All these comments are good and all, but only Chromebooks and Ubuntu have brought forward a instant user friendly experience for users who don't want to Google around to get things working properly by default.
To be a bitcoin believer, its not necessary to think it will displace fiat. Bitcoin is deflationary like gold, so it shouldn't be much different then the gold commodity market or returning to a gold standard. For most of the united States growth and prosperity, it was on the gold standard.
Glad to hear I can just carry one reward card instead of card for every grocery store I visit. Glad to hear Ill be able to use google for person to person payments instead of paypal. Perhaps they will even get the same functionality as the bitinstant card.
As you said, this is only a qualification of 'mature' markets. Also, central banks do not fiddle with interest rates to keep the value stable. They fiddle with interest rates to stimulate economic growth, which causes instability through bust boom cycles...kicking the can down the road.
There is no requirement for any number of coins to be in the system. The amounts are infinitely divisible. You could start the economy with 1 bitcoin, and break it into 7 billion fractions for everyone to share..and if all those are lost, you could do the same with the last 1 bitcoin again.
simply because they do not support SOPA, are actively listening to the demand, they are cheap, and they have a good interface. That beats all the other options I looked at. I considered gandi.net, but couldn't justify the extra cost. The only feature I am missing right now is a registrar that accepts bitcoins.
Demolished it how? All I have seen is that Keynes promotes printing of money and lots of government spending, and the people in power love this! Please enlighten us.