outage, your cell towers' batteries die in three or less hours. So not only can't you make a regular phone call, even though your cell phone is fine, you can't spend bitcoin with the guy standing next to you. With a device that's
capable of directly communicating with other devices sans infrastructure support would at least open up the possibility of bitcoin business transactions in meatspace where internet access is not a given. Someone is going to do this, and if done well, the radio standard is going to stick, and more capable devices are going to come into existance that can
act like a bitcoincard, a bitcoincard server, etc.
