I've said it before.. It's a commodity which is the underlying token for the distributed ledger, which can trade like a stock and be used as de facto currency down the line as well as gold-like savings vehicle
Can be, but doesn't have to be. I could create an address, and using a Tor browser, request bitcoin be sent there. How would you track me down? Current price is based on expected future utility, not on current demand for using Bitcoin. An entirely speculative asset with a small liquidity pool is going to be highly volatile. Whereas if a large percentage of monetary wealth were converted to Bitcoin, the price would stabilize (hell, it's been stable for months even with a tiny liquidity pool and inflating money supply) No one is claiming converting dollars to bitcoin is anonymous.
The same way the FBI tracked down Ross Ulbercht and his bitcoin transactions. If a security agency can crack the original source of the bitcoin address, bitcoin becomes a completely transparant way to track every expenditure you've ever made. Ways to do this that have been recorded include the installation of malware on target computers and what happened to Ross: seizure of the bitcoins and the original computer after an injection attack on his server and possible targeted DDoS honeypots to seperate out non-Silk Road Tor nodes (a noted behavior when a whole host of Tor sites such as Silk Road were seized by federal authorities). If you're a high-enough value target, even (and maybe especially) if you're firmly planted in the dark net--people will find you and they will track you down unless you know what the f**k you're doing. And Ross at least used a bitcoin tumbler once in a while, even if he was documented to be REALLY careless with encryption and keeping his server identity a secret for the most part. And of course, he used the dark net often--and knew there was a target on his back and so he tried to disambiguate his virtual identity from his real identity several times. If bitcoin is to become "ubiquitous", a lot of people will not fit these conditions. I think the rest of your arguments demonstrate little thought about how bitcoin will become ubiqutious, which is where the bulk of interesting arguments reside. You've kinda assumed away a whole bunch of stuff by making bitcoin scale an a priori fact. That merely makes your arguments contradict themselves--a bitcoin used by most non-technical people won't be anonymous or without intermediaries on its current path of development -> see: bitcoin exchanges and how trivially easy it is to find IP addresses and locations with the web. For you to reconcile your thinking will require either the same "it'll work itself out evantually logic" or some technical insight. That's fine though--that's a minor point. But this is a major one: if you don't know your way around protecting your identity online (the vast majority of people) don't f**k around with bitcoin and think it is completely anonymous by itself. Bitcoin transactions will not magically make you anonymous--in fact, if you're not careful about protecting yourself online, bitcoin will magnify the knowledge anybody can have on what you do online.
Bitcoin will magnify transparency for those that need to be "tracked" aka everyone And darkwallets, etc will be used by those in the underground and governmental backdoor dealers
So now that people who actually understand tech, finance, and policy are all going to support *the* blockchain... Where does that leave the ppl with vapid opinions (most of this board) I'm going to the moon you can come if you'd like
Everything is bubble prone and cyclical Don't ignore the point I'm making to satisfy your whatever it is
Real estate bubbles are more due to a hype and fear rather than the maximal utilisation of a new utility/technology
Not to say there isn't fear/hype involved with bitcoin There certainly is But if you pull everything apart it's the utilization of the ledger that drives the basis of it all.
