Just seems like Ecash got so much right in terms of the properties one would want for digital cash...
Millions of people are already using Bitcoin-backed debit cards to make payments. This way it's possible to get the benefits of sound money while being able to use it for daily spending.
"Come for the greed, stay for the revolution."
Yes probably, there are a decent number of people that see crypto as an alternative to paypal. The SMS/MMS over IP provider I use primarily uses bitcoin for payments probably because paypal did something stupid that made it unusable. There are lots of smaller projects like this where the maintainers just don't want to deal with paypal and bitcoin works very well.
Also, you almost never need to do an offline transaction. (I'm not 100% sure, but IIRC that is a feature of at least some of those digital cash solutions based on blind signatures.) And if you can do prompt online transactions and you don't care much about privacy (because you trust the banks) then you don't need digital cash.
BTC and all the other blockchain bases solutions are speculative assets. They hold the promise of creating value out of nothing. So it's a strong motivation for at least some of the developers and most of the adopters. Digital cash, on the other hand, would be issued by banks, so no one could earn a profit from holding them (well, compared to holding the actual currency on their account). Though, in theory digital cash could be issued by its developers (just as blockchain based ones), but since it would sound new and obscure, people wouldn't trust it. (BTC and the blockchain took quite a few years too.)
At one point I actually sat down with a bank consultant to "design" a way to move money between (sets of) bank accounts in 2 countries just so we can do business. Still takes 4+ days (non-bank holidays) to actually happen. Ethereum can certainly match that and with much less costs.
I have been reading a book called "The Bitcoin Standard" which highlights that the goal is a switch for society towards Austrian economics and getting back to something like the gold standard (Hint: Bitcoin is the better gold).
The book is quite good and I learned a lot about the history of money - so I'd recommend it.
To paraphrase, the current cash printing is vaporware and not backed by anything anymore - making it quite weak and easy to attack - disaster waiting to happen. Central planning of currency should be replaced by a democratic and capitalist system where the best currency evolves naturally. Which might or might not possibly happen with Bitcoin.
Something like a government bailout using tax payer money of a "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world - making the economic system a lot stronger for the individuals.
Held up by a house of cards since it's so volatile (at least for now). Can't wait for it to become a stablecoin
At the risk of starting a flamewar over Keynesianism (or MMT): while I agree that tolerating "TBTF" firms leads to serious moral hazards, let's just say it is highly disputed among economists whether or not it's advantageous for states to have macroeconomic levers. I'm happy to acknowledge the Austrian school's perspective, but it's not exactly a universal consensus.
> a democratic and capitalist system
These two things are in tension. That's not necessarily a problem, a free and just society has to balance multiple concerns (minority rights vs. majority rule); but the very issue with monetary or economic policy is that it lives at an intersection point between public and private interests, and any policy decision (or non-decision) is likely to have winners and losers.
Nano is more like digital gold as it can be passed from hand to hand with no fee, but like Bitcoin has a fixed deflationary supply.
They're even working on extending it to support offline transactions.
This is a scary thing to put into any government's hands, let alone the Chinese government's, but it has enough attractive properties that it has a good chance of catching on.