Todays bear post is about the so called uniqueness of Bitcoin.There is not much to write about it, for all practical purposes Bitcoin is innovative but certainly not unique.
Take a look around at the
Digital Currency Wiki and tell me why you think Bitcoin is destined for greatness and all those other solutions are not.
When doing that keep in mind that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily agree with libertarian ideology.
It's exactly because you are living in the first world, that you may not understand why the rest of the world needs it, and its uniqueness.
Ohh that's gonna be interesting. Please tell me how the 3rd world population is supposed to benefit from BTC in any way because I cannot think of any.
I'm serious.
![Undecided](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/undecided.gif)
and don't forget the mountain of gox!
true dat.
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/pay-another-way-bitcoin/The Wordpress guy pretty much got it actually, the status quo is if folks in my nation, and many other third world nations wanna pay for, let's say a wordpress or megaupload subscription, or just simply buying goods in a U.S online store, soon they will find many of the times their only option is to ask people like me(oversea students/workers) to help them out, all current payment methods would not work for one reason or another. Credit cards issued in many nations are not accepted, you can't blame the merchants for this, the issuing banks most likely would not give a shit once you are frauded, let alone pay for your losses, and even if you could locate the fraudster, the chance of a successful prosecution is superslim. Paypal does not do business with perhaps more than half of the world's population, and is not allowed to process foreign currency transactions in China, even in those nations it operates, there are very often draconian restrictions, see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Local_restrictions , the chance that other online payment business/digital currency issuers could operate where Paypal could not is, of course, even slimmer. And don't get me started on the wire transfer, even if the merchant accepts it and you are fine with the exorbitant fees, your fund could be intercepted anytime by an intermediary bank if the amount is slightly large, on the pretext of financial crime prevention of course, and you are left to find out yourself why your fund has not arrived, no one is going to inform you, i had personal experience with that.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, could prove to be very useful, I don't know about other nations, but in China, it's a piece of cake to buy bitcoins with existing domestic online payment system like Alipay, even if the government decides to crack down on the exchanges, the online shops could still sell them under all kinds of pretenses, it is nearly impossible the authority would find out what is the good really being delivered. On the oversea merchants side, all they have to do is to use a payment processor, which adds very little cost. Of course, whether bitcoin could really succeed will have to depend on the size and liquidity of the market, in the end.
Bitcoin, it seems to me, is basically a digital version of hawala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala, except that hawala is nowhere near as versatile as bitcoin is. The decentralization aspect is not just libertarian ideology, it's very tangible in nations where financial barriers are real.