Quote Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix View Post
To be fair that is sort of the point of traditional currency. It gives everything a value to make bartering easier, so if you are a pig farmer you can easily carry a couple of pigs worth of value around with you without actually having to carry a couple of pigs. Also makes trading half a pig a lot easier too

So if we value everything in Sterling, then BTC is just bound to get sucked up into that framework.

While bitcoin is unstable, it won't be used as a reference though. I was told about 20 years ago that in Russia there were financial problems such that the standard currency in Moscow became the subway token. No matter what happened to their currency, a token was always worth one ride on the subway, so had a fixed and tangible value that everything else could be compared against.
I thought bitcoin was about having a decentralised and untraceable money system. I know that the way it works as money is going to be very similar to existing money. I'm just not sure we should keep comparing it with the existing currencies in the way that we do. But it's the way people are looking at it - just as something to trade in temporarily, and hopefully turn into more $'s or £'s etc. I think it needs to stand on its own to work. But I think that feels a bit weird and risky for people to do. I know it does for me. That's why I haven't bought into them yet That's interesting about Russia btw. I like that