Bitcoin can be even safer to spend online than credit cards, since you're not handing the merchant your card number which they can turn around and use at their whim.

For that to be a reality, we need to combine hardware wallets (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet http://www.bitcointrezor.com/), the new payment protocol (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0070), and escrow transactions (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Escrow_Service), but the result would be pretty awesome.

One difference is that slashdot didn't lead with a new "all the credit cards are gone!" story every day...

Yes, but only because it didn't exist yet!

When exactly was that? The Fair Credit Billing Act was passed in 1975.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act

Yes, consumers using credit cards definitely had more protections at that time than they do today with bitcoin. My point is merely that less than 20 years ago people had an almost universal aversion to putting their credit card information into a form on a website. That changed rapidly. I believe that the pieces aren't yet in place to give people the same level of confidence in bitcoin, but I also believe that it's a (short) matter of time until they are. Multi-signature transactions are very interesting in that regard.

I don't believe that bitcoin will destroy fiat or the finance industry as a whole, but I do think it will become a very convenient way of moving money around, especially between national currencies. Much in the same way that sending an email is more convenient than sending a letter internationally. It's not a complete solution; it's a foundation to build services upon, and those services will most likely be offered by the same large financial institutions we have today, along with a few upstarts. Just my 2 μBTC.

Like from Adobe circa last month :P