On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 6:41 PM, <dan@geer.org> wrote:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101841875 Breyer also predicted big things for digital currencies.

He said the leader in the field may not end up being bitcoin, which is the most prominent name now but has faced price volatility, theft and scandal over the past year. Other providers will emerge.

"I have zero doubt in the next five to seven years that we will see at least half a dozen multibillion dollar digital currency companies," he said.

All currencies and property exhibit volatility, scandal and theft. It is a laugh to suggest otherwise, especially for anything 'new'. And of course there will be new digital currency 'companies'. Let's just call them what they will be, large central banks and govt's. But none of them will have the property that their currency is not under their control. Other than the obivous head start bitcoin has in the digital currency game, that is what bitcoin offers philosophically... freedom from control. No company can or will offer that with their currency. And people are choosing freedom to the tune of roughly $100M moved per day [1] when they could just as easily use the current centralized digital currencies of CC/ACH/wire. If bitcoin itself ends up not scaling well enough, or being anonymous enough, or resistant enough to centralization... another decentral digital currency will do better and take its place. The only real question is, will a decentralized currency such as bitcoin beat the centralizers in the race to global adoption by the masses? And similarly to reach point of no return adoption before centralizers realize it's too late to say no? You really don't want to let big central things emerge (here $trillion-dollar corps), bad things always happen with that. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ http://blockchain.info/charts http://www.coindesk.com/