The problem I have is that it is still going to be money, and it will still be subject to money's flaws.
Meet the new investment bankers, same as the old ones.
Ask yourself: if we had a global currency backed by the UN that was regulated a la NASDAQ (remember that guy complaining that mtgox was, essentially, unregulated), would that truly be less preferable to Bitcoin or similar?
Official things have a purpose. Someone, some entity to be accountable provides more of an indication of our affirmed agreement.
No idea without more detail on what that would look like.
But the ultimate goal of BTC and hopefully its forks and descendants is to replace that centralized (corruptible) human authority with a decentralized, transparent, fair, robust and reliable system instead.
It's not there yet, and may ultimately be impossible, formerly undecidable even, but it's opened a new avenue for research and experimentation that has never been possible before.
Whether Bitcoin itself succeeds or fails, that alone is a huge win imho.
Money is, in some sense, a contract between people; or perhaps a better way of saying it is that it's within the public concern. So there _must_ be some human authority backing it.
Many of the solutions aren't perfect, but neither are the human authority alternatives. The question to ask is, on the margin, is having a human authority more efficient than the self-regulating alternatives?
I am no Bitcoin fanatic, just an interested observer, but imho it already has.
It has provided the first viable model for a decentralized p2p [currency|medium of exchange|payment system|something as yet uncategorizable] embedded in the Internet, rather than operated by a third party.
The first iteration is imperfect, but subsequent versions that fix its problems are already being worked on. Some are scams, some are honest but flawed attempts at a better Bitcion, and eventually I expect a more sophisticated Bitcoin 2.0 to emerge.
Imho, Bitcoin represents an inflection point. It may not make it to the promised land, but one of its descendents may.
>You lost.
There is no finish line. This game never ends. And Bitcoin's success does not necessarily mean the end of government currencies. I fully expect they will co-exist for a long time.
Less emotional investment from both sides, less fixation on price/exchange rate, and more focus on the underlying ideas, technology, and their ramifications, both positive and negative, please.