One would expect me to comment on Bitcoin because this is a blog about commerce and Bitcoin is highly relevant to the subject.
I came to understand money many decades ago as a consequence of writing The Seven Laws of Money and having to explain it to people. I ended up saying that money is language. Not A language but language itself. Bees have a dance that is language. Different hives may have different languages but the dance itself is language.
How does that apply to Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is intended to fill three niches.
* One is to provide an international money transfer system.
* Two is to have a monetary system that is not subject to national control.
* Three is to create a global market for the currency itself that is independent of all other currencies.
Let's exam each one of these goals.
We don't need an international money transfer system per se because it is easy to move money between banks or within corporations. For small amounts, credit cards are international money. Bitcoin isn’t needed for goal number one.
The problem with existing monetary transfer systems is that they are subject to the control of any nation or national coalitions. Goal number two is to avoid that control.
That is not only difficult it is impossible. Nations will not permit money to be transmitted without their consent, their knowledge and their ability to apply taxes.
It is that simple and it is the reason Bitcoin could not survive had it gotten any further.
The third goal was to create a global market of the currency itself. Because currencies are truly domestic and connected to the behavior of each nation, to have a currency that is supranational would mean it would resemble the language we call pigeon. Pigeons are crosses between all languages such as Tagalog-English pigeon, French-English pigeon, etc Pigeon is language just as money is language.
Pigeon does not seem to have much grammar therefore it is used in only the most rudimentary situations. Bitcoin would inherently have to be cobbled together in clusters that would be too simple to use and too complex to create. For example: creating the Mexican peso value of Bitcoin would require one authorized Mexican exchange which would in turn be forced to compete with several Mexican exchanges which in turn would form alliances with several U.S. Dollar exchanges. Each would have a different valuation of the Peso to the Dollar. Both too simple to use and too complex to operate. Like pigeon.
A Bitcoin-like supranational new currency is unlikely to be created.