I have concluded bitcoin is a scam

[joshcryer]

25. It has to be fiat based.

Not necessarily government or a central control mechanism, mind you, but based upon internal protocol aspects that are able to be nurtured by the overall exchanges and individual actors. A sort of logical tug of war preventing exchanges from having the kind of power Mt.gox had and allowing the decentralized users the ability to exchange at will.

Of course, this protocol would be immeasurably more complex than Bitcoin ever thought about being (loans, bonds, escrow, credit, possibly interest but that is a relic of capitalism and unnecessary; and to prevent infinite printing of money there are other existing proof of work concepts than searching for hashes). And, to top it off, most crypto-currency supporters are libertarian-capitalists, and find the idea of fiat absolutely repugnant. It's actually what makes Bitcoin rather simple in retrospect, because it's simply "representative money." Looking at the protocol it is extremely simple (the math behind it of course is complex, but that goes without saying when you are looking at proof-of-work stuff).

But yeah I agree with you though I do think Bitcoin is doomed to failure.