Besides, illicit transactions are still transactions.
And.. you are just plain wrong. Bitcoin is also useful for buying many completely legal things. Including a VPN that can't be linked to your identity. (Illicit you say? What about a journalist in a repressive regime).
Also, just because some people do something doesn't mean that there aren't strong incentives against doing that thing, and doesn't make a statement such as "people don't do that" false. It just means that there are exceptions, but when the exceptions don't affect the point it is common to ignore the exceptions in general conversation.
Regrettably, it's still super common for people to turn up their noses in disgust, claiming "Bitcoin Boogey Man, oh noezzz"!
I'm sorry, does the USD somehow not come with a Boogey Man? Because last I checked HSBC was caught with their pants down directly funding terrorism through shady business practices, Bernie Madoff is still in prison for running a giant Ponzi, the illegal narcotics trade is done mostly in USD, plus you have money laundering, and just about every crime conceivable being carried out in USD.
But wait, the Bitcoin Boogeyman!!!
Everyone come to look!
The USD is dirtier than Bitcoin by several orders of magnitude. It's been taking a full out mudbath every day of its life for the past several decades. It's just that the USD is all people know, so they assume it's squeaky clean, because how could it not be squeaky clean??
Why would I buy a cheeseburger with Bitcoins? Say the cheeseburger costs 0.1 Bitcoins (today). Tomorrow, who knows what those (fractional) Bitcoins will be worth!
Dollars (or whatever) on the other hand are generally pretty stable. Currency fluctuations, on a day-to-day basis, are very, very small. Sure, there's the occasional hyper-inflationary episode (several South American countries have experienced these somewhat regularly), but that's the exception.
The problem is that Bitcoin is, at least at this point, more of a commodity that people trade when they can't (or don't want to) use traditional money. It is not a "currency" in that sense.
There is no proof that the 2007 financial crises was not orchestrated on purpose. There is also no proof that that 2007 financial crises was orchestrated on purpose.
But we do know that Goldman Sachs sold financial instruments to their clients which they betted against. When the clients lost that money the profiteers was Goldman Sachs.
1. If you assume that the Rot Schild banks owned the entire English economy since June, 1815 and, If you assume that the Rot Schild bank had a value of USD 1,000,000 at that time, growing at 5% per annum for 200 years it's value would be USD 17.2 Trillion.
If you also consider that the Federal Reserve has been leaking money into the shareholders of the FED at 6% of interest on bonds raised since 1913, and if Rot Schild banks were all part share holders in the founding banks of the Federal reserve this profit has been going to them.
If the Rot Schild banks were the major investors in Goldman Sachs, it would make sense for Goldman to loose their investors money and transfer it to their biggest investors directly through dividend.
We know from 1. above that the Rot Schild holdings should easily be USD 17 trillion + and that the valuations of the banks that went under was about USD 800 billion. Hence it is highly possible that the biggest investor in Goldman is bigger than all the rest combined.
The bitcoins are there for a reason much much more important I think.
Here are their recent financial reports if you're interested: http://www.rothschild.com/about_rothschild/financial_reports...
I think what you meant to say is that bitcoins don't make a good general-purpose day-to-day currency (yet). For example paying your hairdresser, paying at the supermarket, etc.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Restaurants_and_cafes
I don't have an Android+Wallet App (I think you need that), so if anyone with such a phone wants to go with me there, I'm up for it :)
You should ask yourself from where currency originates. What is its predecessor and was its acceptance ubiquitous. And take note that there was a period not long ago where saffron was used as "currency".
Also, though you may be intelligent, it would good to take a note from Socrates and consider that perhaps you don't know everything about every field.
This isn't clear to me at all.
There are a finite number of possible bitcoins, and once the last one is mined no new ones can be created. While it might be true that putting more USD into circulation causes the value of each individual dollar to go down, that's actually an incentive to spend money and create economic activity, instead of hoarding it hoping the price goes up.
You may say that's just a baseless speculation, but not any less than yours.
In fact, if we're completely honest, paying for a VPN with bitcoins doesn't mean your identity is hidden anyway. All it would take is one connection record in one log file and you're exposed.
The "can't be linked to your identity" part depends entirely on how you get your BTC in the first place.
If you buy them with cash from a guy on the street who has no idea who you are, fair enough.
If you buy them from an exchange by making a deposit from your bank account, the level of anonymity you enjoy depends entirely on how much you trust the exchange. They know your real name and the wallet you used to receive the BTC. If they share this information with anyone, a sufficiently motivated attacker can trace the BTC to their ultimate destination (the wallet of the VPN firm). If you launder the BTC through a few intermediary wallets first, I suppose you might have some plausible deniability, but if you're a journalist in a repressive regime how much is plausible deniability worth?
On the other hand, i don't know what "astronomical currency risk" are you talking about. Merchants accepting bitcoin are not forced to keep their balance in bitcoins. They can exchange it for dollars or other official currency every hour if they wish so. They are not affected by the volatility of the bitcoin exchange rate as you probably asume.
These factors substantially reduce the cost of selling goods and services with Bitcoin.
"and 0% risk of fraud" This is completely untrue, because it assumes the motives of both sides of a transaction.
The act of conducting a transaction posts the wallet id's of the participants to the global ledger, and associating wallet id's to real identities is far from impossible.
