disintermediate

If the MPAA wants software to protect its outdated business model, it ought to pay for it itself, not lobby the gov to threaten tech firms.

This is about developing filters to prevent piracy. You'll see.

Yep. Any time a politician talks about child porn or terrorism, you want to ask yourself, "what are they really trying to achieve here?"

My guess is that the film lobby is trying to get the government to push the cost of preventing piracy onto Internet firmshere. The end user will pay for it and have a more restricted Internet.

These companies go to great lengths to avoid US tax jurisdiction, employing an army of accountants and lawyers to avoid giving money to the IRS. Perhaps they could work with the same dedication to avoid giving their users data to the NSA.

What we're seeing there is competitive devaluations through printing and recently confiscations. Fixed supply commodities like gold fare well, but their existence doesn't drag the world into a deflationary spiral. Bitcoin's existence won't have macroeconomic implications either.

The price of Bitcoin won't stabilise. The best you could hope for would be a similar volatility to a commodity like gold or silver. So products and services will never be priced in Bitcoin while there is a better alternative like the dollar which is relatively stable.

A mistake 'economists' make with bitcoin is to draw macroecomic conclusions based on theories suited to single currency economies. Actually we need theories that allow for multiple currencies circulating that have different strengths to understand the effects.

Tl;dr Bitcoin won't change the way we price things, it just provides another option to transfer wealth.

Not yet. Five years I'd guess.

Also, as Bitcoin matures, you'll see businesses pop up that will insure against the risk for a small portion of the transaction allowing near instant confirmation for merchants.

>use cases are so niche

This is a first-world misperception. There is half a world excluded from traditional payment methods.

The biggest advantage of Bitcoin is being able to transfer funds globally without an intermidiary. Think of it as a payment method rather than a currency for the time being and you'll be better served.