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On the other hand, all of your examples could easily be addressed if there was sufficient demand for it.

So Bitcoin could be valuable in disrupting payment systems:

  Step 1: Bitcoin becomes superior to traditional payment systems.
  Step 2: This becomes relevant enough in the large scheme of things
    that Bitcoin gets serious adoption outside of speculation.
  Step 3: Traditional payment providers up their game.
  Step 4: Traditional payment providers win, because their intrinsic costs are lower
    (mining is inherently costly and not needed for traditional payment systems).
So - there's a buck to be made in Bitcoin, but it's implausible that Bitcoin should remain superior to more traditional systems in the long term (except for illegal purposes).



I fully agree. It's not something traditional payment systems couldn't do (at least in principle. In practice I don't know if they can operate on such low fees). The actual success of Bitcoin over the next decade is a much more uncertain issue.




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