Alice acquires $1,000 USD worth of bitcoins, but wants to maintain that relative purchasing power down the road, i.e. not just $880 USD buying power due to some dip, albeit upticks are welcomed, but Alice opts to not play that game, for lack of a better term. Thus, Alice opts for the "Store of Value" option via ticking a box. So, instead of having an address 1xxxXXX..., she has SV1xxxXXX... (x & X denote random digits, of course).
Now, down the road, whatever direction the bitcoin exchange rate takes, no matter how drastic, Alice would still has $1,000 USD worth of bitcoins to make her purchases.
An example if the rate doubles from $1,000 USD/BTC to $2,000 USD/BTC:
Alice has $1,000 USD in the form of SV1xxxXXX..., of which just happens to equal exactly 1 BTC that's, for practical purposes, irrelevant, for in the next few minutes 1 BTC could easily equal $1,006.72 USD.
Several months later, Alice desires to make a purchase of some item that has a price point of exactly $1,000 USD, and the seller, of course, gladly accepts bitcoins. Even though the currently exchange rate is now $2,000 USD/BTC, Alice transfers her SV1xxxXXX... to the merchant's wallet of 1xxxXXX...., but the merchant now has 0.5 BTC equating to exactly $1,000 USD. (like everybody else, the merchant also has the option of accepting BTC and placing them into an SV bitcoin wallet)
Likewise, if the exchange rate halves to $500 USD/BTC:
Several months later (or whatever timeframe), Alice desires to make a purchase of some item that has a price point of exactly $1,000 USD, and the seller, of course, gladly accepts bitcoins. Even though the currently exchange rate is now $500 USD/BTC, Alice transfers her SV1xxxXXX... to the merchant's wallet of 1xxxXXX...., but the merchant now has 2 BTC equating to exactly $1,000 USD. (like everybody else, the merchant also has the option of accepting BTC and placing them into an SV bitcoin wallet)
Alice is not force to spend the entire $1K USD SV at one shot. She could easily opt to spend any fraction of her SV, maintaining the balance SV, but the merchant having the dollar amount converted to his 1xxxXXX... bitcoin wallet.
At any time, Alice would be able to take out a fraction of, or her entire holding, and transfer it to another wallet she maintains that's not an SV wallet.
The above is the gist of the idea I came up with while on the road to Philly. Since then, something else came to mind, of which I'm not as sure it working as strongly as I envisioned the above, but I'll express it below nonetheless.
If a critical mass of bitcoiners opt for the SV option, of course visible on the 'blockchain', then an algorithm could be devised to track at what price point SVs were locked in at to act as a bellwether for the current exchange rate, either as a supplement to, or as the official stock exchange rate, thus eliminating all rouge exchanges. If such were the case, then exchanges would be just that: acting ONLY as the facilitator of BTC to fiat, and vice versa, based upon the rate set by the SV holding patterns, along with having a nominal fee structure to compete with the myriad competition.
Yes, the SV system could be gamed to effect the exchange rate, but at a cost of all transactions being readily available for all to see exactly what is going on, and not behind some doors of some entity named after the owner's cat.
Also, Alice could easily opt to play the game. If she feels that BTC is going to increase in value, she could easily transfer all or part of her SV holdings to a conventional wallet address that she maintains. Conversely, if Alice feels that the rate is about to drop, she could transfer all or part of her holdings to a new SV bitcoin wallet. Obviously, an SV bitcoin wallet can only be used once (unless I'm missing something, though perhaps an argument could be made that if it's funded with the exact dollar, or other fiat, amount that it was originally set up for, then that may work--
KISS).
Discussion.
~Bruno Kucinskas