I don't think Bitcoin dropping in price to the $3 level or whatever level it's at now, means it's the end of Bitcoin. I was very surprised when it had the value of just $1 back April I believe. A currency needs to be supported by real economy, not just speculation. It seems all the speculators are gone now, and Bitcoin will continue its normal course of growing at the pace of its own economy. I believe one of the catalysts for Bitcoin will be NFC payments, because that would remove a huge obstacle for Bitcoin, and it would allow many merchants of real products to sell them for Bitcoin very easily.
Of course, it would help if merchants wouldn't have to be afraid that FBI will come knocking at their door questioning them about it, or if the Government wouldn't immediately freak out about it if its usage explodes in the marketplace. You'd need a president that supports currency competition, too, and might even allow something like this in the market (Ron Paul could be such a president).
But would the customer who wants to pay wth BitC using NFC technology accept that he must wait for some confirmations before he can take his merchandize home? And would merchants, especially large stores that go to substantive effort to streamline checkout processes, accept a payment protocol that by design adds a one hour delay (IIRC, people seem to regard six confirmations as definitive proof of payment, and the work factor is adjusted to give one confirmation per ten minutes on average) to every checkout? Even requiring just one confirmation would mean that a supermarket cashier could only process about four or five customers per hour if you want to keep the process sequential.
why would you use bitcoin below that though? requiring a both vendor and customer have an account at some paypal like site just makes it paypal. it will have the same problems. so what does bitcoin add? nothing
Right. People tend to forget that bitcoin is just the base layer, the first step. Like the kernel would be to an OS. Its goal is to support sending value from A to B reliably. All kinds of functionality needed to run a full-fledged economy can be built on-top without affecting the core system too much. For example using Open Transactions.
I agree. I also think (possibly somewhat antagonizing your idea of pacifying merchants) that things like the banking embargo against Wikileaks and the probably inevitable expansion of those kinds of actions against whatever the antagonizer of established power of the day is.
Bitcoin is building a start point for what will inevitably be a cat and mouse game future of supporting unpopular (with Power at least) movements.
Of course, it would help if merchants wouldn't have to be afraid that FBI will come knocking at their door questioning them about it, or if the Government wouldn't immediately freak out about it if its usage explodes in the marketplace. You'd need a president that supports currency competition, too, and might even allow something like this in the market (Ron Paul could be such a president).