"One should not have to consult an exchange rate to figure out how much their currency is worth. They should know what it's worth by how much it costs for a dozen eggs. If that number changes rapidly (dozen eggs costs 1 BTC Monday, 3 on Friday, .5 next month, 100 in the future, .002 after that) well.... you don't have a currency, you have a speculative commodity."

This is just not true for many currencies that have undergone hyper-inflation and hyper-deflation. You are only comparing btc to the most dominant currencies in the world right now, and btc obviously is not one of the most dominant currencies.

> This is just not true for many currencies that have undergone hyper-inflation and hyper-deflation.

When that happens, people tend to abandon them as currencies (though a currency undergoing hyperdeflation would be hoarded as a store of value).

Actually they often do not really abandon the currency, they just issue a new dollar that removes a bunch of orders of magnitude from the dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_inflation#Currency

Users (not issuers) abandon the currency as a currency until the measures are taken to assure that some measure of value stability will be restored.

Doing what amounts to a a "reverse split" on the currency is a measure issuers take to get the unit value of currency to a usable value.

>This is just not true for many currencies that have undergone hyper-inflation and hyper-deflation.

This is true. But generally speaking, people go quite a bit out of their way to use currencies that are perceived to have a predictable future value.

This is why the dollar (and the Euro) is so popular the world over; it's value is pretty predictable, compared to most other commodities.

Again, you speak of a con of Bitcoin, but I don't see how any other system solves what you complain about.

Please explain to me (or refer me to material explaining) how USD can possibly be stable when used by billions of people. Just because it's been stable from my point of view, doesn't mean it's stable for everyone. If your explanation relies on trusting a single person or organization, you see why I favor Bitcoin.

> The only reason Bitcoin users don't complain is because they're mostly hoarders/traders & the general trend is up.

The only reason fiat users don't complain is because from their perspective it looks like it's working.

USD is more stable because gov/banks/etc. are all staring at it all day, as well as their country's population. Not saying I trust them but I'd rather have a bill backed by the US gov than by Satoshi Nakamoto.

He's the single person YOU rely on -- the one who designed the mining system, currency caps, etc. Ridiculous.

USD is more distributed than Bitcoin just because people are always watching theorizing monitoring USD. Bitcoin is at the mercy of market manipulators and there are no legal protections provided against even basic tricks.

> but I'd rather have a bill backed by the US gov

I am assuming that you are fine with 90% loss in purchasing power of the US dollar in the last 100 years.

You provided no proof that USD is stable, just a bunch of handwaving.

> He's the single person YOU rely on.

For security, no. The protocol is public. So I assume you mean only by market manipulation. But how so? Is this the same way I rely on Bill Gates not to trade all his money to a foreign currency?

> You provided no proof that USD is stable

Inflation figures for USD are readily available. That it is more stable when considered against most goods and services than bitcoin is not something about which there is any room for serious dispute.

Actually the CPI proves exactly that it is stable. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/

This is not the observation of one person or perspective. It's the actual purchasing power of USD.